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English Department Chair Jeremy Freeman believes that good
writing is not just a matter of technical and structural accuracy, but
also needs to include a balance of creative and analytic skills.
WENDY CARLSON;
GRAPHIC:
© IMPRESSED-MEDIA.DE
at his feet (literally) in the large common room adjacent to the dining hall to be read to (all 125 of us). It is
not hard to imagine what most of us thought about such an idea. But over time the soft modulations of his
voice hauled us in and before long even the most recalcitrant among us began to look forward to these half
hour readings. Robert Browning was one of his favorite poets, so we got a healthy dose of him.”
DeRosa was inspired to become an English teacher by his SKS English teacher Bill Carhart. He described
Carhart as “Demanding but never condescending, he taught us how to think…. He did it with humor, an
infectious zaniness, and a willingness to let genuine thought thread its way along whatever paths it chose.”
Writing is a Thinking Tool
T
eaching students to think is as much a part of Storm King education of today as it ever was. Reading,
writing and thinking are skills that are entwined, related and synergistic, says SKS English Department
Chair Jeremy Freeman. He says that experience has lead him to believe that the physical and mental exercise
of writing leads to better thinking and reading — and in turn, better thinking and reading leads to better
writing.
Mr. Freeman is a graduate of Lyon College and Yale Divinity School, with a BA in English and Philosophy
and a Masters of Arts and Religion, respectively. He has attended several workshops at the Institute for
Writing and Thinking at Bard College, a program that was developed for teachers in response to colleges’
concern about college entrants not having the writing skills needed
for their college years. SKS faculty also takes advantage of the
Hudson Valley Writing Project’s seminars to hone their skills in
teaching students how to research and write.
Mr. Freeman is careful to note that good writing is not just a
matter of technical and structural accuracy, but also needs to include
a balance of creative and analytic skills. His training in psychotherapy
at the Gestalt Institute has contributed to his perspective that SKS
students must find and express their own authentic voice. That voice
may be found in the practice of daily journaling by English students,
in addition to a variety of writing exercises assigned at SKS.
Under Freeman’s direction, the goal of an English teacher at
SKS is to awaken in students the belief that they are writers and
what they have to say is worth saying. I was invited to attend
Freeman’s Modern American Fiction class, where students wrote
about images as well as literature, practiced descriptive writing,
interpretation and made comparisons. They described what was
important and what it meant to them, and identified themes. They
practiced and shared their writing together and identified whether
sentences were simple, complex and/or compound. They critiqued
and encouraged one another. They immersed themselves in language
by memorizing and reciting poetry, great speeches, or Shakespeare.
In Mr. Freeman’s classroom, I witnessed students experimenting with language and coming to embrace its
poetic and expressive forms. The atmosphere of the class was focused, inspired and enthusiastic. I remembered
the feeling of inspiration in my English classes at SKS and how comfortable I felt in participating and
