It’s not easy to get students to show up to a 3pm class on a Friday. Erin Lamm has a full house. Fifteen students sit in a small classroom in Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, some fiddling with their iPhones and some lying draped over their desks. All eyes are on the clock. If the professor doesn’t show up in 15 minutes, they can leave. Just under, at 3:09, Lamm (Madame to her students) rolls in—literally, she’s in a motorized chair. The room transforms: the air of disappointment quickly dissipates when she apologizes for her lateness, cracks a joke with her boisterous laugh, and gets the class started.
Erin Lamm, a graduate student and senior teaching fellow at Boston University, has cerebral palsy—a disability that severely affects her muscle control and speech. It doesn’t slow her down. After studying French literature at Drew University and receiving her masters from Columbia University, she applied to graduate school at Boston University to complete her Ph.D. Since then she has made a home in Boston. “I always knew someday I would end up here,” she says, although her apartment—with its classic European feel, gold-framed French posters on each white wall, and French magazines stacked in every corner—might make you think you’re in France.
Since the beginning of her career, Lamm has taught 100-level French classes, and this spring will teach a 200-level course for the first time. Though she enjoys “giving students their first impression of France” in entry-level courses, she is happy to be moving to third semester French and is looking forward to working with more difficult material. When she first arrived on campus, she “team-taught” first semester French with long-time French professor Susan Dorff—an experience she found frustrating at times, but one that strengthened her own teaching style. She also observed Professor Davina Mattox’s class every week, finding inspiration in Mattox’s extensive preparation for each class and learning to enjoy teaching. The two have collaborated in previous semesters, and will again in the spring. “I can’t wait to work with Erin again,” Mattox says. “She’s always willing to share new ways of presenting materials; she’s not selfish with what she creates. It’s incredible, what she’s able to do. Her French is better than mine sometimes!” (Mattox is a native speaker; Lamm is not.) “She’s so creative; she comes up with things I would never be able to think of.”
Deeply integrated into Lamm’s teaching is her interest in French literature and film, which has led to some of her proudest accomplishments. She played an integral role in the 2012 and 2013 Tournées Film Festivals at BU and her article “La force féminine dans Lettres d’une Péruvienne et Gigi” will be published in the upcoming volume of L’Érudite Franco-Espagnol. The article, researched in Paris and Burgundy during her time at Columbia, analyzes the voice of women in two famous French works, Lettres d’une Péruvienne (“Letters of a Peruvian”) and Gigi, a coming-of-age story about a Parisian woman. “Getting my article accepted was my proudest moment,” she says, beaming, and calls her time researching it in Paris the best experience of her life. There she participated in a program that was not handicapped accessible, and received a unique view of the city from a personal tour guide. While in Paris, she also met French anthropologist Anaís Louis Chabanier, with whom she has sustained a ten-year close friendship. Lamm attributes much of her teaching style to Chabanier’s influence. “She always said, ‘teach everyday life and culture.’” And so she does.
Lamm’s classroom is not a typical one. Because of her disability, she has to find new strategies and ways of teaching. Her class is based on visuals and powerpoint slides—Lamm’s assistant controls the computer, slave to her every “next!”—as well as activities that require participation, such as group projects. She often pairs students to do small activities, and moves around the room, her right hand poised over her chair’s remote, ready to speed towards anyone with a question for her. Her fingers, though they have what is called “swan-neck deformity,” causing her knuckles to be slightly inverted, are well polished and decorated with thick silver rings. She glides around the room, attending to every question and correcting every mistake.
She makes sure to establish open communication with her students—in French as much as possible—and doesn’t hesitate to reach out to them individually. “Ten culture points!” she exclaims when a students tells her about having seen a French movie over the weekend, referring to the extra credit system she uses to encourage students to expand their French education outside the classroom. Spencer Wardwell, a former student of Lamm’s, remembers, “she was very encouraging of my passion for film. She once let me do a film project for extra credit, and when I got a freelance cinematography job, she was very happy for me.” He shrugs, “she’s the best.” It seems to be a common sentiment.
When asked if any significant teaching moments stand out to her, she can’t think of any; or rather, she can’t pick one. “I feel like I couldn’t top the way I taught 112,” she says of her close class of six last semester. “My philosophy of teaching is to motivate students to understand and enjoy more difficult material, which I felt I accomplished.” She’s ready for something new, and though it will be a challenge, it is a welcome one. “Every challenge I’ve faced has brought out something great in me. I have to ask a lot of people for a lot of help,” she says. “But as a result I have been able to get to know many wonderful people.” This attitude is woven into every aspect of her life and inspires her teaching—to her, education is most effective and meaningful on a human level. She encourages in her students the same appreciation she has for travel and the building of relationships, and allows them to experience France, as she puts it, “beyond the post-card version of it.”
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