Mary Hammerbeck's Intro

Part 1)
Hey Everybody! In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a writing instructor at WCC and some of you are taking my Eng 100 class! I have been teaching language and writing for quite some time and I would like to share with you here some of my favorite teaching experiences: When I was an undergraduate student I studied abroad in Quito, Ecuador and taught English to elementary school students there. At the time, I didn't speak Spanish very well and had never taught a class before. Most of my students were indigenous who spoke Quechua first, Spanish second and they were adorable, but absolutely full of energy! Needless to say, I did not have much "control" over my classroom. I remember (fondly now) one day when I tried to make them all sit quietly in their desks, but instead they all at once opted to run screaming and laughing around the classroom, arms in the air, tearing paper off the walls!!! But after a few weeks they became more attentive (my Spanish was improving?) and I learned to love teaching from them and I have never stopped. I still miss my little energized bunch...

Since then, I've taught English in Guatemala, Spanish in the states, high school science at an inner city school in Minneapolis, MN, reading and writing at a bilingual elementary school in Minneapolis, and college writing at Western Washington University (more stories to come from other experiences:). I am super excited to be teaching at Whatcom now! I think my new students will make some good memories (except I do hope you don't go destroying the classroom:).

Parte dos) I choose to write sometimes on a manual typewriter. Seriously, one of those old ones that you have to feed paper into, use a lever to switch lines, punch those old keys, and have to use whiteout or xxxx's to correct mistakes (or write the whole thing over again!). I have chosen to analyze this way of writing because it seems so polar opposite to most of the writing I do for school and for teaching (e.g. this blog post!). To be honest, I only use the manual typewriter for fun when I am writing letters to friends and family (yes, I use air mail still!). Giving and receiving letters has been a longtime passion of mine and I still feel the flutter of excitement from receiving a stamped envelope in my mailbox, for me, from a friend. I have a penpal who I have only met in person 3 times, but who I've been writing to for 16 years now. Ok, I'm getting off subject. So, I type letters on my oldschool typewriter at home, in the living room, listening to music, with my dog nearby who barks at the sound the machine makes. I make a lot of mistakes, a ton actually, because I am not practiced at these keys the way I am with keyboards and, of course, I can't correct the mistakes without making a huge effort to do so. But I am relaxed while writing letters, and inspired; I like the way the mistakes and errors lend another level of creativity to the craft of writing letters. As if I don't really have much control over what I thought I wanted to say. So a lot of the times the letters change subject directions, look pretty messy, have made up words. I think this process reflects my ideas about the writing process: I believe it is important for writers who are digging for ideas to lose control, to get lost in their writing, and to make mistakes in order to find the really good ideas. As a teacher, I want get my students to start writing before they even know what they want to say, and to give them time to switch directions and make a mess. That's where to good stuff can be found, at least according to me. (now, I don't advise using a manual typewriter for academic papers...that would just be plain torture...can you imagine what that must have been like for students and authors alike? How many times did they have to retype those pages to make books in order to make it perfect?. I will leave you all with that question.) Adios for now! --Mary Hammerbeck