Qualitative Inquiry

Opening Pandoras Box: An

17(5) 452458
The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission:

Autoethnographic Study of Teaching sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1077800411405432
http://qix.sagepub.com

Kristin B. Wilson1

Abstract
Teachers use narrative structures, both biographical and fictitious, to examine their teaching philosophies and practices
simultaneously. Applying autoethnographic research methods to teaching data can result in cultural criticism, personal
reflexivity, and empowerment. Autoethnographic research can have aesthetic and emotional or empathetic value. However,
this approach to research becomes increasingly difficult as teachers gain experience simply because of the volume of
evidence to consider. This article is an example of how a myth, Pandoras Box, can become a narrative metaphor and a
research tool for reducing large amounts of biographical teaching evidence in order to critically examine philosophies of
practice and ideals in a particular cultural context.

Keywords
autoethnography, ethnography, teaching, community college(s), narrative methods

Pandoras Box Chapter 1: Cabrini-
Green in Rural America
The suna gaseous inferno ever burning and ever balanced
in the infinite space of black nothingnesshas long been
Apollos symbol, a symbol of peace and arts, a symbol of
the god-force that gives life to all things and regulates the
days and seasons. Imagine Apollos fury as he listened to
the arrogant Louis XIV commissioning a portrait of himself
as the Sun King! Imagine Apollos rage as Louis XIV
described himself driving Apollos chariot across paradise
draped in purple and burgundy robes that flew behind him
while his gold coronet remained firmly ensconced atop his
black head! Imagine Apollos anger, the anger of a God!
I should have been thinking about Apollos anger and
jealousy, but I was not. A too-short Black teenager slumped
in a plastic chair next to my desk. He told me he was going
home, and I was hurt, personally hurt. At that moment his 5
10 frame belied none of the athletic prowess that had made
him recently famous on the basketball team. Seemingly,
none of his prowess could forgive the Southern Comfort
found in his room. In truth, the prowess could not forgive
the shortness or the difficult-player reputation. In truth,
the Southern Comfort was just a convenience. For me, the
Southern Comfort, though true, did not seem as true as
the parentless kid growing up in an uncles apartment in
Cabrini-Green, the infamous Chicago ghetto with more than
3,500 units and overwhelming crime. The kid scored a 12
on his ACT, but he could play ball, so he landed in a rural,
largely-White, Midwestern, community college on a full-
ride scholarship. I was the White woman, a liberal, who
wanted to save him.
The ballplayer was the beginning of my faculty life at the
community college. At the time, I felt justified by my desire
to help. I spent hours and hours working with that kid and
others, teaching them to read and write, trying to move
them from barely literate to college literate in a miraculously
short amount of time. The coach told me he was arrogant
and deserved to go home. The Black kid slumping in the
orange plastic chair did not seem arrogant to mejust full of
street bravado. And I am certain the coach and I have gotten
far better than we deserve.
I was unconcerned with whether he played for the NBA;
I wanted him to learn to read, to feel reading as I felt it, as
freedom from the social norms that demoralized me. As a
1
University of Louisville
Corresponding Author:
Kristin B. Wilson, Assistant Professor, Leadership, Foundations
& Human Resource Education, College of Education & Human
Development, Room 326, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292
Email: kristin.wilson@louisville.edu
Wilson 453
new 28-year-old faculty member, I was disappointed with
the student and angry with the coach. I thought I was mak-
ing progress. The ball player had initiated a conversation
about his sociology class; he had read some assignments
without prodding. I was making progress exemplified by
his actions. I was disappointed and angry. He was relieved
to be going home. Upon reflection, I should have been find-
ing community colleges near Cabrini-Green, because his
progress was not diminished by him leaving rural America;
rather, it was diminished by my sense that I was the only
person who could continue to work with this young man. It
seems clear to me now that my desire to help was selfish,
especially in that I seemed motivated by the desire for oth-
ers to see I was helping and to appreciate it. Despite my
intentions, I could not fix or change the negative ways the
sporting culture intersects with the academic culture. I
should have been thinking about Apollos anger at Louis
XIV; I am not the sun king.
Pandoras Box Chapter 2: Knowing Why
Apollo heard Louis XIVs painter tell the king of another
artist, a marquetrist named Andre Charles Boulle. Perfect,
thought Apollo, and Apollo remembered Pandora.
Long, long before Louis XIV, in a time and persisting
into a timeless existence, there was a woman named
Pandoraa gift herself from Apollo to a faithful man,
Prometheus. The faithful man was wise enough to know a
gift from Apollo was treacherous, and he regifted Pandora
to his brother, Epimetheus. Epimetheus and Pandora lived
happily, but Louis XIVs arrogance insulted Apollo, the
same Apollo who had given Pandora her intense sense of
curiosity and goodness.
