Inquiry in the Round
Call to Adventure
Bill Slakey has taught English literature at Sandia Prep for nine years. After graduating from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, where his father taught, and then earning his master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, Bill traveled far and wide as a journalist. “I really wanted to be a teacher, actually, [but] I was worried I wouldn’t be able to manage a classroom. So, I had this whole other career which was really interesting and good.” Bill started at a small newspaper in Iowa, then worked at an English-language paper in Moscow, and then trained local journalists in Kyrgyzstan. He returned to New Mexico to work at The Albuquerque Tribune, and when that paper closed, it inspired him to reconsider the academic career path he’d initially been drawn to. Bill received his certifications and, given his writing and editing experience, felt most qualified to be a literature teacher. And he loved literature besides. “When I started teaching, it actually felt to me like there was a reason why I was interested in it from the very beginning. I really liked this.” It was like coming full circle from his earlier inclination so many years before.
Sharing in the Round
“I enjoy the shared nature of the inquiry. We’re working together to figure out what meaning we can pull out of a book. I’m asking the kids questions; they’re responding. They’re asking me questions. It’s a dialogue and shared inquiry, and it’s so much fun.” The Socratic Method Bill encourages is reflected in his classroom layout. Students’ desks are arranged in a circle, with him in one of those same seats, not separated or in front of the class.
“It’s so much fun to be in that environment, coming to new ideas that they’ve been curious about but haven’t had an access point to. It feels very organic to me. That’s what I like best.”
Learning New Concepts
While it’s difficult for Bill to pinpoint an all-time favorite book to teach, he’s recently enjoyed teaching Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. “It’s so strange. When students encounter it, it’s this unusual mix of humor and science fiction. Then, it’s [about] deadly serious things and also [has] some big conceptual ideas. It’s this intellectual puzzle, and the students get really excited about it.” Meanwhile, Bill’s favorite out-of-the-classroom book is the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, The Overstory by Richard Powers. “It’s interesting because it’s one of those novels that shifts the way you think. The ideas [in the book] are based on a growing area of research” about how completely distinct species in nature share and communicate with one another. “It’s a really interesting and new conception of the [natural] world.”
Navigating the Pandemic
Bill was so used to plugging into expansive literary ideas with his students in person that remote learning during the pandemic was difficult, to say the least. The Socratic Circle “is the way I think about how a classroom works.” So, moving online was jarring but, through a quirk in the class scheduling, he had the fortune of having a lot of repeat students. “It was the second year in a row that I was teaching many of the kids, so they knew me, and I knew them. People talk about this as a great feature at Prep, and it really is. [As a teacher here] you have the opportunity to establish relationships with students.” That, and the overall goodwill of the students was tremendous. “Their willingness and eagerness to ignore all the junk and try to make it work, was so heartening. We tried hard and were still able to have those kinds of shared experiences.”
Lightness and Gratitude
Bill blithely describes how funny it was that, thanks to Zoom, most of his Prep students have now seen “far too much” of the interior of his home. That lightness helps characterize how Bill, his family, and his students managed the practical and impractical aspects of the pandemic. But it’s a lightness birthed out of gratitude. “If I were to think of an environment in which to handle this type of challenge, I couldn’t think of a better one. I have peers who are incredibly creative and energetic and care deeply about what they do. I have the support of all the staff at the school, like IT services, just jumping in and being like, ‘Here is everything you could ever want to try.’ I never felt like I was abandoned or that I didn’t have the resources to try to tackle a problem. And then, [there are] these wonderful students!” When he reflects on the pandemic’s difficulties, he turns to his family, his living situation, his colleagues, and his students. “I just couldn’t be more fortunate. If I were going to be stuck in a historical pandemic, then this would’ve been the best setting for it—with family and work. I just feel hugely fortunate.”
Circling Back
“It’s been nice to have the full class back in the room, to have that full energy, and to have everybody in the conversation on equal terms.” Bill’s grateful to be back in his Socratic Circle. “A conversation is its own weird organism and any sort of inequality or perceived inequality can shift the dynamics of the conversation in unpredictable ways. So when we had some students remote and some in-person, it made it hard [to navigate the conversation]. It’s nice to be back where everyone can see faces. [Even though we’re wearing masks,] you can still see one another and still respond to non-verbal cues, and you can still feel the energy when something’s exciting.”
On Togetherness
Since returning to campus, Bill’s been intrigued by a varying, if expansive, sense of what togetherness means, especially in light of the separation everyone felt during the pandemic’s peak. For Bill, the classroom discussions are core. But he began to more readily acknowledge that some students are instead “really psyched to be here with their teammates or working together on something else [besides literature] that’s so important. It’s really made me reflect on all the different ways that Prep brings people together and brings different groups of people together. It’s a magical thing. I’ve become much more conscious that what I think of as togetherness may not be what somebody else thinks of it.” Regardless, Bill concludes, on this campus, there’s a place that’s very important to that person. “You can see in the students that, somewhere here, they’re feeling that they’re back and they’re involved in community in some way. And I just think it’s tremendous. It's made me think about the great fortune of being able to teach at this place.”
