Rolling Rugs, ChatGPT Birds, and Witches: Reflections on Teaching, Connection, and Curiosity

Book signing at my local Barnes & Noble

Last weekend, I had one of those moments that remind you why you do the work you do. At my book signing, a student from twenty years ago showed up and said, “Remember me?”

As if I could forget. She was the stubborn student who hated English class so much she once pretended to fall asleep on the reading rug right in the middle of the room. Instead of fussing at her, I did what any good teacher (or perhaps any slightly odd teacher) might do: I rolled her up in the rug and carried her into the hallway. She laughed, I laughed, and then I wondered if maybe rolling students up in rugs wasn’t actually in the teacher handbook.

On Saturday, she and another former student from a completely different era of my teaching life drove three hours just to say hi and get a book signed. People can call me weird. They can side-eye my research interests or think my courses are strange. But what endures, what carries through decades, is connection. For me and my students, that connection just happens to come through dark and spooky things.

ChatGPT created image

That theme carried through the rest of my weekend. I spent this morning leading a session on how students can use AI tools responsibly, not as a shortcut but as a partner in their learning journey. We explored how ChatGPT, Grammarly, and other tools can support paper writing, study prep, and presentations while still building critical thinking skills. One highlight was comparing ChatGPT with the chat feature in Office 365. The results were both eye-opening and hilarious: Office 365 gave us slick visuals, while ChatGPT managed to spell “Edgar Allan Poe” correctly—partial credit!—but decided that the bird in The Raven was called a “Thaven.” It was a perfect reminder that AI is powerful and quirky, but the human brain is still the best fact-checker. The takeaway? Use AI to enhance your work, not replace your creativity. Bring your curiosity, and let AI be a tool, not a crutch.

After, I attended "Sylvia Plath and the American Witch-Hunts" with Dorka Tamas, hosted by Romancing the Gothic. It was a rich discussion of how Plath used witches in her poetry as figures of power, persecution, and resistance, shaped by both history and the cultural climate of McCarthyism. We explored four of Plath’s poems: "The Times Are Tidy," "Witch Burning," "Lady Lazarus," and "Fever 103". Each poem revealed how Plath used the witch figure to grapple with politics, gender, myth, and survival. Dorka reminded us that these witches are not just rebels or victims; they are complex, layered, and alive with meaning.

Now I'm just sitting out on my porch thinking about my teaching and learning, how it is really just one long experiment in connection. You never know which moments will matter. You never know which odd, small, or unconventional things will roll back into your life twenty years later. But when they do, they remind you why you teach, why you write, and why you keep showing up. That’s the magic.