“Welcome all to class," says Professor Charlotte Matthews as she begins a weekly online course with 40 students around the world. "I want you all to know that I’m here. I’m full of heart and happy to be with each and every one of you.”
Twice a week, she appears on 40 computer screens, teaching older students like Caroline McCormick.
“I was a thoroughly unpromising youth. I didn’t drop out once, but I dropped out twice,” she recalls.
Today, she’s so excited about writing and learning that she’s thinking of getting a master’s degree, and she gives much of the credit to Professor Matthews.
“She just opens you up. She has this beautiful joyous presence, and the shyest, the most turtle-like people come out of their shells.”
She does this in unusual ways, beginning on day one.
“The very first class I say, please take your pen. Put it in your non-dominant hand and write down a question you can’t answer. And then we all go around and share that, and I say: ‘You just wrote! Now put your pen in your dominant hand and try to answer your question.’"
"I tell my students I’m their Sherpa," she continues. "I’ve hiked this a lot, and I may be carrying more water, and I do know where we’re camping tonight, but I want you to do the work.”
Her students read a novel a week, and they watch thought-provoking films that have sometimes left McCormick in tears.
“I haven’t cried more in the last five years than I have in this class, just from some of the exercises or movies," she admits. "It’s a very safe space. I do love that.”
In teaching, Matthews is inspired by the words of fellow writer Mary Oliver.
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention, be astonished, tell me about it.”
She instructs them to make notes during their daily lives, because she warns, ideas won’t just come to you because a writing assignment is due. And those assignments must be written by hand.
“We are trying to get away from the tyranny of technology and write in a journal and slow down and much of the class is spent in quiet and reflection and just trying to not run the rat race, which I think is revolutionary.”
For 56-year-old Jennifer Boyer, who lives in suburban Richmond, the online class was transformative.
“She offered the course at a time when my two army sons had deployed, and I had some personal things going on, and I thought writing would be a good place to get rid of some thoughts and feelings and stress.”
Boyer credits Matthews with providing something essential.
“The most important thing she gave me was something that I was aware I needed, but not just to the extent that I needed it, and that was confidence. She knew how to give that to me in a way that felt so authentic. It meant the world to me, and it still does.”
In this class, students do most of the talking.
“They have not come this way easily, and they’re not 19 years old," Matthews explains. "They’ve worked hard to get where they are, and it is that that I greatly, greatly admire!”
Punctuated by bursts of enthusiasm from the instructor.
“Yes – thank you. Nicely said!"
"Oh, that would make such an interesting essay! Wouldn’t it? That’s really cool!"
"Nice!”
Matthews is also the cofounder of Whistle Words, an organization that helps women during and after treatment for cancer to reclaim their sense of self through writing. She’s the author of five poetry collections, a novel, and a memoir, which was a finalist for Indie awards best creative non-fiction.
She’ll read from her newest work – Everything in its Brilliance - at the Batesville Market on Sunday, December 8th at 3.
