AADL Talks To: Judith DeWoskin, Longtime Community High School Teacher
When: July 15, 2024
Judith DeWoskin is an award-winning teacher of English literature and creative writing from Ann Arbor's Community High School, where she taught for most of her career before retiring in 2021. Judith talks with us about her teaching style, including some of the unique assignments and classes she created, and she reminisces about her favorite books and authors. She also recalls some memorable moments over the course of her career, from the meaningful interactions -- mostly joyful, sometimes painful -- with students to playing Prospera in The Tempest during COVID.
Transcript
- [00:00:09] [MUSIC]
- [00:00:09] ELIZABETH SMITH: Hi. This is Elizabeth.
- [00:00:11] AMY CANTU: This is Amy. In this episode, AADL Talks To Judith DeWoskin. Judith retired from Ann Arbor Public Schools in 2020 after teaching for 33 years, the majority of them at Ann Arbor's Community High School, where she was a beloved and award-winning teacher of English and creative writing. Judith recounts her history with the schools, some of the changes and challenges she's witnessed over the years, her teaching style, and reminisces about some of her favorite memories with students and staff.
- [00:00:38] [MUSIC]
- [00:00:42] ELIZABETH SMITH: Thank you for joining us today, Judith. We usually start by asking: Where did you grow up and what brought you to Ann Arbor?
- [00:00:50] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Thank you so much for having me. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, above the Mason-Dixon line. I came to Ann Arbor because my husband was a young assistant professor at the University of Michigan, that was his first job. We were in Kyoto having babies while he was finishing his dissertation in Chinese literature, and he got this job offer and we moved to Ann Arbor, and we've been here ever since.
- [00:01:17] AMY CANTU: What year was that then?
- [00:01:18] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Probably '70. Let me see. We went to Japan in '60... No, we went to Taiwan in '65-'67, New York, '68-'71, then Japan, probably '73-ish.
- [00:01:32] AMY CANTU: Did you know that you wanted to teach at that point, or what brought you to teaching?
- [00:01:37] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I think what brought me to teaching oddly enough was my high school English teacher. I'm convinced that high school English teachers have the best job in the world, and I think I adored our high school English teacher. When I say "our," my husband had the same teacher. We did not know each other in high school. We were not a high school romance. But the English teacher was fabulous, and he asked me once what I was going to do, and I told him I'd be an elementary school teacher. He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, I don't know," and it was stupid of me because I probably wouldn't have been able to do any math. And he said, "You really should teach high school, it's the best age." I said, "But I'm too young." He said, "You won't be forever." [LAUGHTER] He was right and I've had a wonderful job. He was my inspiration.
- [00:02:17] ELIZABETH SMITH: How did you first become involved in teaching in Ann Arbor?
- [00:02:23] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: When we came to Ann Arbor, I was a young mother and I had three small children. Ken was teaching at the U of M. He was teaching Chinese literature and Chinese thought. One day, I was invited to give a talk. I had taught in New York already, I had taught in St. Louis, and I had taught a little bit in Taiwan, and here I was at home with babies, and I was asked to give a talk. And I got dressed up and I looked in the mirror, and I thought, I remember you, you're my teacher. I went into this classroom and I gave the kids a talk on life in Japan. My children would have been a little older. They would have been seven and eight, the big ones. The little one was with a daycare person that day or maybe my husband stayed home with them, I don't remember. But I gave this talk and it was so much fun. It was like being back in teaching. Then, I finally just decided to apply and I ended up teaching... It wasn't a part-time job, but it was a temporary-ish job at Pioneer. Some teacher had left, and they needed to replace the teacher quickly, and I was interviewed and I got the job. I was put out in a portable. You know what those were? It was fabulous. I was teaching these kids in this little portable and we could look outside and see the football--I don't know where we were, it was a lot of woods--and that's when I started.
- [00:03:54] AMY CANTU: Was it English right away?
- [00:03:55] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Oh yeah, it was English. In fact, I had to teach The Scarlet Letter on a Monday and I had never read it. On Friday, my husband and I were in the car driving to visit some relatives and I was reading the book out loud in the car, thinking it was the funniest thing I'd... It was fabulous. I knew I was hooked, and I realized that the sub who had preceded me had avoided everything that was difficult. She taught all the easy stuff, and I came in and there I was with The Scarlet Letter, and I have taught it ever since. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:04:26] ELIZABETH SMITH: From Pioneer, where did you go after that?
- [00:04:30] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I think I was at Tappan for a year first, and then I was at Pioneer. Then I was going to go back. No, how did it work? No, Pioneer, then Tappan, then Community. Then Community was just a one-year stint because somebody had something called -- it was a sabbatical. They don't have those anymore, but they had -- you know what those are? This teacher had a sabbatical and I filled her position, and at the end of that year, the kids filled out some massive petition. They went down to the human resource people, and I said, "Guys, this job was only for a year." "No, we're doing this." "Okay, do it." They went down there. The job wasn't mine, but I was going to go back to Pioneer and I had already agreed to go back to Pioneer, and then I got a phone call from the Dean at Community who said, "Debbie Low has decided to leave for good." I said, "Not another sabbatical?" "No, she's leaving for good. Do you want the job?" I had already told Pioneer yes, but then I called and told Pioneer no, because my husband said very simply, "You've never been so happy as you were at Community." I went back to Community and that's where I stayed.
- [00:05:35] AMY CANTU: Can you talk a little bit about the public schools writ large at the time? How has it changed over the years? What have you watched and what have you seen that's changed as you have gone through your 33 years of teaching?
