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The University English Professor in the
High School English Classroom

Stanley Rich
University of South Carolina at Aiken

The program has been implemented on the basis of seven goals:

1. To raise the general awareness of the value of the humanities for high school students, teachers, and parents;
2. To strengthen the relationship between the college and the area school districts;
3. To utilize more fully the resources in the community: the people, the services, and the materials available;
4. To promote good public relations between the educational community and the parents of students involved with the program;
5. To heighten awareness of students regarding a college-level mode of scholarship;
6. To encourage collegial exchanges between and among college and school teachers for scholarly and professional growth;
7. To provide alternate opportunities for school teachers to earn recertification credits.

Since one of the primary goals of the program is to encourage increased cooperation among school and college personnel, the planning involved many people from various teaching and administrative levels in order to initiate the project. A brief history of that planning process follows. First, the USC-Aiken Dean of the College of Humanities and the Chair of the School of Education met with the School District Superintendents and the Directors of Instruction to determine interest and commitment to the basic concepts of the program. Next, following a statewide meeting in Charleston, SC, to learn about the Charleston School District program, a joint meeting of college and school district representatives was held at USC- Aiken. School district Directors of Instruction then met with the district school teachers of English and history to introduce the concepts of the program and to determine the particular needs of the district. After fielding a questionnaire to facilitate teachers' input, the needs assessment data were incorporated in the grant proposal. Throughout the process, both college and school personnel continued to emphasize the need for this to be a cooperative, mutual endeavor--and it continued to be so in the implementation of the program.

After the project was funded, one of the most crucial aspects of the program took place. That was a two-day planning retreat held at a conference center near Aiken. In early May, more than twenty people involved directly with the program spent an intensive two days planning and organizing the specifics of the program: The eight host teachers from the schools met with the two college scholars, one in English and one in history, and scheduled specific dates and topics for eight residencies of two and a half weeks each. In August, two weeks after the public school year had begun, I, as the English scholar, began the first of my four residencies in the public schools, at Aiken High School. In late January, as the spring semester was beginning, the history scholar began his semester-long residence.

As the English Scholar-in-Residence, what kinds of activities did I undertake in the public schools? Prior to the planning retreat, I had given to each of the teachers I would be working with a list of topics that I could offer to their classes. With careful negotiation and mutual agreement, we settled upon specific topics appropriate for the classes and the time of the semester when I would be in residence at each school. In each school I worked for four days every week with a host class, that group being an Advanced Placement class or a class of advanced students. Some of the subjects for those host classes included Oedipus Rex, irony and parody in poetry, the English sonnet form, the metaphysical poetry of John Donne, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, writing about poetry, Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," a brief introduction to classical mythology, Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," and the syntax of basic English sentence patterns. For each of these host classes, I assigned an essay and marked it in the manner of a college teacher. At other hours during the day, I was available to talk with the students about their lessons and other relevant issues, such as issues regarding attending college.

Since this program was designed not to be elitist in concept or in deed, I worked with a second class each day. While the host class was a twelfth-grade advanced group, the others were spread throughout grades nine to twelve and involved basic, standard, and advanced groupings. So, on one day I might have taught a ninth-grade basic English class something about how to read an expository essay, and the next day I might have taught an eleventh-grade standard class how the humanities can integrate myth, painting, and poetry, using the example of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus and W. H. Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts." Topics for other one-hour presentations included the following: using the English dictionary, reading a short story such as Eudora Welty's "The Worn Path," presenting a slide show to increase the students' powers of observation, lecturing on American English dialects, reading in Middle English passages from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and discussing irony and satire in poetry. Much planning went into scheduling these one- hour appearances--so that the presentations would fit as much as possible into each teacher's own planned goals and activities. In this manner, the scholar's presence would enhance the education experience for the students.

In addition to the two hours of classroom teaching each day, I was engaged in other assignments. At each school I presented for both students and parents an evening program entitled "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About College But Were Afraid to Ask." At one school, this event brought out over 120 enthusiastic people on a "dark and stormy night." At another school in a rural setting, more than 100 students, teachers, and parents appeared to learn more about attending college. For each school, I also held an in-service program for the faculty. These programs included a slide presentation on the English Lake District and Lake Poets, a workshop on freewriting in the classroom, and a workshop on "Where English Words Come From." In addition to being available to talk with the teachers about their curricular and pedagogical concerns, I also met with the librarians at each school to review their holdings in English language and literature and made suggestions on how to improve the collection.

Such a total immersion in the life and activities of the schools gave me a greater appreciation for and understanding of the daily "real life" of public school teachers, and I hope that in some ways I have been able to encourage both students, teachers, and administrators in the schools to engage in further study of the humanities. One of the signs of the success of the Scholar-in-Residence program is that many of the teachers have asked me to return to present other workshops and to return to give guest lectures in the classes where I taught. Several of the teachers noted that they too had a greater sense of professionalism during both the planning and the implementation of the residencies.

This fairly low-cost program has been eminently successful and beneficial in two important areas: Collegial relationships between the university and the area school districts have been strengthened, and the general awareness of the value of the humanities has been raised for high school students, teachers, parents, and the larger community.