Teacher of the Month-- |
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Teacher of the Month-- |
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An accomplished writer and instructor, with a ASU career spanning 20 years, Jay Boyer is remembered by former students as an instructor who dared to challenge the way they looked at the world. "Never before have I encountered a professor that was so in touch with his students and their capacities to develop intellectually," said Lindsay Anne Holmgren.
You have asked me too for my agenda for the future, the innovations that I plan to bring to a classroom. I am not sure I have such an agenda to offer. I am not sure I have a clear sense of the future, to begin with. I read the same things that you do about technology and change. I read that cybernetics paired with digital imaging will make teaching a breeze since students will interact with sophisticated software rather than look to their professors as mentors. I'm doubtful. Of course, I read elsewhere that cybernetics in the classroom will mean the end of Western Man, and I'm doubtful of that as well. The truth, I suspect, is well aside from either position. Technology will be of use in providing quality education only to the degree that we employ it wisely. No doubt we will find what mankind has always found, namely, that where quality education is the goal, there is no substitute for a desire to learn and a teacher's heartfelt effort.
You have asked me for my philosophy of teaching and for my agenda for the future, and I really don't have either to offer; so let me tell you a story by way of a reply. One hot August day in 1977 I left my last class to go home only to find that the battery in my Volkswagen had surrendered to the weather. My car was parked in a heavily graveled lot behind the new Science Building. I went into the Science Building and called AAA, then returned to my car, to my wait. A half hour passed, then an hour as car by car the parking lot emptied, until mine was the only one left. Soon a van pulled into the lot, a new one, a Chevrolet or maybe a Chrysler product, something well beyond a young teacher's budget. It parked adjacent to me, as if starting a row. A lift at its rear lowered, then raised; double doors opened in back. A young man, a boy, really, wheeled himself onto the lift. He balanced his texts on his lap, then lowered himself to the ground. Vans engineered to the needs of the disabled are common now, but this was the first one I'd seen. With my car on the friz, I was taken by all those moving parts, by the wonder of hydraulics, by the poetry and magic of a vehicle that works. But once on the gravel, the wheelchair, I saw, was at a great disadvantage. Though it was probably less than a hundred feet, I remember it being a hundred yards or so from the van to the nearest pavement. I recall the sight of the chair-bound boy, the shimmer off the rocks of that terrible, searing heat, the sight of the Herculean effort it was taking to negotiate that distance atop loose rocks toward freewheeling. I offered my help and the young man refused. He'd meant to maintain what dignity he could, but his tone with me was curt, and in return I was rude. I watched in my rearview mirror. It took him ten or fifteen minutes to negotiate that lot, a distance I could have managed in seconds on foot.
You have asked me about innovations I have in mind for the future, my philosophy. I'm a good teacher. I work very hard. But I have nothing in that regard to offer that might set me apart from any other hardworking teacher. Insofar as I am to be set apart at all, this has to do with that young man, you see; he is a link to my past, and a guide to the future. Since that hot August day some twenty years ago, I have done my best to teach each class of each course as if I am teaching it for him. I try to teach each student as if they have labored in order to sit before me, as if anything short of my best would demean the journey that has brought us together.
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Bob Rafelson:Hollywood Maverick. |
The Offence. Forthcoming. London: Flicks Books, 1998.
Sidney Lumet. New York: Twayne/MacMillan, 1993.
Ishmael Reed. Number 110, Boise State University Western Writers Series. Boise: Boise State University Press, 1993, 52 pp.
Richard Brautigan. Number 79, Boise State University Western Writers Series. Boise: Boise State University Press, 1987, 52 pp.
"Arthur Godfrey"' American National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (accepted for publication).
"Bob Rafelson," American Directors: Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company. (accepted for publication).
"Chester Conklin," American National Biography. Oxford University Press. (accepted for publication).
"Geoffrey Hill," Cyclopedia of World Authors. Pasadena: Salem Press. (accepted for publication).
"Glendon Swarthout," Cyclopedia of World Authors. Pasadena: Salem Press. (accepted for publication).
"James Tate,"Cyclopedia of World Authors. Pasadena: Salem Press. (accepted for publication).
"Richard Arlen," American National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (accepted for publication) .