- [00:05:53] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: The best thing I can say is that when you shut your door and you're talking to 35 children, nothing's changed, because I haven't changed, and surprisingly, they haven't either. They're just as curious, just as interested, just as wonderful as they always were. Outside, it's not so. That's not always true. There are always a lot of pressures from the state or pressures from the federal government, or you've got a terrible person who's running the Department of Education, but at least we have one right now. There have been different pressures. Never so much in our department, never so much, certainly in my classes. I never felt that I had to stop teaching some... Well, maybe that's not true, but there were times when I worried about teaching certain books. I think today, if I were in the classroom, I'd be canceled on one side, I'd be banned on the other, I'd be in deep trouble. Because a lot of the books I taught even then, they were disliked by people who hadn't read them, they were worrisome for people who might have read them. I was teasing somebody recently that if I could just go back now, I would just teach a banned books course. I would teach everything that's in trouble because we could learn from that. We could understand why it's banned here, why it's canceled there, why we have to read everybody, all the dead people, all the living people, all the people of all ethnicities. I worried a little bit teaching Chinese lit because with identity politics -- you can see that I'm not Chinese, right? -- that was a little scary for a bit, but I managed. Those pressures on the outside didn't affect me as much as they affected, I would say, people in other departments, because other departments lost their electives. They had to teach certain courses and the kids had to have them for the requirements for graduation.
- [00:07:53] AMY CANTU: You said that you think if you were teaching today, you might be dealing with more of that cancel culture and such. But in Ann Arbor?
- [00:08:02] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I'm not so sure that Ann Arbor would be a problem. I have checked in with some of my friends at Community, and I don't get the sense that they are under any pressure. They may have personal tastes that are different from mine. But I'm amused every now and then that I hear about some person in the department teaching some book, and I'm thinking, Oh, that's my book. That book is in the book room because I put it there. I don't think that that would be an issue here. Thanks for clarifying that.
- [00:08:32] ELIZABETH SMITH: Community High School itself is a bit unique and even in the Ann Arbor public school system. Can you tell us about what makes it special, different?
- [00:08:40] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Well, I think from the get-go, when that first dean hired me, when she interviewed me, or no, maybe it was after she had hired me. She said, "You can design your own classes, and you can teach what's important to you or what's interesting to you or maybe what you want to learn." That makes it very different, because I remember starting out with all the usual courses, American Lit, I think it was Composition, and then eventually Short Story Writing or Creative Writing. By the time I left, I had certainly changed American Lit many times, and I was teaching Hyphenated American Lit, I was teaching Chinese Lit. At one point, I was teaching Chinese and Japanese Lit together. I eventually took the Japanese part out. Actually, I think I might have had two separate classes. I did. But then I stopped with Japan because I didn't feel connected anymore. My husband, a professor of Chinese -- we were in China a lot. I read a lot of books, but I did in Japan too. I just let the Japanese Lit go, and I pursued the Chinese Lit. Then toward the end, I added Hyphenated American lit, and then the last course that I added and only taught for one year until I retired and then taught as independent study on Zoom, was a Women's Lit course that I organized and put together with a course pack and a lot of books. This morning, I actually printed off all my opening day handouts because I thought, I can't remember the name of one author that I really want to tell them about. When I saw his name, I thought, Judith, do you remember anything? And so I looked him up and I taught a lot of books. Boy, I taught a lot of books. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:10:18] AMY CANTU: How would you describe your teaching style? And how different is it from what other teachers are doing in English?
- [00:10:29] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I don't know. Because I think that I have a genuine affection for an interest in young people. I like to hear them. I love reading their papers. I know that sounds maybe crazy, but it's true because they're so thoughtful and they're so smart. That comes through in my relationship with them. Community always prides itself on the relationships that the teachers form with the students because of Forum and because technically, it was supposed to be smaller classes, but that was never the case. Given that relationship and given my love for the content, I just taught the classes like I'm talking to you, and I listen to them. I ask them a lot of questions, and I read every assignment every time. People would say to me, "You're reading that again?" "Yeah, I have to read it again. These are the chapters I'm reading for tomorrow." "Don't you know them already?" "Well, I probably do, but I don't know them exactly, and I have to know them exactly." I always reread the material. I always wrote new study questions. I had tons of half sheets that I scribbled notes on. I never saved them because they were going to be different the next time. I think my teaching style was very interactive. I thought of lots of games and silly things we could do in terms of skits and putting all the characters together with political figures. I'm not sure I would do that today, I mean literally today. But I managed to do that in ways that were interesting to kids. They were having a good time and learning. They wanted to please me, so I got a lot of good papers.
- [00:12:09] AMY CANTU: Do you think that the location had anything to do with it? Would you have been the same teacher if you'd stayed at Pioneer? Would you have done it the same way?
- [00:12:25] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I would have been the same person, but I wouldn't have had the same material, because I think that their courses are more specific and they're already set up. I put these courses together. The Chinese Lit course -- believe me, my husband was putting that together for me -- and I was learning it as I was teaching it. I had a wonderful time with it. Once I taught a social studies class because it just so happens that I'm certified in social studies by whatever accident, and there was a teacher who had some other assignment for one period, one year, one semester, and they gave me her class, and I loved it. Just loved it. I would be the same person, but the material would have been different. The location is very conducive to lovely things and bad behavior. Kids are late because they had lunch out there at Kerrytown, but they were good.
- [00:13:22] ELIZABETH SMITH: You touched on a couple of the courses you designed throughout your time there. Did you want to expand on any of those?
- [00:13:29] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I want to tell you about Hyphenated American Lit, because when I tell you that word, what do you think the class was? Now we're playing school. What does that sound like to you?
- [00:13:40] AMY CANTU: I assume you meant something like African-American Literature.
- [00:13:43] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Okay. Give me two others that would work in there.
- [00:13:46] AMY CANTU: Chinese-American.
