Dancing Over Rainbows

Karlyn Crowley (CVC, English) reached into own experiences as student and teacher for “Dancing Over Rainbows,” a recent piece in Earlhamite, the magazine of her own alma mater, Earlham College: “[My professors] taught me that learning is eminently relevant … In essence, they showed me that I always had my mind. That my mind was powerful. And I could use my mind for the good.”

Earlhamite magazine is the oldest college alumni magazine in continuous publication in the United States. “Dancing Over Rainbows” is reproduced here with the kind permission of Earlham College and the author.

My path to Earlham was haphazard.

While my parents lived in Indiana, we were originally from the East Coast and my dream was to return there for college. I did, and it was awful.

The school I chose ended up being profoundly alienating - largely cliquey, isolated, traditional. It was not for me. My high school best friends had gone to Grinnell and Oberlin respectively and I thought – well, I’ll go to Earlham. Why not? I knew Earlham had a good academic reputation and that it was Quaker, but I had no clue what that meant. I showed up at Earlham for scanty reasons. And I found home.

I tell people that Earlham was the first institution in my life that recognized me as a whole person. Other than experiencing some fine moments in elementary school, I loved learning, but I had not always loved school. Earlham was the first place where the teaching I experienced felt congruent with what learning should be. Earlham taught me three main things about learning: It is affective, engaged and communal.

As is true for many of us, we appreciate what we had after we leave it. I knew when I was an Earlham student that the teaching was good, I just did not realize how good. I attribute my own success in the classroom now directly to what I encountered at Earlham. My two main mentors, Paul Lacey and Barbara Ann Caruso, created my teaching self. Of course, I had a host of other wonderful teachers including Lincoln Blake, Gordon Thompson, Alice Shrock, Hugh Barbour, among others. But my butt was on those sofas outside the third floor Carpenter English offices. Whether sitting or sleeping, I just lurked on those sofas waiting to grab Paul or Barbara Ann.

These were faculty members who were affective, emotion-filled – they indicated how ideas and books could change my life. I remember Paul Lacey crying while teaching “King Lear” and talking about a father’s relationship to his children. I remember Barbara Ann beginning Women & Literature dramatically by reading Adrienne Rich’s poem “Power.” We analyzed it and then read it once more to allow us to end class having the poem made whole again.

These were faculty members who used engaged learning and experiential education long before it was considered good teaching. I remember Barbara Ann creating a panel of community members and professors to judge our final experiential education projects in Introduction to Women’s Studies. I remember Paul beginning the Introduction to Literature seminar by asking everyone to go around and state the first poem, rhyme, song you remember hearing as a child.

We all sat in a circle naturally and we all talked - not just some, but all. When I started teaching as a professor and would walk the hallways, I was stunned at times to see images of the “sage on the stage” – a single person behind a podium, desks in a row. That is so weird, I thought – Where is Earlham?

At Earlham I saw faculty members whose ideas of being a teacher extended beyond the classroom. I got chickenpox, for example, while at Earlham and had to be quarantined off campus. Crazy, I know. In our poetry class, Paul had students write couplets for sick me with extra credit for rhyming with locks or Birkenstocks. He drove to where I was staying, risking exposure himself, and delivered the poems saying, “This will be the most poetry you ever have written for you so don’t lose it.”

Barbara Ann had Women’s Studies students out to her house for a potluck and everything had clever gender-y names like Emma Goldman salad. It was the first time in my life I had Pad Thai with tofu and I thought – oh to be a Women’s Studies professor is the most exotic thing in the world. It’s like being a unicorn. My 4-year-old recently asked, “Where do unicorns live?” I wanted to say, “In Women’s Studies, of course.” Women’s Studies professors have magical powers and make the world more beautiful while dancing over rainbows, just like unicorns.

We live in an age where it seems the humanities and its teachers are under siege. Just pick a random day to read the Chronicle of Higher Education and it’s so doomy and gloomy you won’t want to pick it up again. But the kind of learning I’m describing at Earlham is the only way we can go on. These are humanities professors who showed me how to think critically but with compassion. Philosophically, I believe, this is the root of Quaker education. These professors taught me to sit in a circle listening to ideas I disagreed with and learn to adjudicate those ideas rather than act out violently against them. They taught me that learning is eminently relevant - that every TV show, conversation, moment in nature, could be both experienced and understood. In essence, they showed me that I always had my mind. That my mind was powerful. And I could use my mind for the good.

My students roll their eyes when I put them in circles, make them answer hard personal and intellectual questions, force them to confront difficult issues and stay present. But I don’t waiver. Why? I was taught by the best. There is no substitute for this kind of teaching and learning – no short cuts, not workarounds. This is Quaker pedagogy. It is Earlham’s gift – affective, engaged, and communal. The world needs it.

July 1, 2019