St. Vincent de Paul Teacher-Scholar
Award Lecture
What Teaching Means to Me
Marie-Lise Gazarian
Coordinator, Graduate Program in Spanish
St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of
Languages and Literatures
gazariam@stjohns.edu
Father Harrington, Sister Julia Upton, members of the Board of
Trustees, dear colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen:
May I first of all express my deep gratitude for the great honor
that has been bestowed upon me. As the recipient of the prestigious
St. Vincent de Paul Teacher/Scholar Award, I would like to share
this distinction with all my colleagues as well as all our
students, past and present. I take this opportunity to thank the
Committee chaired by Dr. Maura Flannery for having selected me. I
do hope that I will always be worthy of the trust placed in me.
To have been associated with St. John's University for the past
41 years and to continue to be associated with it has been a
rewarding experience and a most challenging task. There is indeed
something special about St. John's. Whenever its name is mentioned,
it seems to open doors in the most unexpected places, cutting
across continents in magical ways.
A few years ago, as I was coming back from Europe, I realized I
had misplaced my passport. My only credential was the ID from St.
John's. When I showed it to the Immigration Officer in charge at
Kennedy Airport, he said to me: "Carneseca, go ahead! Welcome back
to New York!" There was no need for a passport. While I was
attending a meeting in Spain some years ago, the Minister of
Culture unexpectedly inquired: "Is your basketball team still
Number One?" And last January, at Mount Sinai Hospital, where I had
just undergone knee surgery, a physical therapist came to my room
so that I could be discharged. Her name was Debora Marro. Lo and
behold, she was a St. John's graduate, a member of the President's
Society, a member of the Skull and Circle and a member of the
Campus Ministry. When I asked her whether she would consider giving
me therapy sessions at home, she answered with a big smile: "I'll
do anything for my Alma Mater!"
Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet and 1945 Nobel Prize Winner,
used to say that to teach is to awaken in all students a sense of
awe; it is to be so very humble in front of God's creation. She
said, "O Lord, You who taught, forgive me for bearing the name that
you bore on earth." I have always endeavored to be inspired by
these precepts, which go hand in hand with those of St. Vincent de
Paul.
Some teachers inspire us, not just with their knowledge, but
with their passion to share that knowledge. My aunt Sonia, who just
passed away in Paris, was an example for all. A pioneer among women
doctors in France, she directed four hospitals during the Second
World War. Some of her students are now renowned medical doctors in
many parts of the world. I met one of them not too long ago in
Lima, Peru. My aunt served the poor, just as the rich, in the
spirit of St. Vincent de Paul. When she retired at age 80 from the
medical profession, she undertook a Master's degree in Russian
Literature and finished with a certificate of excellence. Her young
classmates gathered around her for assistance and she studied with
them and guided them.
Teaching is a skill and an art. I was fortunate to have
professors who opened my mind to poetry and creativity. Teaching is
always creating; no class is ever the same. Every lesson is as
enticing and appealing as a new sunset, with a distinctive beauty
all of its own. Have you ever looked at a sunset over Manhattan,
particularly in a fall evening? We can appreciate this striking
spectacle from our own campus. I recall one such sunset. I was
teaching a graduate course on how to write poetry. One student kept
silent, his eyes turned toward the window, as if in contemplation
of nature. A few days later, that same student, today one of our
adjuncts, stopped me in the hall and exclaimed, "Dr. G., I have
something for you." He handed me a poem he had written during my
class.
Much of my professional life has been dedicated to encouraging
excellence within St. John's University as well as promoting
Hispanic letters in this country and abroad. The satisfaction of
transmitting knowledge and inciting students into the art of
writing is commensurate with teaching a child how to talk, to walk,
to live. Students and writers to be are like oysters that, full of
creative potential, receive grains of sand, which may turn into
pearls. Teachers can be instrumental in the spreading of grains of
sand. The pearl that some day we will hold in our hand is part of
that miraculous process.