- [00:13:47] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Right. So you know what "hyphen" means. One of my colleagues thought I was teaching abbreviated. [LAUGHTER] I was really stunned. Then the dean whom I adored, said to me, "That's a weird title. Why don't you call it All-American Lit?" I said, "That sounds like a football team. No, I don't know anything about sports." Then I got in trouble with the -- we had a racial consultant that year. He thought it was a weird title. So, one semester, I gave it some other title, but I don't remember what it was. And then one summer, I was surfing the Internet, and I came across an article I'm pretty sure by Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, and it was called My Hyphenated Life. That was like, Bing! Then I went in to Ha Jin, who was the name that I couldn't remember this morning. Ha Jin is the Chinese American who wrote Waiting and a whole bunch of other stories. He wrote an article, and it literally said in the opening paragraph, something about my life on both sides of the hyphen.
- [00:14:54] AMY CANTU: There you go.
- [00:14:55] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I took these suckers out, and I mailed them to my dean and I called it Hyphenated American Lit from then on. Does that answer your question?
- [00:15:04] ELIZABETH SMITH: Yes, thank you.
- [00:15:05] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I'll tell you one other cool thing. When I just came back from New York, we go to an Irish pub and we drink to Frank McCourt. I don't like beer, except when I'm in China and it's hot outside. But did you read Angela's Ashes?
- [00:15:20] AMY CANTU: I did.
- [00:15:20] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Okay, so you know the pint. So we drink the pint and we eat fish and chips, my husband and I. We just did that Saturday night. Once a year. Because I love that book, and I love teaching that book.
- [00:15:34] AMY CANTU: So good.
- [00:15:35] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: And I got in a fight at a dinner party about that book.
- [00:15:37] AMY CANTU: Tell us about that.
- [00:15:38] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Because... What did that woman say? You might not like this. I will tell you anyway. She was very negative about Frank McCourt's father, which is reasonable. He was a terrible father. He was an alcoholic, he was sick, he was a mess. But he spent those mornings with his son when he wasn't drunk, when he was drinking tea. He taught him how to tell stories. He told him stories and he told him stories, and if nothing else, he gave him that. I felt this much affection for him. His mother, who did the best she could and got in this horrible mess with her cousin and all that horrible stuff. He at least waited till she died before he wrote that book. I love Frank McCourt, and I sent him a letter. I sent him a quiz that I gave the kids one day. I said, Okay, the chapters were so visual. All you have to do is divide your piece of paper into four parts and just draw me four memories. If you can't draw, don't worry about it. You can be a minimalist, you can be an artist, make sure you have a label, then I know what you're trying for. These questions were so stunning. I packed him up, I wrote him a letter, and I found out an address and I mailed him and forgot about it. A year later, I was in the office. I was pulling my mail down and it said something McCourt, and my doctor was Jane McCourt, but this wasn't...it said New York. I have goose pimples telling you this. He sent me the most beautiful letter. I could give you that letter.
- [00:17:15] AMY CANTU: That would be great.
- [00:17:16] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: It's just gorgeous. So, that's a Hyphenated American Lit.
- [00:17:26] AMY CANTU: I have a question, and this might be going off track -- we don't necessarily have to include this in here -- but I am curious: Do you... The thing about Angela's Ashes is... I had other people I know who read it. They didn't like it. It was just too sad. But to me, the very last line, all of it just redeems that...
- [00:17:51] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Oh, "'Tis," meaning "it's a great country." The last word is Tis, but I don't remember... You know what? There were days when I thought, I'm going to get fired. Is he really doing this again? You know what I mean. The kids never bothered me about that. Sometimes they might have giggled, but they just didn't bother me. It is very sad, and there are people who don't like to read. I'll tell you, this District Library, do you still have a writing contest for the kids? Back in the day before we had computers and the stuff could be sent in to you, I had to carry my 15 or 20 submissions over here. One year I was invited to be a judge. Actually, the person who was the other judge is here today. I don't think she's in your library, but she's around. We were both judges, and I had picked my winner. When I mentioned my winner, she said, "That's impossible. That's just too sad." That was it. She got it. She won. I said, "Okay," so we picked somebody else or whatever. The next year we came back and I had my winner again. Lo and behold, she had the same winner. I said to the group, "Forget it. If she and I agree, it's over." I think that there are people who find some texts too sad. But it's not just sad, he's funny and he's outrageous. Frankly, he took on the church. Maybe there are people who don't like that, when the door is slammed on him all the time.
- [00:19:32] AMY CANTU: I guess what I was getting at too is, do you prefer books that really delve deep into disturbing or sad things, or is that not necessarily the case?
- [00:19:43] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I don't even think about it that way. The Scarlet Letter is sad, too, if you want to think about it. Let me think. You know what, let me answer that question because I like that question.
- [00:19:54] AMY CANTU: I can't help it. I'm a librarian. We work at a library. We can't help but ask what literature you like.
- [00:20:00] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: My Antonia, that's not so... It's pretty interesting. The Awakening is pretty sad. Foreign Babes in Beijing, my daughter wrote, it's not sad. Passing? Oh my gosh, did you read Passing by Nella Larsen?
- [00:20:16] AMY CANTU: No.
- [00:20:17] ELIZABETH SMITH: Yeah.
- [00:20:18] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: It kinda goes with Gatsby. It's about pretending you're somebody else. These are black women passing for white, Gatsby's passing for educated and whatever. Brother, I'm Dying, I guess that's pretty sad. That's interesting that you should ask that. That's just one class. But Women's Lit had 1 million other things in it.
- [00:20:38] AMY CANTU: Because I tend to like sad.
- [00:20:40] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Well, I guess I do. Nobody ever asked me that. I'm just thinking about this. Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, that's wild. World's Greatest Fisherman, that comes out of Lone Ranger and Tonto. Love Medicine, Rappaccini's Daughter, Scarlet Letter, Crucible, that's sad and Cask of Amontillado. Have you ever been into a winery where they have those big casks underneath? I can't go in there without thinking about that story. I'd like to say I like everything, but I like things that are really intense. Invisible Man is certainly intense. Grapes of Wrath I stopped teaching eventually. Woman Warrior and Glass Menagerie.