Gods ask little of humans, so when Apollo asked Boulle
to make the box, Boulle felt the weight of the task, though he
knew not the reason. He mixed stain after stain in graduating
degrees of black and brown with reddish and yellowish hues.
For an English teacher, grading is the work of Boulle,
but unlike Boulle, the whys have mattered to me. I con-
stantly and foolishly asked, Why is your paper late? and
other such questions. So I know that over the years, I have
failed abused wives afraid to report their spouses; I have
failed aspiring nurses who were struggling with bipolar dis-
orders; I have failed young men who had car wrecks and
spent weeks in the hospital recuperating; I have failed moth-
ers with sick children or undependable day care; I have
failed students who had surgery on their knees or backs
from high school sports injuries; I have failed people with
broken printers and no gas money; I have failed drunks and
drug addicts; I have failed people who simply could not
work hard enough in 16 weeks to go from marginally liter-
ate to college literate. Every semester in every section, I
have failed someone with a fantastic reason, and that some-
one was a humana human who believed that if I could
only understand and sympathize with her or his story, I
would have given them a passing grade for effort.
Certainly, my position is glib and demonstrates more
caring for ideas than people. However, I embrace grading
because the motivations of the student as demonstrated by
enrolling in college are supported by grading. Teachers and
students form relationships within institutional domains and
disciplinary arrangements (e.g., Sally enrolls in sociology).
These institutional domains and disciplinary arrangements
are boundaries for the relationship because the classroom is
no ones full context and teachers should not and cannot fix
or judge a students outside problems or advantages. Grades
are not ethical judgments about people; they are disciplinary
judgments about products, but they are disciplinary judgments
that should be made ethically.
If I had given good grades for sad stories, there would
have been no real access at the community college; I would
have been selling love potion. Access is a costly mission
because teachers and students are both human. At times, it
was emotionally difficult to fail a student with a wonderful
excuse, but poor work, especially knowing that at times that
student viewed the failing grade as uncaring.
However, I did not fail the student who competently
completed the work. I passed these students despite their
absences, ringing cell phones, and tardiness. I passed them
even if they were rude or right-wing Republican. I passed
them if they were patronizingly agnostic or determined to
save my soul. I even passed the student whose thesis was
that women older than 30 should be charged with a federal
crime for becoming pregnant, because old people do not
make good parents. I was 31 and pregnant. The danger in
caring about the institutional constructs or my ideologies
more than the persons in the room is in failing students for
their cell phones or politics despite them having gained dis-
ciplinary knowledge. The reason did not matter to Boulle
because a God asked him to build a box. It is a contrived
idealism to say that the students ask me to teach writing
when they sit down in my classroom. In truth, were it not
required many would not take writing; rather, for me, the
motivation comes from the cultural belief that a tiny bit of
social justice can be achieved when students, who might not
otherwise, learn to write well. When students sit down in
my classroom, they take part in that cultural belief, both
wittingly and unwittingly, so I grade, and I have stopped
asking why.
Pandoras Box Chapter 3:
Making Beautiful Boxes
The box was stunning. Describing it as a box is an injustice,
as is the word trunk or chest. The marquetry artisan created
a complicated design using the tiny pieces of died wood,
ivory, bone, and brass to craft his masterpiece. He sharpened
his carving tools daily to ensure no shards or imperfections
454 Qualitative Inquiry 17(5)
caused a disjointed section or piece. The background was
black-stained oak with a foreground of flowers, foliage, and
scrolled patterns framing a single bird, a bird of paradise.
Imbedded brass and bone highlighted the bird that had yet
to glimpse the sun and was drinking nectar in anticipation
of the journey to come. Surely this box will meet the needs
of the great god Apollo. Utility and magnificence combined
as a physical statement of Boulles philosophy of art; useful
things should be beautiful.
Andre Charles Boulle delivered the box to Delphi, and
he set it upon the Omphalos stonethe center of the world.
Perfect, thought Apollo.
Debbie Lane, a student who was of my age with a daugh-
ter the same age as my son, wanted to write one perfect
essay. Debbie was a laid-off factory worker from a neigh-
boring town. Debbie obligated me to teach writing well; a
laid-off factory worker with a child needs a good teacher.
She deserves one. In her first paper for my class, she recalled
this dream.
I came upon large pieces of paper floating and laying
on the road. Where were the brakes or steering wheel
to change my course? Lost, for I became the passen-
ger as the pieces of paper turned red as I passed by.
