The Hindsight of Research and Teaching Statements

It's 27 December, and just as I took down the tree, put away the ornaments and all the decorations, and took down the lights, it occurs to me that it's time to put away the job market materials as well.

But here's the thing...
I am a teacher. I've been a teacher since I first stepped into my Brooklyn classroom in 2001, I was a teacher before that as I taught and ran light crews as a master electrician in theatre, and I was a teacher when I was a wee one and forced my little sister to be my class as I taught her out of the McGuffey readers we had.
I am a teacher now, of high school students.
There is not a single thing that can make me NOT a teacher.

In a similar manner, I was a scholar before I ever started my PhD program. And I have met some excellent role models in the last few years about the scholarly contributions people outside of the academy make.
In fact, it might be a better fit. If I'm not beholden to a tenure committee, I have ultimate freedom to do MY brand of scholarship- to smash periodization. To explore folklore across genres and disciplines. To talk about the fun stuff.

I did have a thought yesterday though that I wanted to share.

Yesterday, as I was walking Nehi, I thought about teaching. Specifically, I thought about what teaching statements do, and what they don't do. They don't tell the truth. All the advice I see about teaching statements is to be specific about what you do in your classroom, to not speak in generalities To describe specific assignments, why you assign them, what they accomplish, etc. Invariably this looks like a list of cool assignments I've gotten, which is fine, but I think misses the heart of what people should look for in teachers.

But here's the truth:

Too often people with little to no pedagogical experience or training design their classes around their wants and needs, what is easiest for them. Scroll academic Twitter at the end of the semester and you'll see the end result of this. It doesn't appear to work very well, for the professors or the students, but it is a pattern that repeats again and again.
In my first year of teaching I was told to always do what was best for my students, not what was easiest for me. This has remained a guiding principle for how I design classes and interact with my students.
This means that I can't tell you exactly what my classes will be like from semester to semester. My students will be different, their needs and interests will be different. Where they're coming from will be different, so my class will be different.
I will not know when my office hours will be until I poll my students about what hours work best for the majority of them.
I won't know how to tweak the assignments until I see what they get and what they don't YET get.
I won't know what mini-lessons class needs to cover until I see what they need.

I can tell you what I value in a classroom. I can tell you what these values look like in my classroom.

• I believe in equity in my classroom, so I will always work to establish a culture in my classroom where everyone feels that their voices are valued, where they feel comfortable engaging with the text, me, and classmates, and where they can share their interests and insights.
• I believe there is a lot that students need to know to be successful in a classroom, and they're not always taught these things because people assume they already have these skills. So I will always be transparent about what I expect, why I expect it, and offer to model and teach students the hidden skills (professional email, how to use the library, how to evaluate sources, how to paraphrase, what to look for in a reading, how to participate in a class discussion, etc.) they need to be successful.
• I believe in representation, not diversity. So I will always revise and reflect on what I teach to make sure that my students see as much of a whole picture in context as I can. It also means that I will always empower my students to find themselves represented in my class, and empower them to share their research, enriching me and the course. 
• I believe that everyone's interests are valid. So I will always design fairly generic assignments that ask the students to pick their own research interests, to decide what the form should be, and to think about what the assignment should look like based on these things. Students will often struggle with this lack of structure. They are used to having everything laid out, a checklist of requirement. And I get that. But I want them to understand the importance of language, how it shifts and changes for audience and purpose, and I want them to understand how to adapt and change for different purposes.
• I believe in learning, not grades. So I will always encourage students to send me drafts, talk through ideas, and think through the process. It means that I will always leave a ton of comments on a students work, in a way they can read, that asks questions to help them revise, in addition to holistic comments about my overall feelings about the piece. It also means that students will always be allowed to revise their work for a higher grade.
• I believe in helping students will the gaps. So I will always offer help about time management, organization, resources on campus, and issues that women, POC, and first generation students face.
• I believe that my teaching style may not best serve all my students. So I will always check in with my students, informally in class, and more formally through surveys throughout the semester, in order to see how the class feels I'm doing, identify what they may need, and then have a conversation with them about what changes we may need to make, how I can help, and what I may not be able to change and why.

To me, these beliefs more clearly show the kind of teacher I am than me telling you that students turn in sample 16th century pamphlets, or a series of Game of Thrones clips that mimic Shakespearean scenes.

In hindsight, I can tell you why I didn't get a job.

My dissertation work covers medieval and early modern English literature. I did this in part because job market trends the last few years showed that more and more schools that I was interested in, small liberal arts colleges (SLACs) were combining these positions, advertising for a generalist who could do both, so I was well positioned for this. I feel just as confident covering one as the other, so I also applied to separate medieval and early modern positions.

But here's the sticking point-

While my book based on my dissertation covers the political devil in medieval and early modern English literature, the rest of my publications focus on folklore.

• How the folkloric devil functions in The Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ
• The folkloric forest as a character in Twin Peaks.
• The Visual Aesthetics of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
• The Artificial Construction of the NM Folk Hero Elfego Baca.
• Freddy Krueger as the folkloric bogeyman.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Board Game as Liminal Space.
• Analyzing Folkloric Horror Elements in Video Games

For me, what each of these pieces explores, and centers around, is applying a folkloric lens to literature and popular culture. I am interested in how folkloric figures represent the fears, anxieties, and desires of a particular historical and cultural moment. What these representations show us about that time period. How these artificial constructions demonize others and establish a norm. The importance of understanding these ARE artificial constructions. How analyzing folkloric figures across literature, and popular culture, reveals patterns across time periods, genres, and disciplines.

This is the work I think is most interesting, and valuable. But I don't think I explained this well enough in my research statement. I don't think I argued strongly enough for the value of this approach, that pushes folkloric studies past just identifying trends and seeks to historicize them, and interrogate how folklore can be analyzed as a moment in amber of the time. 

I think part of the reason I don't do this well is because I was told throughout my PhD program to back off from the folklore, tone it down, do the work, but don't call it that. But this is the heart of my work. It is the most valuable, unique contribution.

Applying a folkloric lens to literature and popular culture is WHY I study medieval and early modern literature and history- I wanted to trace where these ideas and figures came from. This enables me to take a long view of these figures, to see where they came from, how they change and adapt, and what these changes mean.

But because I followed my own interests, and because I started publishing before I ever started my PhD program, and because I was never advised to publish strategically, I can see how someone would look at my list of publications and think I was unfocused, all over the place, not a contributor to medieval and early modern literary studies.

I get that.

In the same breath that I don't care.

Because I know the value of my work. But I also think in hindsight I could have presented it better.

A few weeks ago Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (@Ebonyteach) did a great thread on Twitter about the approach, and struggle (?) of figuring out what it is you do, what your brand is, as you move from student to professor. 

This got me thinking about what my brand is. Yes, I am now an expert on the English devil (feel free to send all devil related toys and items my way). But to me, the most important aspect of my work is the aspect that I was told to bury- pushing the boundaries of applying folkloric studies to literature and popular culture. Folklore studies has long been stagnant, stopping at identifying trends, patterns, and figures in literature and popular culture and not pushing past as to HOW these trends, patterns, and figures are vehicles for fears, anxieties, and desires of the current historical and cultural moment. THAT'S where I live. THAT'S my work. THAT'S my contribution.

It is a unique contribution BECAUSE of my medieval and early modern background and training. 

Hindsight is always 20/20.

And I don't know if I will have a chance to revise any of this and go on the job market again. I don't know if I want to.

But I do know that reflecting on who I am as a teacher and a scholar, knowing how I want to contribute, and move forward, is something that will serve me well no matter what the future brings.