be the best teacher that I can be

...that will probably never get crossed off the list, at least as long as I remain in (or trying to be in) the teaching racket.

Teaching was one of the big reasons that I disappeared from this site for as long as I did. Last semester turned out pretty well, though, all things considered. The syllabus itself is awful, and it is not at all clear on the first go-around how the various component parts of it are supposed to fit together into a cohesive whole, and that caused me great headaches and much angst at times.

One thing that I discovered, though…and it worked well, at least with my style of teaching, such as it seems to be…was that, if I was a loss about something, syllabus-wise, and didn’t know how to best move forward, it often wasn’t a bad idea to simply tell my students that, rather than trying to fake it and act like I knew what to do next when I didn’t, and to ask them what they thought. They actually respected me more, I think, for doing that, and since the purpose of the class is to teach them, getting their input on how best to do that actually seemed to get them more involved and more invested. Especially because, a lot of the time, I took their suggestions, and when I didn’t I explained why.

It was still kind of a train wreck, as a cohesive whole, ultimately. So starting over this semester, I spent some time rethinking the syllabus, and thinking about how to restructure it and how to tweak it and how to be more conscious about how all the component parts fit together so that I could try to integrate them better from the start.

This semester, now, turns out to be kind of a train wreck, too, but in different ways. Some of my innovations worked kind of brilliantly, if I do say so myself…the first unit is rhetorical analysis, and the first time I taught it it wasn’t clear to me that we were supposed to be teaching the students about rhetoric as writers as well as readers. So this semester I gave them a diagnostic essay (the first, ungraded assignment) that wasn’t open-ended, but was shaped so that they would have to write a persuasive essay. Then, when the rhetorical analysis essay came around, I didn’t allow them to choose readings to analyze…instead, I had them rhetorically analyze their own diagnostic essays. It was kind of great, because it taught them not only how to read critically for rhetoric, but also to examine and become aware of the fact that, whenever they’re writing, they are themselves using rhetoric, whether they’re conscious of it or not. It also made them more self-conscious about their writing, in a good way, because of that realization, and maybe even helped them build an intellectual bridge between the act of reading and the act of writing.

On the other hand, I also spent about a month at the beginning of the semester on issues related to the writing process in general. I don’t think I did it very well, and some of the readings I chose were disastrous in the field, but I think it was maybe kind of useful. At the same time, now here I am at the end of the semester, and it turns out that because of that month at the beginning, I don’t have quite enough time to cover the full ground that I’m supposed to cover with them on the last unit, which is argument (where they’re supposed to kind of put together all the stuff we covered in the other units). There are three major assignments that are supposed to be part of the argument unit, and we have less than a month left until the end of the semester. I sort of tore my hair out (such as it is) for a weekend, before concluding that there just wasn’t enough time. So I scrapped one of the assignments, which would probably bring hellfire down upon me from the English department if they knew about it. But, well, it’s what needed to be done. We live and learn.

Anyway. We got started on argument this week, and aside from the necessary dispensing of certain departmental requirements for the course, I’m thinking it’s probably going to turn out okay. My students seem to be really psyched about getting to write a paper of their choice (it’s been pretty regimented up till now), and they seem to get at least the rudiments of argument reasonably well, and almost all of them seem to have their topics more or less chosen, and for the most part they don’t suck, and with the jettisoning of one of the intermediate assignments I think they’ll have the time to do their final papers right, and thoroughly, and well. Not all of them will, of course…they’re going to have a lot of research days in the next few weeks, where I’m not going to hold class but they will be expected to be doing stuff in the library and whatnot, and no doubt many of them will just take those days and fuck off and frolic in the burgeoning springtime (for which I can’t entirely blame them), but I can’t worry about that too much…they have access to me if they want it, and they have ample time to do their research, and they know what’s expected of them for the final assignment, so…

I dunno. It’s possible that I’ll be teaching at least a couple of sections of this class in the fall, as an adjunct, and if I do, I’ll be inclined to make further radical changes based on what worked and what didn’t this semester. It’s always different, it seems, because the students are different, and there’s always going to be stuff that works once and so one assumes that it works, and then it turns out that the first success was just a fluke, and all that. On the whole, I think I am a better teacher of this stuff than I was my first semester, but I’ve also learned a lot about what doesn’t work over the course of this semester, so there will be more tinkering to do before the semester after this one rolls around. And I expect that, if I’m actually engaged and paying attention, that will turn out to be true every semester. And if I stop being engaged and paying attention, and learning how to do this better and discovering new ways of achieving that, then I should probably stop doing it and find something else. I don’t think I’m going to lose that engagement, though…teaching is hard, and frustrating, and worrying and demoralizing and all that other stuff, at times. But it remains the best work I’ve ever done…it’s a good thing to do, and on days when what you try to do with your class actually hits, well…there’s no feeling quite like it that I’ve ever run across. So.