Fear had engulfed me in its dark embrace, even as I
flew through the air twisting and turning as night
became day.
The paragraph appeared in a stack of around 60 papers.
Each of the papers looked the same, and all were written to
the same general prompt, a creative nonfiction piece. In the
stack, there were papers about breakups, car wrecks, and
smoking pot. There were papers about proms and promo-
tions and other events full of pomp and circumstance.
For English teachers, commenting on papers is the work
of Boulle: useful and, we hope, beautiful. It is a practice that
is intended to initiate exchanges between teacher and stu-
dent and guide students in envisioning another text, a better
text (Anson, 1989; Odell, 1993). It is the work of building a
beautiful box knowing the treasure is not the box, but in the
box. It is always tempting to build something crude and
functional, like rubrics, because the work of teaching so
many students so much is overwhelming, but Boulle would
find that unacceptable craftsmanship for the treasures of
Apollo, and, likewise, I have long found it unacceptable
craftsmanship for students, and sometimes my students have
found it unacceptable craftsmanship for their essays; they
are Boulle too.
Large bodies of literature guide teachers on responding
to student writing (e.g., Anson, 1989; Emig, 1971; Odell,
1993). Whether encouraging writers to ignore audience or
to write with audience in mind, whether suggesting writers
edit after they draft or draft and edit simultaneously, English
teachers have philosophies of writing, commenting and revision
that are constantly in flux and constantly challenged by the
logistics of grading.
My colleague, a poet, sometimes counted the number of
pages he graded in a semester. It hovered around 5,000
pages. He and I discussed the amount of time it should take
to process a typed page. Ideally, we thought 30 to 45 sec-
onds per page. If you spend more than that, you are obsess-
ing, and in the community college world, you do not have
time to obsess. You must quickly assess or give up all per-
sonal life. The trick is to take in the typewritten page in a
single motion, understanding content, context, and surface
simultaneously then say something that is insightful enough
to challenge the student to reenvision their text. We believe
it can be done, but sometimes our students are Boulle too.
Debbie was grateful for my teaching efforts, especially
because I allowed unlimited revisions. She always came to
class, she spent hours in my office, and I spent too much time
commenting in response to her writing. She wrote that she
was grateful on her student evaluation, but she could as eas-
ily have been angry because her efforts did not garner an A.
Debbie told her reader about her husband and their life
together. She wrote, In December of 2000, Fred and I had
been laid-off from [Corporate Giant Inc.] due in part to the
fact that the products we made were going to be made in
China. Then she said:
When we pull into my driveway, Fred came dancing
out of the house and jumped over the porch railing to
tell us he got a job down in [nearby town] that paid
better than [Corporate Giant Inc.]. He was starting
that night for the third shift. He had to go in early to
do paperwork, and get his locker set up. I asked, Did
you get any sleep? Fred said, I was too excited to
sleep.
English teachers also understand that when you com-
ment on too many papers in isolation, you get a sort of pet-
peeve mentality. You look for the stuff you hate: comma
splices, a lot spelled alot, or being used as a main verb.
Commenting on student writing becomes finding student
error, and the only reenvisioning that occurs is that of a text
with fewer errors. We try to resist our peevishness with dis-
cussions of student writing, staff developments, and just
hanging around with one another. Still, there is so much
grading. Debbie wrote:
The next morning I fixed Miah runny eggs and toast
with grape jelly. I did the paperwork I needed, and
headed toward [Community College Town] to drop it
off at [This State] Works. Fred had not shown up yet,
so I kept watch for him as I drove.
Debbies paper continued to chronicle her day after she
returned home. She wrote:
Wilson 455
The sense of wanton doom with its black menacing
cloud would not go away. That doom pulled up into the
drive in a black and white marked police car, and an
officer got out. In his hand was the doom I had dreamed
about on a white piece of paper. Are you Mrs. Freddy
Lane? I said I was. He then informed me that there was
an accident three miles south of [Community College
Town]. Fred had fallen asleep at the wheel and had a
head-on collision with a tractor-trailer and was killed
instantly. The officer wanted to know if I thought it was
strange that Fred was not home yet. I replied, It was his
first day back at work. I thought he would go to sleep
along the road. In all my life nothing has changed me
more than this mans death.
I read 11 drafts of her essay. Over and over, I read about
the death of her husband. Debbie struggled with verb tense,
commas, and organization. I dried green pens commenting,
and she improved. All semester long, she researched the
things factories can do to keep employees from falling asleep
on the job and on the way home. She could spout statistics
about the number of drivers who have fallen asleep and the
number killed because of it. She knew which factories offer
dinner and which rely on vending. She knew which ones keep
all the lights on for third shift and which ones give breaks.
