Christopher Mazura

Though I was raised in a family full of teachers I never thought it would be my path. My mom and dad were both in education, my sister, brother-in-law, and aunts and uncles too, and perhaps for this reason I avoided it like the plague. Or perhaps I believed the old dictum “those who can’t do, teach.” I declared I would never, ever be a teacher. 

So in college I decided I would do “really important things” and did a deep dive junior year into environmental policy in Washington D.C. and Costa Rica. Across a handful of experiences in this field I realized my passion for addressing deforestation and climate change would have no impact without experiential education for citizens. So I bailed on advocacy work at age 20, taught for a year at a private school right after graduation, supervised an expeditionary learning experience where a student nearly died, and burned out by age 22. I was depressed, obviously out of my depth, and felt like an utter failure. I declared, once again, “I will never be a teacher.”

You see, despite education coursework and good intentions even the daily work was impossibly challenging: my patience, passion, and resilience had quickly waned that first year and I felt utterly ineffective with the young people I cared so much about. I decided that it was writing that was my true calling and meditation was the way I would develop the inner resilience I sought. I took off and didn’t loo back: I was never, ever destined to be a teacher.

I enrolled in The Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where I studied meditation and writing and set to work on a half dozen novels that never quite panned out. Yet after I took a position as a Fellow at the Naropa Writing Center, I realized that the marriage of writing, meditation, and process pedagogy was fulfilling when doing social reflection for equity. I wrote in community, about issues that mattered to me, and groups of us engaged in civic action. If writing was taught as a way of thinking, communing, and engaging, it could be a vital tool for education and for civic life. And it could be what sustained me. 

I returned to the east coast, where I taught English Language Learners at Kingsborough Community College and high school English in Brooklyn for five years doing my best to be of service. These were my most formative in the classroom, when I realized that my still limited experience of life had not fully prepared me to work with all learners. Ten years into on-and-off-again work in the classroom I wrote: “I am still learning how to become a teacher”. This, for me, is being a teacher.

When I moved to Albany (NY) in 2008 to raise a family, I enrolled in the Capital District Writing Project’s Invitational Summer Institute and in my writing group had space to think through the relationship between writing and meditation. In that experience I knew I had found the community of inspired educators I knew could sustain me as a teacher-learner over the long haul. These were folks who were innately curious about teaching, learning, and, most importantly, students. These were folks who believed, like me, that writing could change the lives of young people as they wrote their way into the world. 

I’ve stayed in touch with the National Writing Project ever since, and as a result of this community I’ve become an education writer, published researcher, PhD student, and now Co-Director of the Capital District Writing Project. I am thrilled to be with the Hudson Valley Writing Project this year. When I’m not co-teaching English 10 or SUPA English (“Literature and Social Class”), I’m typically studying at SUNY Albany, running or on my road bike, or gallivanting with my sons, who are ages five and eight. 

This summer we’re on vacation together much of the time, busy adding on to our Star Wars LEGO empire, exploring the swimming holes across the region, or camping in the high peaks and Vermont. Right now, evenings before bed, we’re reading The Lost Hero together. And this summer they’re writing graphic novels: my eldest son is presently  writing a countercultural screed against firm parenting, entitled Rhys Mazura’s Somewhat Stinkish Life.

Yeah, I’m still learning how to become a teacher.

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