- [00:21:23] AMY CANTU: I suppose saying "sad" is pretty limiting. What we're saying is that they delve deep into humanity, whether or not it's difficult or bad.
- [00:21:32] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I think that people that are complicated and have contradictions and have to make choices. Sometimes they're wise, sometimes they're not wise... One of my favorite books is A Gesture Life, by Chang-rae Lee.
- [00:21:46] AMY CANTU: I haven't read that.
- [00:21:48] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: He was in the Hyphenated American Lit course. He's actually Korean American. That's a pretty interesting... I don't even remember. In Vierno, which is a short story by Junot Diaz. That's sad. That's with, I think he's with his brothers and they're stuck in some apartment when his father brings him here and locks them up and won't let them hang out with white people. Raisin In The Sun is certainly sad. Interpreter of Maladies. She's got a lot of stories in there that are pretty interesting. You made me go through this. This is a fair question. If you don't like that part, you can dump it, but I think it's really interesting because I never thought of it that way.
- [00:22:26] AMY CANTU: What about your creative writing class? Can you talk about that specifically? We know you won Creative Writing Teacher of the Year in 1997.
- [00:22:36] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I did.
- [00:22:37] AMY CANTU: Yeah. Tell us about that.
- [00:22:38] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Thank you. Well, my creative writing class was pretty organic in that I don't think of myself as a creative writer, I think of myself as a reader. I had lots of assignments that were very spontaneous and lots that just were typical. I had a book, and certainly with the poems, I taught kids a bunch of forms. I started with ballads. I did... Limericks I had to drop because they got ridiculous. [LAUGHTER] But ballads were always good and sestinas, and I had about seven kinds of couplets that I taught the kids, and I would give them their choice. With the short stories, I had so many different assignments. One time, I would cut out hundreds of faces from magazines, unknown people, and then I would put them on the table. There was this big table that I often sat on. Kids would come up and pick one character, and then I gave them a character sheet. They had to fill out all this information about this person. I said you cannot pick somebody whom you might know because if there's an athlete in here that I don't know and you do, don't pick that person because you've already got information. You've got to create this person. Then they would pick one. Then I would have them pick a second one, and they thought they were so smart, but they were not so smart. They would pick a second one. Let's see, then how did I do this? Then I had a student teacher run frantically with one of the two and make carbon copies, and then everybody was given a random character that somebody else had created. They had to write a story with their two and then this random visitor from somebody else. They were great. Then, of course, the kids read these pieces to the class. That was another whole thing that happened in there because in creative writing, what happened in that class was so bonding and so deep in terms of the relationships that they formed with each other, listening to each other's pieces, because what I wanted them to do was give positive feedback or ask questions about how it could go. They weren't to be critical, they weren't to be whatever, they had to be kind, and they were brilliantly kind. I always knew which kids were going to raise their hands first. They loved this, and they loved listening to each other's pieces. I wish I had thought to look this up before coming because then I could remind myself of a bunch more of my assignments, but I can tell you they were good and they worked. I put together Free Verse, which was the literary magazine for years. I sent a ton of these things to whoever was collecting them for the Creative Writing Teacher of the Year Award. But I'll tell you something really horrible that happened that was also wonderful. The horrible part was it was the day that the fifth child died in Ann Arbor within one year. It was just a few years before I retired. The first one had jumped from something over at, I want to say Huron. The second one, I think, was shot in the night doing something icky. The third one, I think actually slipped from the same place that the first one jumped. The fourth one was one of our students, was hit by a car before he got to school, Justin Tang. The fifth one was the younger brother of a student I had had. I didn't know him, but he had I guess been drinking too much, and his kid's friends threw him in the shower, and by the time he got to the hospital, he was brain dead. That was number five. I remember coming in there to the creative writing classroom that day. Do you want me to tell the story?
- [00:26:25] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
- [00:26:26] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: So I came in the room and I didn't know what to do. I said to the kids just that. I said "I don't know what to do." I said "I'm a grown-up and I'm trying to process this death, and I'm trying to imagine how you're doing it. Just tell me." Boy, oh, boy, the floodgates opened. They just went crazy. The first kid who spoke was this student I adored. I dressed as him as Halloween one year. I borrowed his clothes and went as him cause he had great taste. I sometimes did dress as kids. He raised his hands, and he gave his speech about the pharmaceutical world and how evil it was, and how he had to take so many drugs to keep whatever, he didn't know who he was, and on and on. He was lovely, but he had some issues, and he obviously had been medicated and didn't like it. We all heard him. Everybody was kind, and this other hand went up. She turned at this boy, whose name I won't even say because I remember all the names of these kids. She said, "So and so, I so hear you. But honestly, if I didn't have a little of that medicine every day, I couldn't come to school because I'm really depressed," which was shocking to me because I had no idea she was depressed. Then this other kid raised her hand, and she said, "Thanks for bringing that up because my aunt would be dead." This is how it went. Then somebody over here started talking about pressure, and that's what they did for the whole hour, and kids left the room, hugging me and it's wild. The last day of school, one of the kids in that room, said -- because we were just doing evaluations and whatever, hanging out, eating -- she said, "What's your most memorable day?" I said, "Are you kidding?" [LAUGHTER] We went back to that, and I ran into her maybe a year ago.
- [00:28:20] AMY CANTU: Wow. Sounds like just the thing they needed at that moment.
- [00:28:26] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: It was stunning. It was absolutely stunning.
- [00:28:27] AMY CANTU: Wow. I remember when that all happened.
- [00:28:29] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Well, it was more than any--and you know what? Those were the five that I knew about. I think there was another one, a younger kid in a middle school, who had jumped off of some bridge.
- [00:28:44] ELIZABETH SMITH: To change the subject. [OVERLAPPING].
