framed

Today I wound up talking to a retired professor of history for twenty minutes instead of just zipping out of the adjunct office space. He is a fascinating guy, and he offered insight into teaching students in our area. When he started teaching, he made a lot of waves by giving Ds and Fs instead of just passing students during a time when branches really earned their bad reputations. He talked about challenging students who really needed it, and not sweating those students that you just don’t reach. He also praised me for showing students how there is more to the world beyond Ohio. I felt accepted and worthwhile, and I do hope that at least a few students leave my class aware of a larger sense of human culture.

I realized that maybe this was the frame that I've been missing. I hit a wall when I made a feeble attempt at writing about local art; that wall was made of a mixture of self-doubt and inspiration without direction. I thought  it would be arrogant to think my express purpose is to spread culture to these students. As if I have returned from Manhattan, climbed down from the mountaintop, to preach my secular religion. But hearing another teacher chatting about the opportunity to bring my New York experience into my work as a positive made me realize that it’s all about the frame. I’m not here to impose my views, but to help other students replicate the same kind of journey I made: outward, beyond, further.

Perhaps coming to terms with leaving New York could also bring me to terms with my new purpose. I want to encourage critical thinking, literacy, self-expression, and above all, curiosity. I hope that, eventually, I’ll write some of my own personal insight about local art here, but I’m going to frame it with the differences between home and the outside world. Zanesville to New York, Ohio to the East Coast. And maybe I’ll prove to a few students that they truly are connected to the world beyond this town, all while proving to some people outside that there is more to this country than its coasts.