Jeffrey Berman, professor of English at the State University of New York at Albany, has published an essay in Inside Higher Ed, which is adapted and reprinted with permission from his latest book, Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning.Berman talks about writing a eulogy for his wife Barbara as she fought end-stage pancreatic cancer,before her death, as a celebration of her life. He then shared this eulogy with his college Expository Writing class, "in which students share with classmates self-disclosing essays on a wide variety of topics that are rarely discussed in the classroom."
According to Berman, this revelation made many of his students cry but it also allowed them see their teacher in a new light. Berman writes, "My new self-disclosure was different, and they now saw me differently. I was still their teacher, but I had now become another member of the class, one who was struggling, like everyone else, with a personal issue."
Berman weighs in on whether this was the right thing to do, "I don't believe that teachers should unburden themselves to students or seek psychological counseling from them, but I do believe that a teacher's careful self-disclosure of a real-life experience can become a profound educational experience for everyone in the classroom."
Personal revelations, including those of profound joy and profound pain, can make us stronger. We learn to tell our stories and perhaps more importantly, we learn to listen.