- [00:28:45] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Please change it. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:28:47] ELIZABETH SMITH: But kind of on the same subject, you, the previous year, had won another award from the White House Presidential Scholars program.
- [00:28:58] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: That was wonderful because I think I was in the running for that another time, but I think the student didn't... What happens is, the student wins. That was 1997, maybe?
- [00:29:09] ELIZABETH SMITH: '96.
- [00:29:09] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Was it six? Sam Erman. He won, and he came to me and he said that I was his most influential teacher, and would I go to Washington DC. I said, Yeah. [LAUGHTER] My husband and I went, [NOISE] and it's funny, there was supposed to be an event at the Rose Garden, and they canceled the teachers from that, which at the end of the day turned out to be okay because I think the kids had to get up at 4:00 AM. But I did go the night before to a speech given by Al Gore who was then the vice president. He was hilarious. It was really interesting. I don't ever remember anybody's jokes, but I do remember this. We were sitting in the back and he said something about the seal on the podium from which he was speaking. He said something like, "Now, if you just cover one eye and you blur it a little, it'll look like president, not vice president," and I thought, Well, that's funny. Anyhow, that was very pleasant. Then there was a luncheon where all the students were asked to say something kind about their teachers, and it was lovely. But the most impressive thing I did at that event was I took a ticket they gave me and my husband and we went to the Holocaust Museum, because it was fairly new then, and I had never been there. It was overwhelming. But really interesting and I've supported it ever since.
- [00:30:34] AMY CANTU: Now, your students have described you... You're known as a beloved teacher, but also one who demanded a lot from them. Can you talk about that ratio? How much do you give and how much do you demand?
- [00:30:54] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I think I'm adorable and charming and I'm very loving, and I feed people. I kept food in my room all the time until I got mouse poop, then I had to stop that. But I kept lollipops, kind of like in a doctor's office. If it's a hard day, kids need a lollipop. But I think they knew I was serious. They always knew I was serious about the work, and I told them that I wouldn't work them any harder than I worked myself. I also asked them on the very first day, "How many of you hear the words in your head when you read?" And about third of the hands went up. Is that for true of either of you? I said to them, "You know what that means? We are sub-vocalizers. It means that we're slow readers, but we're nice people and the good news for you is I'm one of those people, so I'm never going to give you more than you can read because I'm not going to give you more than I can read." But there were probably times when I gave them a lot and times when they got behind, but they somehow managed. As far as the papers were concerned, I gave a lot of papers, but I spent hours grading them. I wrote lots and lots of comments. We were trained in the '60s so we couldn't use red ink, we had to use green and purple and pink and orange or some other color. To me, it was a dialogue. It really wasn't about the color of the ink and kids respect that because they knew I cared. They knew I cared about their writing, they knew I wanted the writing to get better, and you don't turn kids into good writers by telling them that they're stupid or their papers are bad. I told this on capsule night. It's not a funeral exactly, I don't know what the Quakers call it, but some sort of meeting when somebody dies. A dear friend of ours, who was a linguist at the university had died. One of his graduate students told the assembled people that her first language was sarcasm, which was funny, and that when she graded papers with our friend Pete, she would always point out the mistakes and the stupidity and she'd say, "Look at this, and look at this," and Pete would always say, "Look at this, and look at this." I would then say to my student teachers, if you get to the bottom of the page and you don't have a compliment on there, you got to go back. If you haven't found something that you can encourage the student about or say, "Wow, what a good chosen word" or "Wow, this phrase is fabulous," or "Shoot, you just taught me a new word." Find something, otherwise, I'm going to make you do it again. I think they took me very seriously, and they knew that I cared, and they knew that I turned those papers around pretty fast. I have pictures of vacations with a book bag of stacks of papers. I would figure, if I get five done before breakfast, or if I get two done...and that's how it was. When I visited my children, "If I can just get one done here..." I was always grading papers.
- [00:33:50] AMY CANTU: Wow, that's fantastic.
- [00:33:52] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I think I was demanding. My daughter who was a student there once overheard two guys, two skateboarders in the front. She came home and told us this. She said, "Mom, there were these guys outside, and one of them was saying, 'A class with Judith, are you kidding?' Mom, I was really pissed at first and then I thought, No, that's a compliment." Then we at home, came up with the phrase, "Judith Avoider" because some kids would come to me and say, "Everybody says I have to take a Judith class before I graduate." I had never heard the word, a Judith class. Oh, that's sweet. Okay, welcome. But a Judith Avoider was our word. I think some people found that maybe whatever intimidating. I asked the kids later, "I'm I really that different or hard?" Some of them would say, Yeah, but most of them said no. I don't know.
- [00:34:43] AMY CANTU: What did you do for Shakespeare and things that...
- [00:34:47] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: You know what? I didn't get to teach Shakespeare, except Romeo and Juliet and then I was in the play. I got to play the Prince, remember?
- [00:34:54] AMY CANTU: Yeah, tell us about that.
- [00:34:56] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: But just to say the reason I didn't teach Shakespeare is that was a dedicated course that somebody else taught.
- [00:35:01] AMY CANTU: Got you.
