JAMES MUNRO LEAF
November 20, 2017
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing to recommend James Munro Leaf for an MA in TESOL. After 30 years of teaching at the college level, I am increasingly aware of the need for ESL training for college level teachers. Although James Leaf is new to the art of teaching (he graduated from Harvard in 2010), he has demonstrated a natural and quite extraordinary gift as a classroom teacher. He has lectured in my courses at Barnard for the past five years, in the dramatic lit section of the survey, and in my seminar “The American Cowboy and the Iconography of the West.” He has given a dozen formal lectures in my large survey course, Major English Texts, in the English Department at Barnard College. I have taught at the college level for over 30 years, and after observing James in the classroom and in post-class conference with undergraduates, I believe he is one of the most brilliant natural teachers I have ever seen in action. I believe that his skill as a classroom lecturer and seminar leader must translate to his enterprise as an ESL instructor.
For example: when James Leaf guest-taught my advanced special-themes seminar “The American Cowboy and the Iconography of the West,” the students listened in pindrop silence as he wove a dramatic intellectual tapestry of references to and quotations from Shakespeare’s Henry V, Norman Mailer’s Seige of Chicago, The Iliad, All Quiet on the Western Front, Eugene O’Neill’s later plays, August Swanson’s last play, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, and other texts. James added to this florilegium of learned reading many references to Hollywood’s Cowboy (referring not only to classics like “High Noon,” “The Magnificent Seven,” and certain films starring Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, but also “Apocalypse Now” and Peckinpaugh’s “The Wild Bunch”). James brought in a series of cowboy ballads on CD, which we listened to while he commented on and analyzed the lyrics. He referred to the Battles of the Alamo and of Little Big Horn as “America’s Thermopylae,” for Mr. Leaf possesses an astonishing command of classical literature and history. He also knows Shakespeare inside and out, and apparently, American history and literature spanning a vast range of cross-references. His erudition is equally impressive about theories of culture and artistic production.
James Leaf concluded that session of the cowboy seminar with an emotionally stunning recitation of Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Ballad of William Sycamore.” The class burst into spontaneous applause. My teaching fellow/grad student, a true cowboy from Texas and Australia who is actually quite reserved and difficult to impress, said he felt inclined to give a standing ovation. Our department’s top-ranked English major, who enrolled in this seminar, said that Mr. Leaf’s class “was the best class [she] had ever taken in college.” The entire seminar then invited him to join them for their celebratory evening of poker and cowboy music.
I recommend James Leaf very, very highly as a future culture-maker and keeper with an unparalleled range of learning, as well as beautiful and focused performance energy; I also recommend him for the obvious and instantaneous rapport he establishes and maintains with those he works with.
Best,
Peggy Ellsberg
Senior Lecturer in English
Barnard College
Columbia University