An Interview with Professor Jo Keroes, Fall 2000
San Francisco State University, Department of English
Tales Out of School: Gender, Longing, and the Teacher in Fiction and Film
and
the Revival of the Epistolary Form: Technology, Teaching and Writing
Elizabeth Sommers: My first question is this: do you think Miss Jean Brodie [editor's note: one of the fictional characters explored in Jo Keroes' recent book Tales Out of School: Gender, Longing and the Teacher in Fiction and Film] would have sent her students email, or would she have found this technology too cold, too formal?
Jo Keroes: Never. Never!
Elizabeth Sommers: I agree, sometimes also feeling the technology is only snake oil too (though I also often feel it's changing literacy in our time). Yet we both use it in our teaching, maybe for different reasons. Why do you?
Jo Keroes: I use the technology in a very limited but I think productive way---to extend the times and places my students can exchange ideas with one another. So far, this has meant setting up a class listserve in my
graduate seminar in teaching literature. We meet only once a week, but the
issues we discuss deserve more time than we have together.
Elizabeth Sommers: That's what I do too, but I discover the group comes together more as a result. So I don't see this as a limited use. Also, I like textualizing the classroom talk; they need to write more than I need to read, and that can happen.
What do you think Sir [editor's note: in To Sir With Love, another character explored in Keroes' Tales Out of School: Gender, Longing and the Teacher in Fiction and Film] would have done if confronted with these contraptions? I'm actually asking about Sir for a serious reasons. Human contact, for reasons that we understand and probably some that don't, seemed in many ways repugnant to him. Of course I'm thinking especially of the temper tantrum he threw when confronted with that unmentionable object in his classroom, but I also think that race kept him apart from his students (as well as temperament). Would these contraptions have done anything at all that's good?
Jo Keroes: Sir would first have issued a set of rules for proper behavior at the machines and would have gone absolutely crazy with ire at the first sight of a flame.
You're right, of course, the way we use technology to extend what happens
in the classroom and to foster group "togetherness" is the very opposite
of limited or limiting. And that's precisely its point for me. Each week,
a member of the group is responsible for posting a question that in some
way or other connects or complicates an issue we've discussed in class or
read about. The ways in which individuals respond have the potential, at
least, for generating lively and provocative discussions, which is what I
always hope for.
Elizabeth Sommers: Another real question: how does and did technology affect writing Tales Out of School? I'm thinking of the writer's group, your editorial relationship, and your writing process itself.
Jo Keroes: Oh. It's transformed it totally, absolutely, utterly. I came late even to word-processing but once I arrived I was instantly hooked. I could
never have written the book without the power of playfulness and revision
the computer affords. I find it difficult now to compose much of anything
without the keyboard and screen, though just lately I've developed a
curious affection for pencils, of all things. Number 3, sharpened to a
razor-fine point. Still, they're not for composing. And don't get me
started on email. I am someone who didn't get a phone answering machine until driven to do so. I now can't imagine existence without email, for just about everything.
Elizabeth Sommers: Now please get started on email. Do you feel you can write stuff you can't say?
Jo Keroes: OK. With email it's not so much that I can write stuff I can't say but that it's so efficient and effective. I can communicate with so many more people so much more easily. And I just love logging on and seeing messages. It makes me feel wanted. I have actually had a life enhancing experience almost entirely due to email--the revival of a once close
friendship that lapsed for 25 years. This friend and I now exchange
emails daily, have learned just about everything about one another's
lives, and have discovered we really like one another. Who knows what
might have happened had the friendship just continued in the old fashioned
way over the years through moves and life changes?
When I first started the list several years ago I thought it was important
for me to be part of the discussion. I learned very quickly that it's much
more effective for the instructor to lurk.
Elizabeth Sommers: Notice the long, tangled path we've created in a short (virtual) time, each main thoroughfare with seven or twelve minor paths diverging from it, each of those paths with twig paths off of it. This technology is great but sometimes it drives me mad.
Do you have reservations about technology-enhanced instruction, too? If
so, what?
Jo Keroes: Yes. These particular graduate students are simply swamped with teaching, with studying, with outside jobs, with participating in CRAFT,
the student organization. I'm impressed with the depth they bring to
their discussions and with the fact that they allude to matters that come
up in the email exchanges as they talk in class. It's true, though, that
because no one was assigned a "question of the week" this time, only one
person posted a message at all.
Elizabeth Sommers: Narrative seems to fascinate you, both as a teacher and an author. Can you tell us a little bit about why this is so?
Jo Keroes: Everything we do contributes to the patterns of our lives, I guess, but we don't often step back to examine the elements of our own stories, at least not with a view of putting them together. About narrative I'm more certain: some psychologists believe we're "hard-wired" for it; I'm inclined to agree. The pull of the story, whether it's "The Three Bears" or OJ is virtually impossible to resist and it exerts its force at a very young age even in children who haven't been read to. Narrative is one of the two fundamental ways we make sense of our lives and the actual arc of a complete narrative has an exquisitely satisfying shape, one that Peter Brooks has pointed out is erotic in nature.
Elizabeth Sommers: I am engrossed in talking with you and don't want to stop but feel it's my duty as designated driver to tell you it's about quarter to eleven, new time, and remind you that you have an eleven o'clock appointment.
Do you have anything you want to say that you didn't get a chance to tell your readers yet? If so, please tell me now.
Jo Keroes: About lurking: sometimes the teacher needs to get in there and prod and probe a little, then get out and stay out of the way.
This has been great fun. I wish we could continue discussing teaching, writing, editorial relationships, Tales Out of School, technology as a teaching, learning and writing tool. If anyone wants to contact me about these works or the technology I used, I'm available to discuss them. Contact me at
jkeroes@sfsu.edu.
Editor's Note: Jo Keroes is the author of Tales Out of School: Gender, Longing and the Teacher in Teacher in Fiction and Film, Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
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