- [00:35:02] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: With Shakespeare, I used that book that has the two sides cause it's helpful, and we read it in class, we watched movies. Oh, my gosh, I remember. We did this day when kids got dressed up, and one girl, I had forgotten about this. She came in and she did her little act or whatever she was going to do cause you could do a drawing, you could do whatever. It was a project. That's what it was. It was a project. When she stabbed herself to die and fell on the floor, there was this red mess all over the floor. I don't know what it was. It was a mess. It was that fake stuff. Another kid, this was scary. He did the fight with Tybalt, so the fight. Who's fighting with Tybalt? Tybalt and Romeo are having the fight, and Tybalt dies. He falls on the floor but on the way to falling on the floor, he hit the corner of a desk. Went down, went like this, went like that, and blood came gushing out of his head. This is in my classroom. He's gushing blood. The drinking fountain was right outside my door. I think I grabbed some paper towels, grabbed some, got it wet, came back, said to one of the kids, "Get Gena," because Gena was the community assistant. She was called in. I'm holding this thing over his head and of course, I didn't put gloves on first. Well, I forgot. But at least the bleeding stopped and it was pretty dramatic. But heads bleed, and so his father was called, and eventually, he told me he was going to Pioneer for class. I said, "You are not going anywhere. If your father takes you to class, that's fine, but you're not leaving my room until..." Anyhow, that's how that...so that was pretty exciting. That was one of the Shakespeare moments. Yeah, I love teaching it. Then what happened was Tracy and I, who were teaching intro, we had to give it up because we got another staff member. Maybe it's when I went to 60% because before I retired, I went to 60%, and I had to give something up, and I hated giving that up, but I gave it up, and so I didn't get to see any more Romeo and Juliet projects. But I saw Scarlet Letter projects till the bitter end.
- [00:37:23] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was actually going to ask that next. You made a Scarlet Letter quilt. Can you talk about that project and how it came about?
- [00:37:29] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: The quilt is mine, but I'll tell you how I got the block. Are you a quilter?
- [00:37:35] ELIZABETH SMITH: I'm not. No.
- [00:37:36] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: But quilts are made of blocks. The blocks are from the project, and here's how the project happened. No, it's not in Donald's documentary. It was something else I did. There was a girl in the class who ended up in the Joffrey Ballet. She was really talented young woman. Raised her hand one day in the middle of some discussion about the Scarlet Letter. She said, "How come we're not embroidering A's?" I said, "Should we be embroidering A's?" She said, "I think so." I said, "That's interesting. Let me think about that." I went home, I thought about it. I made a list of possible projects because I didn't think everybody'd want to embroider. I had play lists, embroidering. I had paintings, I had acting scenes, I had music. I had the puppet show for certain parts of the play. Studies of medicine from the 17th century because Dimmesdale, he's maybe being given poison from Chillingworth.
- [00:38:39] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I had a lot of projects. A lot of the kids, including the boys, would do needlepoint and embroider A's. At the end of the class, some of them would give them to me. I'd say, "No, your mother's going to want this." "My mother doesn't want it." "But your mother does want it." "No, she doesn't, and if you don't take it, I'm throwing it away." "Give it to me." I took them for years and I just put them in a drawer. Then one day -- I'm a quilter -- I looked at these. I have a picture in my phone, I'm sure. I have a Scarlet A quilt on my piano and it's beautiful. Sunday I went to the party of a former student who was introducing her baby to the world. At that party, someone said, just like downstairs, "Judith," and she's the mother of the girl whose block is in the middle of the quilt, and that girl is a doctor now. I remember all these kids, and that's my quilt.
- [00:39:36] AMY CANTU: It is in the outtakes that Donald took for that documentary. We have it on our website.
- [00:39:41] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: So you have a picture of the quilt?
- [00:39:42] AMY CANTU: We do.
- [00:39:43] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I'll be darned.
- [00:39:43] AMY CANTU: We have a video of you walking through the...
- [00:39:45] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Down the hall because all of the beds have a quilt that I made.
- [00:39:49] AMY CANTU: What are some of the most impactful memories from teaching? You've already talked about several, but what are some more?
- [00:39:57] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: All right, I happen not to believe in trigger warnings. The first time that came up, I talked to my daughter, who was a professor then at the University of Chicago. She says, "Mom, if they need trigger warnings, tell them not to read books, and for heaven's sake, never to look at the news." I said, "Okay, well, whatever." My younger colleagues, especially the males, were frightened and they felt they had to give trigger warnings, and I respected that. Even though I didn't use the word trigger warning, I would say to kids, This book is pretty hard going. There's some disturbing moments. If you ever feel that this is too much for you, come talk to me and we'll change the book or we'll do something. That's not exactly a trigger warning, but it's certainly an open heart and a promise to be flexible and respectful, and reactive in a way that's kind. I was teaching Women's Lit, I didn't want to teach The Bluest Eye because I taught it 1,000 times in American Lit but the kids wanted to read it. I thought, so we're reading The Bluest Eye. This is not a good story. All of a sudden, this one girl whom I didn't know well just screamed at me. "Why didn't you give us a trigger warning?" You know the Bluest Eye? I said, "I don't." Over here, one girl started crying and she left the room with another girl, and this one's still yapping at me. I was very polite, and I explained my reasons, and I said, Literature should be shocking. It should be informative, and all books are not cheerful. I did tell you from the get-go that I would always change a book if you were unhappy or something was disturbing. She said to me, and I can almost quote this. This was years ago, not that many years ago, "If I go home and I hurt myself because of this, it is your fault." I said, "You know what, we need to talk at lunch, could you come back?" I kept myself together, but I was not a happy camper. Then I said, "We're going to move on and talk about whatever." This other girl said, "No, we're not going to stop this conversation." I said, "Actually, we are. But I'm happy to talk to any of you if you need more attention on this." So the one who had almost killed me, I came in at lunch, I gave her an entire lunch period. She was angry at her brother. She felt that her mother didn't love her as much as her brother. It was just so much projection of her junk on me that day. The two over here were kids who adored me. They came back after school. "Are you okay? We're sorry about..." I mean, it was fine. But I was undone. A couple of kids came up to me at the end very quietly, because they were afraid of this girl, and they hugged me and they said, "We agree with you." I said, "Thanks." But they couldn't say anything. It was horrible. You asked me for a memorable day, that's one. Because it's not always perfect. But I can tell you honestly that in 33 years of teaching, that is the only day that something like that happened. I probably lost my temper to the extent that I used a very powerful voice and was harsh twice in 33 years. Once I went out into the hall and screamed at everybody in the hall to clean up the hall. I said, "The custodians are not your hand servants, pick this crap up so that she can sweep the floor." They're all looking at me like, My God, Judith has just lost it, and they cleaned up the hall. That's it.
