Cultivating Puzzlement: Teachers Who Transfer from the High School to College
Doug Hesse

Carol Samson, Kelli Custer, Casey Rountree, and I spoke at the College Language Arts Society (CLAS) conference, a gathering of (this year) 330 Colorado English teachers, most of whom were high school teachers. Carol Samson framed her remarks around a study of teachers that focused on their career progressions, using it to talk about her own rich teaching life and her coming to DU; if you dont change, you get embittered, and the varied perspectives in our program encourage change. Kelli Custer explained how her sense of puzzlement when she taught in a Florida high school (who are these guys?) was mirrored when she came to DU (who are these guys?) and that teaching in both settings required knowing the identities of students. Casey Rountree talked about how his temporary teaching job at Smoky Hills HS turned into a seductive four-year stint; he contrasted college teaching with high school in terms of how the former allows/demands more attention to certain kinds of questions and cited our Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research project, in which we counted grammar mistakes, and its implications. The audience was small, which allowed the presenters to be conversational and allowed us to hear stories from our audience members, who included two legendary Colorado teachers, one of them a past National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) president. We made some good bridges to other teachers in the state, and I was fascinated by insights I gained about whats happening in the schools. There are some fine teachers out there.

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