Every paper she wrote that semester had a connection to the
death of her husband.
I asked her why she kept revising the first paper. She told
me that it was the most important event of her life, and she
wanted to tell it right. Approaching college literacy from
a position of gatekeeper is different than approaching col-
lege literate from a position of helping the student tell her or
his story well or the position of Boulle.
Debbie did not want to go back to factory work. For
Debbie, her grade told the world that she was college liter-
ate. Despite my reputation as a hard teacher, she had earned
a respectable grade that said to the world that she is college
material. The public reporting confirmed for her and for
those around her that she was a college student and that a
new identity was possible. She had built a beautiful box.
Pandoras Box Chapter 4: Ugly
Birds and Uncomfortable Dialogue
Apollo said, Come, and the birds circled the box.
Unattractive with its wide blunt tail and greasy black
feathers, the creature continually made a loud obnoxious
caw-caw-caw sound. Apollo held the dirty creature firmly
as he placed it in Boulles box. The crow carried arrogance
and conceit, the kind that is deeply felt and often masks
itself as human accomplishment.
Then Apollo placed a small brown bird with a cocked
tail, plain in every respect. The house wren carried greed.
The wren desires multiple mates, multiple nests, and
multiple broods. It hauled insecurity of self and fear of oth-
ers along with its insatiable desire for more, more, more.
Next, Apollo imprisoned a sparrow, specifically a Towhee
sparrow. The bird normally lives in the dense undergrowth
and is more often heard than seen, though the sounds could
as easily be a squirrels as the sparrows. It scratches for
food on the bare ground forging for the remains of others
meals. This bird carried deceit.
When Apollo closed the lid, the birds flew together caus-
ing a chaotic racket. Apollo thought of Pandora and her
insatiable curiosity. These birds carried with them the
obstaclesagonizing, humiliating, dehumanizingto curi-
osity and goodness.
In a moment of mercy or possibly grace, Apollo cracked
the lid as little as possible and shoved the robin into Boulles
box. The robin is beautiful with its touches of white and its
brick-red breast. It sings loudly cheerily-cheerily. The
robin must eat large quantities of food, so much so that oth-
ers often think the cheerful, friendly, tame bird is a pest.
The robin carries education, the desire to know.
I open the classroom door and in an instant the students
know I am a woman, White, and middle class. They know.
I see them. I know. The crow, the wren, the sparrow, and the
robin are flying around the room. This section tells three
anecdotes of uncomfortable dialogues.
Class and Race in Laundry Piles
I see her in the computer lab, so I ask whether her family is
attending graduation. She laughs loudly, Everyone! When
a Black woman graduates from college, everyone comes.
My mom and sisters and aunt and cousinstheyre all
coming. I think about the difference between an associate
degree and a baccalaureate degree, and I hope she earns the
baccalaureate. I say, Thats fantastic. She says, I should
thank you: you and Dr. Ross. I know this seems stupid, but
you two taught me the difference between Black and poor.
You know, the difference. In that moment I thought I
knew, and I felt proud of my work. But, as I look in the
mirror and see White, woman, middle class, I am not sure I
can separate myself like my laundry, the White pile, the
woman pile, the middle-class pile. It was silly, Louis XIV
silly, to feel proud. Everyone knows the birds fly together
in a chaotic mix.
Super Visibility: Race and Gender
Personally, I love The Awakening by Kate Chopin; it
speaks to my experience as a woman, so when a young
Black woman reacted angrily to the novella and our class
discussion, I struggled to process her reaction. After all, her
status as a female reader seemed most important to me.
When Edna steps into the water at Grand Isle, seemingly
choosing suicide rather than gender roles, it resonates with
456 Qualitative Inquiry 17(5)
my understanding of a young womans struggle to under-
stand her identity outside of gender roles. The book was
being read and discussed in a room full of White students,
and my Black student asks angrily, Cant you see the
nurse? Cant you see her sacrifice for her societal roles?
The nurse is a minor character who takes care of the pro-
tagonists children. Her reaction was to the role of servitude
in the text. Although the text is set past slavery, all the ser-
vants are Black and the text embodies the assumed racism
of the period. The student reacted to the silence of her
White teacher and White colleagues on this point. It was
just another example of Whites belittling the importance of
race. Race created a super visibility that was uncomfortable
for a Black student in a largely White classroom. Teachers
cannot ignore any of the birds. They are all there flying
together in a chaotic mix.