- [00:43:46] AMY CANTU: That's pretty good.
- [00:43:47] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Let me just think for a second. Once a parent called me and went cuckoo on me, and my leg started shaking under my desk. I went down to the dean's office and just sobbed. I was just stupid. It was for nothing. So it's not like every day is perfect, but those things are few and far between. But I feel like I should give you some of those.
- [00:44:08] AMY CANTU: No, I hope you don't want to call and have us take that out because that...
- [00:44:12] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: You can have it. I was sitting here agonizing about that because when you said memorable moments, I was thinking, did she only mean good ones?
- [00:44:21] AMY CANTU: That brings us to more recent history. I'd like to ask you about...if you don't mind. I'm curious, especially now that you're retired, you can say whatever you want to say.
- [00:44:32] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I did even then.
- [00:44:33] AMY CANTU: I bet...about how the public school system handled COVID. What are your thoughts about that?
- [00:44:44] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I taught at the end of that second semester. I honestly don't think she could have done it any other way. As much as my granddaughter said we hate Zoom school, Zoom school saved us. It gave us a platform to continue some connection, and here's a good one. From some of the kids in my forum, whom I didn't know that well because they were very quiet, when I would give them these weird assignments because they were just sending them to me. Sometimes I asked for pictures of something. I asked for answers to weird questions. I learned the most lovely pieces of their lives, and they talked a lot about spending time with their families because Zoom meant they were at home. I know they didn't have to turn their videos on, and I thought that was respectful, because not everybody has a pretty background, and sometimes parents are not dressed nicely or not dressed, and you don't want to see that. I understood all of that. I had my differences with the superintendent on certain other issues. But honestly, I don't know what else she could have done.
- [00:45:54] AMY CANTU: Mm-hmm.
- [00:45:55] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: People were getting sick. People had families, people had spouses that were getting sick. It was a mess. It was an absolute mess. I respected it.
- [00:46:06] ELIZABETH SMITH: It exacerbated already struggles to keep teachers in positions. Did you have any thoughts about that? Has it progressed at all? I know you're retired now, but did you see more teachers leaving?
- [00:46:21] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Because of COVID?
- [00:46:22] ELIZABETH SMITH: COVID and then the response to COVID.
- [00:46:24] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I didn't. I think it's because I was so involved in my own personal crazies right then in terms of my husband's recovery, which was lovely, but it was a lot of work. It was stressful. Trying to see my own children. When we went for my husband's surgery, it was at Mayo Clinic, because they weren't doing these surgeries then. My youngest son and my daughter and I had to be in a hotel across the street. My daughter and I cooked and froze enough food to feed us for 10 days. It was a lot, three meals a day, because we couldn't go out. I went for a walk with her once, and she was so nervous about people 50 feet away, it wasn't worth it. If you think back to the way we had to take care of vegetables and grocery shopping and all that stuff.
- [00:47:19] AMY CANTU: It was pretty rough.
- [00:47:20] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: It was pretty intense. As far as teachers leaving, I don't really know because I don't think anybody at Community left at that point. I know right now with this crazy mess that's going on with the board and the 25 million missing dollars, I know that teachers are being pink-slipped. I have friends who live from paycheck to paycheck, and I think that some of them are the best teachers I've ever known. But I think that it's not about money. I can give you an example because people would say to me when I was in my 70s -- I retired at 77. But even at 65, 68, whenever normal people retire. I am not normal -- they would say, "It's not worth it to you. You can make more money from your pension." My husband, who's much better with numbers, said, "One, that's not true. Two, that's not why you're doing it. Remember?" And of course, I remember ed and of course I didn't want to retire. I was going to teach until I was 80. That was my goal.
- [00:48:26] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
- [00:48:26] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Oops.
- [00:48:27] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
- [00:48:31] AMY CANTU: You were Prospero in the play?
- [00:48:33] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: I was Prospera.
- [00:48:35] AMY CANTU: Prospera. Can you tell us about that experience?
- [00:48:39] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Well, let me start with being the princess in Romeo and Juliet. Because Quinn called me. He wasn't in the building very long and he called me, and he was very strange. He said, you know how I was talking at that staff meeting about how when I do a play, I like to get, staff members and secretaries and everybody involved. I said, yeah, thinking he's not talking about me. Then he said, are you forceful in your class? I said, I don't think so, I'm pretty nice. Why? No, but don't you ever get angry. I said, rarely, no, why? I said, Quinn, where is this going? [LAUGHTER] He said, well, I want you to be the prince in Romeo and Juliet. But you'll be the princess and you have to be very firm. I said, Quinn, in third grade, I was in the three little pigs, I've never been in a play. He said, Judith, I think you can do this. I said, can I think about it? I called my daughter, mom, of course, you're going to do it. You'll never know a play better than you'll know this one, so that's where it started. It was so wonderful because I got to be in somebody else's classroom in a way that's profound. Because I was one of the students, and believe me, I knew my lines, I never had to say, line, never. I had lines in my car, lines pasted behind my desk in my classroom, I had him in the living room, and I had him in at the bedstand. Then when the I don't remember how prospero happened. We were leaving a staff meeting, walking out the door, and Quinn started up again. I think it was about how he had played so and so in the tempest when he was in college, and he'd always wanted to produce the tempest. Thinking, well, that's good. I said, Quinn, I haven't even read the tempest, I think I saw it. In fact, I had seen it when Quinn was in it, but we made that connection much later. I said, I've seen it, but I haven't read it. He said, you don't have to have read it. Judith, I want you to be prospero. I said, What? I mean, that person has 1 million lines. Well, I'm going to cut it some. I said, I really need to think about this and of course, my daughter [LAUGHTER] . I worked so bloody hard on that. I wish I could show you I got, I could give you these. They're five by seven cards, they're like index cards, but they're not the little ones. They're five by seven, and they had different colors, so for each of the scenes, I use different colors, so you know what cue cards are. On one side, you have the last line you hear, and then on the other side, is the line you're going to deliver. You look at the cue card, that last line, you flip it over, and that's how you memorize it. I started memorizing this the summer before 2020. I met with Quinn a few times and he had kids. He was opening, he was bringing groceries in, I was sitting at his table. Kids were crawling all over the place. Anyhow, I learned those lines. I went on opening day to the first rehearsal with all the lines memorized. I went through what he does call the first reading... Readout?