"Rita Dove," Cyclopedia of World Authors. Pasadena: Salem Press. (accepted for publication).
"Sidney Lumet," American Directors: Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company. (accepted for publication).
"Willard Van Dyke," American National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (accepted for publication).
"Meryl Streep," Read More About It. Volume III: An Encyclopedia of Information Sources On Historical Figures and Events. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1989, pp. 679 - 680.
"Walter Huston," Read More About It, Volume III: An Encyclopedia of Information Sources on Historical Figures and Events. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1989, pp. 336 - 338.
"Art Carney," The Book Of Days 1988. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1988, pp. 607 - 608.
"Arthur Godfrey," The Book Of Days 1988. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1988, pp. 486 - 487.
"Eddie Fisher," The Book Of Days 1988. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1988, pp. 453 - 455.
"Natalie Wood," The Book Of Days 1988. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1988, pp. 409 - 411.
"Boris Karloff," The Book Of Days 1987. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1987, pp. 590 - 592.
"Dustin Hoffman," The Book Of Days 1987. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1987, pp. 387 - 389.
"Edward Anhalt," The International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers: Volume IV. Ed. James Vincent. London: St. James Press, 1987, pp. 18 -19.
"Michael Wilson," The International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers: Volume IV. Ed. James Vincent. London: St. James Press, 1987, p. 467.
"Robert Redford," The Book of Days 1987. Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1987, pp. 406 - 407.
"Daniel Taradash," American Screenwriters. Ed. Randall Clark. Volume 44 of Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1986, pp. 370 - 377.
"Delmer Daves," American Screenwriters. Ed. Randall Clark. Volume 44 of Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1986, pp. 76 - 82.
"Sidney Buchman," American Screenwriters. Eds. Robert E. Morsberger, Stephen O. Lesser, and Randall Clark. Volume 26 of Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1984, pp. 76 - 82.
"Cry Food: The Use of Food As A Comic Motif in the Silent Comedies of Charlie Chaplin." Beyond The Stars, Vol. III. Eds. Paul Loukides, Linda Fuller. Boiling Green: Popular Culture Press, 1993, pp. 24 - 38.
"No Fit Place For Any Man, Woman, or Child: Early Depictions of Arizona in the Motion Pictures." Beyond The Stars, Vol. IV. Eds. Paul Loukides, Linda Fuller. Bolling Green: Popular Culture Press, 1993, pp. 11-25.
"The Schlemiezel: Black Humor and the Shtetl Tradition," in Semites and Stereotypes: Characteristics of Jewish Humor, Ed. Avner Ziv, Greenwood Press, 1993, pp. 3 - 13.
"The Schlemiezel: Black Humor and the Shtetl Tradition," Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, Spring/Summer 1991, pp. 165 175.
"Superfluous People: Tramps in Early Motion Pictures," Beyond The Stars, Volume I, Eds. Paul Loukides, Linda K. Fuller, Bolting Green: Popular Culture Press, 1990, pp. 79 - 89.
"Searching For Survivors: Saul Bellow and the Holocaust," Remembering For The Future, Ed. J. Ring, Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1989, pp. 1429 - 1440.
"If Bach Had Owned A Computer: Technology And Teaching The Novel," The English Journal, January, 1987, pp. 59 - 63.
"Technology And The Future Of Entertainment In America: A Calculus For Poets," The English Journal, January, 1987, pp. 59 - 63.
"A Conversation With Joseph Heller," Hayden's Ferry Review, Spring, 1986, pp. 99 - 108.
"Is Hollywood Being Put Out Of Business?" Social Text. Winter, 1984/85, pp. 118 -127.
"Why You Will Never Read The Novel You Might Like To," The 60s Without Apology. Eds. Sohnya Sayres, Anders Stephanson, Stanley Aronowitz, and Frederic Jameson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 309 - 311.
"Film Making In Prescott," Diversions, Spring, 1983, pp. 16 -19.
"American Studies And Film," Film and History. Fall, 1978, pp. 42- 43.
"On The Aesthetics Of The Lie," North American Mentor Magazine, Winter, 1978, pp. 82 - 87.
State: ASU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award for Faculty, 1994-95.
Last Update:
October 18, 2001
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URL--http://www.asu.edu/upfd/teachmo/boyer.html