Teaching is an invigorating profession. It challenges on a daily
basis our capacity to listen to students, to ascertain their needs,
to share with them our knowledge, to involve them in our research
projects, and to take an active part in making their own dreams
come true.
I started teaching when I was 14. My first student was a four
year-old child. Her parents were writers and asked me to teach her
how to read. As we were walking from her house to mine, the little
girl told me, "Look at the sky. Don't you see that big ladder that
unites the earth to the heavens?" "Show me where," I said with
enthusiasm. "Don't you see Beatrice walking up the ladder to talk
to Dante?", she answered. And we both stopped to listen to a
beautiful dialogue between the poet and his Muse. This was perhaps
my first encounter with the realm of imagination and creative
writing. A four year-old child had shown me the way and given me a
lesson.
Writers live in an imaginary world through the characters that
inhabit their dreams. They may, like Faulkner, create countries
with rivers, oceans, mountains, boundaries, and even imaginary
passports and maps. I still have in my possession such a map drawn
by Juan Benet, one of Spain's foremost novelists, who was also a
civil engineer. Ana Marma Matute, at present the only woman writer
within the Spanish Royal Academy of the Language, told me on more
than one occasion: "When I write I am not the Ana Marma that you
know, I become the blank page." This reminds me of the poem "End of
Space,' which my brother Pierre wrote. The following quote is taken
from the last stanzas:
Words started to push and pull, / And growl and bite...
And we wrote in the sky, / On the edges of the moon,
And into the moon, / In craters and on hills,
And in the powder of the planets.
And the words flew / To the end of space and burst
Into the sun.
As the Moderator of Epsilon Kappa, St. John's Chapter of Sigma
Delta Pi, the National Hispanic Honor Society, I have organized for
the past 30 years a large number of literary events with the
participation of writers and artists from Spain and Latin America.
Our University became known as early as the decade of the seventies
for its deep commitment to the Hispanic literary scene. Students
thus were given the opportunity to interact with writers and become
involved in the magic of creativity.
One of our major achievements is, no doubt, the launching of the
literary journal Entre rascacielos. This journal, published by
Epsilon Kappa, serves as a forum and an incentive for creative
writing for both St. John's students and the Hispanic community.
Its first issue became a memorial to Angel Juarbe, a young
firefighter who died responding to the terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center on September 11.
During the ceremony devoted to the launching of the journal, Dr.
Jose Rodriguez, Dean of Student Affairs, praised the courage of all
fighters. Dr. Antonio Garrido, Director of the Cervantes Institute
in New York and one of the Honorary Editors of the journal,
stressed the importance of a literary magazine in tragic times and
praised the works of St. John's students: "Culture," he said, "is
the answer to barbarism, the written word to violence, poetry to
suffering." And he added, "A literary journal is always a forum for
freedom."
So many stories make me proud to be a teacher. May I conclude
with the following episode, which is very dear to my heart. The
most moving impact I made during my long teaching career did not
take place within a classroom setting. It went far beyond the
campus limits while I was working on the televised series Summer
Semester, a series of 30 half-hour segments of interviews and
lectures shown across the United States. Among the numerous
responses to the series stand out several letters I received from a
prisoner from San Quentin, in California. He was a Mexican
American. He wrote that he had turned on his television as I was
interviewing Carlos Fuentes. That program, he said, changed his
whole perspective on life. For the first time he felt proud of his
Hispanic heritage and asked me to send him books, so that he could
educate himself while in prison and learn more about his roots.
Planting seeds, so that they may grow and prosper, even in the
most infertile grounds, is a challenging and enriching experience.
We must try at all times, even under the most unexpected
circumstances, never to miss an occasion to give others a chance to
learn. In the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, compassion,
understanding and humility must be an intrinsic part of our daily
experience as teachers. I am grateful for the opportunity to
address this Convocation and to share with you my thoughts on the
wonderful life that teaching offers us.