Cheers.

Which is part of why I haven’t even looked at 43things in what feels like about a zillion years. The fall semester started last Monday, and one of the things that I have on my plate this semester is teaching a section of English 105, aka Freshman Composition, aka “Critical Reading and Writing in the University Setting”. It’s been terrifying…I’ve certainly never done this before, and I don’t generally feel all that great about public speaking as a rule. But it’s also been really excellent, and it’s gone pretty well.

I kind of fucked things up a bit the first day, because I was a lot more worried about whether I was actually going to be able to stand up in front of a room full of incoming freshmen and actually talk than I was about what I was actually going to say. I had a general idea, and I thought that when I got into the generalities, the specifics would just sort of come to me. I was so wrong about that. I got into the generalities and, well, the specifics just kind of deserted me. It was all boilerplate stuff, though….attendance policy, classroom decorum, things like that, and so the fact that I ran through what I thought was going to take twenty minutes in about ten wasn’t all that horrible. In fact, it was a pretty painless object lesson in the value of detailed preparation and lesson planning. So I walked them through a little getting-to-know-each-other exercise, and sent them home early, and got all crazy detailed in my planning for Tuesday that evening.

And Tuesday wound up being kind of great. I’d given them a kind of dense ten-page article to read for homework, and I wanted to have a good and substantial group discussion about it, and so I really mapped out the sorts of things that I wanted to get them talking about, and I made a list of about twenty different questions to toss out at them. And the first ten minutes or so of class were kind of dead…they answered with yesses and nos, and monosyllables and whatnot. But if one question didn’t work, there was another to lay on them, and with some persistence and patience on my part, I actually managed to get them talking. After that first ten minutes, they really started to open up. After another ten, they were raising their hands and not only responding to my questions, but also to remarks their colleagues had made. After another ten or so, they were starting to jump in without raising their hands, and while that was a little chaotic at first, they pretty quickly figured out how to do that without talking over each other, with no prompting from me. It wound up being a great class, one that got them interested and engaged and talking not only with me but with each other, and doing it repsectfully and courteously. I dunno quite how that happened, but it was awesome. My kids rock.

So, on to the second week, beginning tomorrow. Eek. But it’s a good “eek”. I think one of the most striking things for me about my students as a group, one of the things that I took away from my experiences with them the first week, was how well they have responded to me treating them like adults, and letting them know that I expect them to behave that way. We had two weeks of training before we started teaching, and heard a lot about how we had to establish our authority in the classroom and make sure they knew who’s boss, and start out strict and rule with an iron first and all that, and not show weakness because students are like wolves, and so on and so forth. That’s really not my style, though, so I didn’t approach my students that way, and they seem to be taken aback by that, and grateful, and they seem to want to rise to the challenge of working and thinking and speaking and acting like grownups. They don’t seem to entirely know how to do that yet, but they have a pretty good idea and they’re pretty willing to try. I have the impression that nobody has ever really taken most of them at all seriously in a classroom before, and that’s kind of heartbreaking. They’re all pretty sharp, and while they all certainly have some learning to do, they are certainly worthy of respect, and, well, they’re a good bunch of young people. They’ve impressed the hell out of me over the first four days of class. I love them dearly all ready, and I owe it to them to learn how to do this teaching thing, and to do it as best I can, so that they’ll get as much as they can out of this class.

I think we’ve made a pretty good start thus far, but there’s a whole semester still to go. I’ve got my work cut out for me, I think, but I’m also really looking forward to it. I think I am equal to the task, and it’s very, very good work to be doing. It feels good. So.

That’s pretty much what this goal is all about for me….trying and learning, and allowing my failures (because there certainly will be some) to teach my something about how to teach, and allowing my successes (and hopefully there will be more) to inspire me some more and teach me some more too. It’s good work, and it’s worth doing, and it’s worth doing the very best that I can, not only (or even especially) for my own sake, but for my 22 students. Being they’re worth it, and they deserve the very best that I can provide. So I’m going to do my very best to provide that. Wish me luck.