- [00:51:51] AMY CANTU: Read through?
- [00:51:51] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: The read-through. I was just enthralled. I was just... I mean it was magical being in that room and there had to be two of us. There was the so-called understudy. What she didn't have that I have is gravitas. What she had that I don't have was a brilliance that was just stunning. One time in a rehearsal, this is when we were in the theater before we got shut down two days before opening night. We were blocking something and I must have been confused, and she was right where you are. She looked at me and she went [GESTURES] and then, I always knew that I was headed over there, and so whatever I did, I did exactly what she told me to do. Then we got shut down, we had a dress rehearsal. We had one dress rehearsal, and I had the dress rehearsal. I didn't have a costume. They put me in this 400-pound graduation robe that made me sweat, and my hair was -- I looked awful. Quinn had this idea that my hair had to be down at one point, and that was never going to work. But it was down then, and it was a disaster. But anyhow, I had the dress rehearsal. He was very complimentary when he gave notes at the end, and it was wonderful. Then the next day or whatever we were supposed to do Lily's dress rehearsal. The superintendent shut the schools down, it was on a Wednesday. I wasn't there that day or I was home already, and I learned later that all of the kids from The Tempest were in the theater crying and Friday was supposed to be opening night. That didn't happen. I didn't regret the time I spent. I learned so much about learning, and learning from the kids and watching them. The compliment that Quinn gave me that night was that I'm supposed to take this stick and break it. Well, the bloody stick was a little too, they gave me a stick that was too thick. Somebody was going to help me, and I pushed that person off and I jammed the stick on my foot and broke it, and then did what I was supposed to do with it. Quinn said, "And what did she do?" And all the kids scream in unison. "She made it happen!" And that was one of his little themes. If you're on stage and something goes wrong, make it happen, just figure it out. Well, I made it happen, but that was the end. Then he called me, and he said, "Look, I got to do this, I have an idea, I think I can do it on Zoom. I said, are you kidding? He said, "No, I'm not we can do this." I said "I have everything, my husband buys everything. We had a real green thing, whatever you call that, the green screen." We had the real deal. There were these huge tripods with this green screen hanging in my study so no one else could come in my study. It's not a big room, but it was a big green screen. Then those cards I told you about. I used the same cards because Quinn when he did blocking, he would tell us where to look. Then you had to put a card there or something, you had to put a sticky note. My study was covered with these pink five by seven, and I would say this is Calban, this is so and so, this is Miranda, when I got to look at Miranda, this is whatever and that's how I look. Three of those cards are still on the ceiling, and I've just left them there. Because I used to have these cards in the living room when I was just practicing, but that was when we had a real play. Then when we have to do the Zoom, my study was the place. I have a lectern that somebody made me years ago, so I could put my computer on the lectern. I could see myself in the Zoom. I had all my cards, I'm looking here, I'm looking there, I'm looking everywhere. Quinn he was trying to tell the chorus how to do this growling sound like they had to sound like dogs. He got so close to the screen that you could see every one of his teeth. I remember thinking, I have crowns, I am never go to show my teeth like that. I was so impressed with him and it was just amazing. He figured out ways -- like my husband, at one point, had to be in it. He had to take my gar--pluck my magic garment from me. Those are my husband's hands actually taking the garment off, but it looks like it's Miranda's mother, because he had her do something, and then he spliced it in some weird way that my husband's hands were either changed or they disappeared. I mean, it was so interesting, but I don't think many people watched it, I don't know.
- [00:56:35] ELIZABETH SMITH: What are you most proud of?
- [00:56:40] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: Aww. I am proud of those classes I taught. I am proud of the years of students that I deeply love and run into all the time, and their parents, as you saw. I'm proud of a job that I loved so much that when people call... There was this one woman who called on the phone one day and they called me in my office. They said, "There's someone who wants to talk to an English teacher." I said, "Okay. " So I got on the phone, I talked to this unknown person, told her it was the best job in the world. I had a long conversation with her. Years later, she showed up. She was my student teacher, and I didn't know that. She said, "Judith, we've met" and she was that one. But also, I'm proud of learning to swim at the age of 70.
- [00:57:20] AMY CANTU: Great. Lots to be proud of.
- [00:57:24] JUDITH DEWOSKIN: And you know, I have a marriage of 59 years, I'm proud of that, too. I guess I'm proud of a lot of relationships that I have and the love that I feel for this job because I don't think everybody feels it and I still feel it. I mean, I talked to this kid in the airport the other day, who was waiting for a hot dog, because I knew he was a teenager. But I made it clear that he looked old enough to be a college kid. But then he told me no, he was going into his junior year. We ended up talking about his classes, and I realized that this was just a stranger that I talked to because I missed those kids. But I still have coffee with a lot of them, take some of them out to lunch. I've had a wonderful life.
- [00:58:12] ELIZABETH SMITH: Thank you.
- [00:58:12] AMY CANTU: That's great.
- [00:58:17] ELIZABETH SMITH: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.
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July 15, 2024
Length: 00:59:10
Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library
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AADL Talks To
Judith DeWoskin
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