Geary Hobson is a great poet and a great fiction writer.  Now I know him as a great instructor.  He has contributed a lot to the Native Literature field, and he adds a lot to the University of Oklahoma's faculty.  I took Native Poetry 5353 with Geary Hobson this semester, and I am so humbled to have been able to do so.  He is a great person with real compassion for students.  He was always helpful and always extended his services to the students in the class.  I wish there were more Native instructors in the educational field who could bring this generosity with them from inside the tribal community.  Geary Hobson is a rare person in the Native Lit field.

Last weekend, I was at the Jacobson House gourd dancing with my family.  My family organizes the Oklahoma Gourd Dance Club, which is an organization that carries forward a Kiowa/Comanche traditional custom of gourd dancing.  I am a member and nephew to the founding organizers, Butch and Linda Tahsequah; in essence, I was born into this traditional custom, so I gourd dance with my family as often as my hectic school schedule will allow.  My family was hosting an exhibition gourd dance at the Jacobson House (this is an art gallery a block from the main OU campus that showcases many Native artists), so that members of the Norman community could see our custom.  I was gourd dancing with my family and there were the welcoming handshakes from other members of the Kiowa and Comanche community.  This is how we organize our community, with dancing, singing, and hospitality.  I enjoyed the time I spent with my community at the Jacobson House last weekend, and I needed it.  This semester was a hard one for me.  What got me through the tough semester was the hospitality of Geary Hobson.  He is Cherokee and Quapaw, and he has a strong sense of community building.  I am grateful that this custom was applied to the classroom setting.

I want to express my gratitude for someone that I respect a great deal.  For me, it is always a bonus to have an instructor that I respect; this helps me with comfort in the classroom, and as we all know there are many psycho bullies in every classroom.  Geary did a great job of keeping all the voices equal in the classroom.  I am still in awe of his abilities as an instructor.  He is extremely knowledgeable in the field of Native Literature, and he has all this information stored in his head.  It was amazing to witness his ability to expound on a topic or issue with literature directly from his accrued knowledge.  His compassion as a human being is unlike any instructor I've had in the past.  This is not to say that I have not had great instructors before.  I have.  Geary is just a rare person with many talents.

I hope to become more like Geary, as an instructor.  I taught English Comp II this semester, and I learned so much from my students.  I reflect on my instruction and on the instruction of other faculty members at the University of Oklahoma, and I attempt to make my teaching style stronger each semester.  While this is only the second semester that I have taught English Comp, I hope to get better and better in the future.  With Geary and other faculty at OU as my role models, I will do my best to grow.  I hope to have many more instructors that I can brag about in the future.  Geary Hobson will go down as one of the best!