Meet Teaching Artist Ethan Jacobs
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Ethan Jacobs is a freelance writer currently based in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. He has written extensively in narrative and short fiction formats, and his work has received recognition both domestically and internationally in microfiction, short fiction, and narrative essay formats. He is a lover of all things craft and believes that the classroom exists as a place where discussion can be used as a medium for learning. He encourages students of all backgrounds and skill levels to participate in his classes, as he considers himself a student of the writing process as well.
To find Ethan's current class list, visit his artist bio page.
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When did you start teaching? What path—career or otherwise—brought you here?
I started getting teaching experience while I was still in college. I volunteered at an adult education center in Allston, Massachusetts, near where I went to school. There, I worked with adult immigrants who were working toward earning their GED via night classes. I took on a few other teaching roles after graduation before ultimately transitioning to freelance writing—a field in which I sort of wandered around clumsily for a few years, accepting whatever jobs were thrown my way just to make ends meet.
A few years ago, I did some extended traveling through Asia and discovered a trove of literature from authors from the countries that I visited. Reading so many compelling works ended up being the nudge I needed to shift my focus to writing work with a focus on literature. It also ended up giving me the confidence I needed to write my first work of short fiction—based loosely on an experience during that trip—which ended up receiving runner-up recognition in a short fiction contest.
Now, the further down the literature rabbit hole I go, the more I appreciate the technical aspect of it. I find myself thralled by the thousands of microscopic decisions that writers have to make over the course of a piece that, in gestalt, transform a piece into something powerful. My fascination with that kind of minutiae inspired me to design a course that puts the nitty-gritty under a microscope and offers up powerful literature from writers of diverse backgrounds and life experiences as case studies.
How would you describe your teaching style?
I’m a Montessori school product, so my background is kind of in hands-on learning, and I remember hating just about all of my lecture classes in college because, for me, they sometimes missed opportunities to incorporate the lived experiences of the students present. In that sense, I think that structuring classes in such a way that there’s an imbalance about who gets to contribute can result in the subject matter not resonating as profoundly as it could.
That’s all a roundabout way of saying that I’m pro-discussion and pro-workshopping whenever writers feel comfortable doing so. So much of this course is rooted in being conscious about how the stuff we read hits us at the moment we read it. So, when we cover different structural approaches to storytelling or some other tool that a writer has incorporated into their work, I really want to open the class up to discuss how that decision sat with each reader and whether they thought it was successful or not.
When it comes to imagining and creating classes, where do your ideas come from? What in particular inspires you?
For this class, I drew inspiration from some of the work I do in my free time. I have an archived list of essays and short fiction that I couldn’t tear myself away from (a rarity for me, given my short attention span). With those kinds of pieces, I try to let them sit for a bit and then revisit them with the intention of dissecting the choices the author made. I think in my own writing, I tend to really dive into minutiae, so I wanted to do the same thing with this course while focusing on technical bits and bobs.
What's the ideal environment for your classroom? What atmosphere are you hoping to establish?
I want the space to be hands-on and collaborative. We’ll do a fair amount of theory discussion, but I want to make sure that there’s time for students to either apply what we’ve discussed to something they’ve been working on or work on something from scratch that gets them comfortable with new devices. Ideally, assuming students feel comfortable sharing, we’ll discuss the impact that certain literary decisions have had on us, what was effective, and what might be revisited in the interest of making a piece stronger.
Regardless of what your class is specifically focusing on, what's the main goal you have for your students?
My hope is that my students walk away from the class having developed a more critical eye for literature. I know that in doing these analyses on my own, I’ve found it much easier to recognize decisions that writers have made in their work and think through whether they were effective or not. I think the ability to recognize those things brings an entirely different dimension to reading, and my hope is that my students are able to experience that when they come across a piece that they really enjoy.
What are goals you have for yourself? These could be teaching goals, writing goals, career goals, community goals, etc.
I’m a devout incrementalist, so I try to only think about the small things I have right in front of me. It’s not a sexy answer, but I’m really just focused on becoming a better writer today—in whatever form that manifests. My experience has been that when you focus on things at a granular level, the larger career goals sort of just happen, and platforms present themselves for you to make an impact on your community.
What have been some of your own favorite educational experiences?
The volunteer work I did with the Jackson Mann Adult Education Center during my time as an undergrad and my tutoring work with Hands-on Charlotte in the first few years after college were, by far, my most rewarding educational experiences. Any time you get a chance to be part of the process in which a student moves closer to their goals, it’s an invaluable experience.
To you personally, what is the most important part of the literary arts?
It sounds kind of performative to say, but I think diversity is crucial to the literary arts. I’ve benefitted so much from reading works from authors of divergent backgrounds, and I think that insomuch as they’re authentic, a waspy middle-aged man from Connectitcut has every bit as much to share with the world as does a non-binary pirate from west Africa or a teenaged chai merchant from India. For me, the power of literature is its ability to get readers to think about life differently. Great writing casts the mundane in a new light and transforms the inconceivable into something we can apply to our own lives. In that sense, it behoves us all to bring our most authentic selves to the page and support one another in doing so.