Freesia McKee: Teaching Statement
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Teaching Statement
I resented the institution because I thought it didn’t pay me enough
to tell the truth, I believed I had chronic migraines, but it was just dehydration, exhaustion,
I loved it when my students ate in class because it meant they were comfortable
and I remembered how in my college advisor’s classes, no one was allowed to leave
for any reason, including to use the bathroom. I promised myself, once, peeing after class,
that I would never institute that kind of rule should I be given power
over such a matter someday and I’m a believer that we’re always trying to do better
than our parents, to fulfill our parents’ incomplete dreams, or to pursue goals
they never would have wished for, but also that we’re trying to do better
than other first teachers, those from whom we learned
in this perpetually performative profession. When I told my students I didn’t believe
in grades, someone asked how I would know who did well and who was failing.
So much of it is about who shows up. The transience of students
and teachers means it’s especially important to be present, perhaps even more than we think
while waiting at the gas station or a red light, dismounting from a bicycle, glugging
from a clear water bottle left in a hot saddle bag. I know it’s inappropriate—a word I learned
from teachers, not at home—to bring my whole self to class, now, that teaching is a facilitative
activity, but still, I puzzled over the sadness I associated with beginning to teach
because it felt like there were parts of myself I would never be able to bring to class again,
eager parts that wished to impress the teacher refracting through the thick windows
of my glasses. Even as a teacher, part of me is the student reticent to share her name
when the class pulls chairs into a circle and waits for the teacher to begin speaking,
but there is some part of me that equates being the facilitator with being a template.
I remember how I over-participated and felt the need to share a point
just because no one else had made it. Even now, there are parts of me that wish
to provide an answer I’m sure the teacher doesn’t know.
Family Dinner
I’ve been thinking about middle school: in 5th grade,
our teachers told us
that kids in families who ate dinner together
tend to do better in school. I wondered what this meant
for families who were separated or divorced, like mine.
Families whose dads worked second shift, like mine.
Families like mine where a mom went back to work
after picking up the kids from school. I liked reading a book
while I ate. Later, I took dinner in front of a computer,
but we didn’t eat together. Our dad
lived several blocks away. When my sister
had an accident, a fall, our dad ran all the way to our mom’s house in bare feet.
Freesia McKee is author of the chapbook How Distant the City (Headmistress Press, 2018). Her words have appeared in Flyway, Bone Bouquet, So to Speak, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Virga, Painted Bride Quarterly, CALYX, About Place Journal, South Dakota Review, New Mexico Review, and the Ms. Magazine Blog. Freesia is a staff book reviewer for South Florida Poetry Journal. Her reviews have also appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Pleiades Book Review, Gulf Stream, and The Drunken Odyssey. Freesia was the winner of CutBank Literary Journal’s 2018 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, chosen by Sarah Vap. Find her online at freesiamckee.com or on Twitter at @freesiamckee.