Visibility Other Than [Dis]ability
or Invisible [Dis]ability
Initially, I knew Todd as an online student with clean, fluid,
engaging prose. His insights into Roethke and Chopin were
astute and fresh. I enjoyed reading his online entries, open-
ing them first. After I assigned a short story by Bierce called
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Todd e-mailed to
set up a meeting. In the story, a plantation owner tries to
sabotage the movement of the Union soldiers by blowing up
a bridge. Peyton Farquhar, the plantation owner, fails to destroy
the bridge; rather, he gets captured by Union soldiers who
hang him on the very bridge he tried to destroy. During the
hanging, Peyton imagines a fantastical escape. With bullets
whizzing by his ears, he swims upstream to safety finding
his waiting wife and family. But, it is only a fantasy. The
final line of the story is Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body,
with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath
the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
As Todd stood outside my office door fumbling with the
handle, it took just a moment too long for me to realize he
could not open the door. I jumped up and opened the door
as quickly as I could. Too slowly. Because it was a hot day
outside, Todd carried in with him the smell of heat and rot.
I was accustomed to the smell of heat, but not of human
decay. I do not have a sensitive stomach, but I gagged and
attempted to disguise it as a cough. I shoved the remainder
of my lunch into the trash can by my desk. Years have passed,
and I am still ashamed of my reaction.
Bandages covered open sores across his chest, and
gloves concealed missing fingers. Unlike most of us, his
derma layer did not hold together: Epidermalysis Bullosa.
Any frictiona loving pat or an inadvertent bump in the
hallwaycould cause a serious injury.
We talked about the story and his life. His fantasies, like
Peytons, were full of images of slowly removing bandages
to find restored fingers and toes; he dreamed of a pretty wife
and little children. He talked about the positive role of fan-
tasy in human life and about literary resonance. Through
the conversation with Todd, I learned that disciplinary
learning through online course offerings were an avenue for
being in a positive human relationship that did not have an
element of pity. We met a few more times after that to talk
about a short story or poem, but not many more times. As
teachers, we cannot always see the birds in the room.
Pandoras Box Chapter 5:
Feeding the Pest
The ending is too well known. Apollo gives the box to
Pandora. Apollo commands Pandora not to open the box,
knowing well she will. The box sits in Epimetheus and
Pandoras home filling the air with the racket and clatter of
the four imprisoned birds.
Apollo listened as Louis XIV proclaimed on his death
bed, Je men vais, mais ltat demeurera toujours (I am
going away, but the State will always remain). This time
Apollo smiled at his arrogance, and at the arrogance of the
box maker: Useful things should be beautiful, yes, beauti-
fully tempting.
In a moment of quiet, believing nothing ill can come
from something so beautiful, Pandora opens the exquisite
box. Out flies the birds: the crow, the wren, the sparrow,
and the robin. The box sits empty. Adorned with the bird of
paradise, it is an empty vessel. Chaos reigns. The flying ver-
min distract Epimetheus and Pandora and they forget to
feed the Robin. They forget to feed the robin! The robin
sings cheerily-cheerily, but hungrily-hungrily.
There is but one moral of this tale. Feed the robin! Care
for the insistent voracious needy bird!
The ballplayer is an individual, not an instance for the
application of a rule or an opportunity for me to show-off my
teaching prowess. The too-short ballplayer does not feel
heard or equal, nor does Debbie or Todd or many of the other
students who have entered my classroom. Too many feel
deceived and duped, not just by society, but by the pain of
humanness, and, if I am honest by me. I believe as educators
we accomplish our philosophies in ugly ways, in ways that
do not look or feel like successes, and our success has little
to do with our methods or techniques and more to do with
our disciplinary knowing. It certainly has nothing to do with
our policies. I am willing to assert that I teach well when I
live my pedagogy in a relationship with my students in the
language of the discipline. Next semester, I will ask my stu-
dents for relationships, not boxed role playing. I will not say,
Follow the guidelines in the syllabus. I will see myself as
one teacher, not the teacher. I will work like Boulle and not
ask why. I will acknowledge all the birds flying around in the
room, visable, supervisable, and invisable. Next semester, I
will go to lunch with the student who stuck a card in my
office window saying, I miss you. Lets do lunch. Sandy.
Wilson 457
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Acknowledgment
Many thanks to my good colleague who wrote, We move away
in order to build a kingdom of telos, out of our bones that hold
wine, breath, and love.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Kristin B. Wilson was a professor of Literature at Midwestern
Community College for more than a decade. She is now an
assistant professor in College of Education and Human
Development at the University of Louisville. Her research
interests include narrative methods, community colleges, and
low-income students.