Doug Yates
- Email: doug.yates@rrcc.edu
- Phone: 303.914.6100 Ext. 6549
- Doug's blog
I started playing the bagpipes as an adult, during a period in my life when I had the focus and freedom to dedicate myself to a time-consuming hobby. I traveled to a workshop in Maine and, as experienced players fired up their pipes in a dimly lit church, I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by this project that I had decided to tackle. This was the very beginning, and I was there to learn the notes of the scale on a practice chanter, a piece that resembles a skinny version of that instrument we've probably all fooled around with at some point, the recorder. I was struggling with the absolute basics, and I felt hopelessly out of place. At one point, I remember talking to a workshop attendee and saying, "I feel like this thing is a mountain that I'll never be able to climb." He looked at me with a somewhat strange expression on his face and replied, "It's not that hard, man"
My experience as a student of music has had a tremendous influence on my philosophy as a teacher of English, both composition and literature. Specifically with respect to writing, I like to start each semester addressing preconceptions that students have about the practice. I am consistently amazed by how often they believe writing to be easy, though this comes out in more subtle behavior rather than in overt statements. Perhaps because it is something that they have been working on since grade school penmanship class, they have grown numb to the complexities of this form of expression. Anyone can throw words onto a page with little difficulty, I sermonize, but to write well, to express oneself with verve and originality, is hard. I have been a student of English long enough not to feel quite as intimidated by it as I once did, but my experience with music forces me to never lose sight of the challenges faced by newer learners.
And I believe writing to be a process. Unlike teaching students, say, to whistle with their fingers--surely a skill, and a fun lesson plan incidentally, but one that sticks with you once you learn it--writing must constantly be nurtured, practiced. This often takes the learning far beyond the defined limits of a fifteen week course. And such is also the case with literature; for example, is it reasonable to assume that one can fully digest the magnitude of 150 years of American letters in one semester?
But, the study of both writing and literature, if the student is up to its challenges, has huge dividends to pay. To know oneself, I believe, is one of life’s most sublime pursuits, and English is one of the portals to this knowledge. It is not much of a surprise, then, to find that my method in the classroom is one that hinges on this critical dictum of Socrates. Those moments when I am able to tease out real clarity in students' perceptions are what I consider to be my greatest joys as a teacher. This was never meant to be an easy process, however, and it is comforting to some extent to know that we have a lifetime to complete it.
I have heard stories of bagpipe players getting so frustrated in the learning stages that they have thrown the temperamental instrument at a wall. The challenge of gaining competency, in these moments, just seems too intense. But, persistence in climbing that mountain does eventually lead to a unique sound that can give a listener goose bumps. Writing and literature, in its own way, is very much the same.
