A Teacher’S Tale

Book excerpt: It was never in author Joe Gillilands plan to become a teacher, certainly not a college teacher and most certainly not an English teacher. But thats what happened, and hes never looked back. In A Teachers Tale, he explains, how by neither planning for nor seeking a life of learning and teaching, lacking a syllabus or lesson plan, he discovered that a life in academe lay in his patha path hes followed for more than fifty years. A Teachers Tale begins in 1932 with Gillilands first experiences in schooling and concludes in the summer of 1955 just as he completes his apprenticeship and stands on the brink of becoming a qualified instructor in a small college in east Texas. This memoir presents a collection of stories about his experiences as a teacher and a college student. A story of schooling deeply immersed in the arts and humanities, A Teachers Tale shares Gillilands love of the university and how it compelled him to seek a life devoted to teaching, primarily in the community college arena. Through this narrative, he brings together a philosophy of higher education based on the importance of arts and humanities in todays high- tech world.