Thoughts on the Connections Between Writing and Teaching
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In an interview for this project, poet and activist Raphael Jesús González talked about the differences and similarities between teaching and writing. His poems have appeared in In Praise of Fertile Land: An Anthology of Poetry, Parable, and Story and Mirrors Beneath the Earth: Short Fiction by Chicano Writers.
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Transcript
" . . . all writing is teaching, but if we mean the classroom teaching kind of thing, there are two different kinds of, two different kind of teaching in many ways. It's a driving, it's essentially a monkish thing to do. We have to enclose ourselves in our space, to write. Even when we're writing on the subway or in bars, we're still creating that shield. It's a very, very lonely process.
And teaching is not, teaching is a communal process. Or if it's two, it's still a community of two. There is much more of that encounter thing. So the difference is in the very action itself, the intimacy that occurs in teaching.
And teaching when everyone [unint.] and it's very interesting, because I never really learned my art until I started teaching it, and then I had to really focus on my art, you know, it forced me to question very simply, you know, language and the things-that it was always a give and take kind of thing."
