Teaching and Other Tests of Self-Concept
Geez.
First week of school is complete anxious chaos. Am. Lit. (first half) for the first time and I'm only one reading ahead of the students; Honors Comp. for the first time (though I have taught some of the texts before, and read almost all, for some it's been years); a new basic grammar class (hot on the schedule heels of Honors); and Freshman Composition, online for the first time. My usual online Advanced Comp. classes are back next semester; for now I'm creating this online class as I go, typing out lectures that I've been doing in the classroom for years. Actually, that's not such a bad experience, but I should have done it over the summer. Instead, I taught summer school for the first time since I was hired full-time. Bites. Gnaw and bites.
I guess things could be worse. But here's the rub: I love to feel competent, look competent, even in the eyes of 18 year old kids. Especially, maybe, the smart ones who tend to be more demanding, whose approval makes me feel even better about myself as a teacher. I'm not an Am. Lit. scholar by any stretch. We might have one or two Am. Lit. Ph.D.'s but the way the system works we can all teach anything on a rotation basis, and I wanted to teach the American and British surveys (it will be years before I get to the brits). Those classes always fill and they're interesting. Last semester I pulled off a pretty solid second half of Am. Lit. in my not too humble opinion; this semester I'm starting a bit more behind and there is so much background I'm learning for the first time. Who were the freaking Pilgrims, anyway? And what the heck do I make of Cotton Mather and his witch hunts? This man would not like Harry Potter.
So even though I'm tenured I am stressing stressing stressing (I will be evaluated this semester, every three years now, though it's purely formative; even a poor evaluation, though it would sting like roadrash on the hands, wouldn't affect my job security or my pay).
Most of it gets back to wanting to look smart, competent, confident, knowledgeable. One kid dropped my Honors class after the first day (for who knows what reason; maybe he doesn't want to do Honors) and I'm questioning myself already and we did almost nothing in 50 minutes. You see. Trying to please a room full of people is exhausting, and while I've gotten better at holding more to my own standards, those are pretty high standards. Pretty high.
When I was a young teacher, my first five or six years in the classroom (most of those as an adjunct, a freeway flyer,) I was more like a popular peer than a professor. One guy in one class kept calling me 'the Fonz,' because my status really was like that. I knew less then than now, but I dressed like a student, looked like a student, was popular and connected to my classes in ways I'm not anymore. Now I tend to dress up (ties aren't uncommon) and I feel a large gap, a canyon, between myself and them. This seems healthy to me; it's a professional boundary; I am after all 40, not 30 anymore. You student, me professor, you write, me grade. I actually expect respect simply because of my position though students seem more inclined to the consumer model than ever. Not that I'm not still popular and at least a little hip, but it's not what it was, I'm not who I was, and I'm harder on myself in the classroom than ever.
Or so it seems. I'd muddle through new books and readings back then all the time (though I never had lit. classes). Yet my discussions were often electric, or so I remember them. But I was an underdog, a 'part-timer.' Now that I've climbed a floor or two into my ivory tower, distanced myself more from my students' world, I expect myself to possess the wisdom of an Ivory Tower Man, to teach and field questions like one.
Maybe I should go back? Put my earrings in, the ones that have been out now for six years since I took this job. Wear jeans, hip shirts (you know I used to teach at CSULB in colored t-shirts, real t-shirts without collars, short sleeve for hot weather and long sleeve for cool, jeans and unlaced boots; I can't believe this now) and take a more egalitarian approach. My college is conservative, but it's not the east coast; and again, I have tenure. The new dean is fairly casual himself and one of my genuine friends at the college.
But whatever I do, I need to realize I am not the god of literature nor do I have to appear to be. Yes, I want to do a good job in my classes, but whatever happened to...'I don't know, I'll try to find that answer by next session?' As it is, I slam myself full of background info and research off the web before each lit. session (and in the survey, it's a different author almost every single class meeting!) try to sound brilliant and then ask questions. That last part, asking good questions on a reading, is really an art. I have to find something the students can connect to, but in some ways I think I'm trying too hard these days to do the work myself, not letting their minds run enough, though I do still have good discussions.
Of course I could teach more theory, the major theoretical schools, and then toss those in when I run out of other things. I barely cover theory now because I don't like it, but this is another idea. And how Ivory Tower.
Or I could not have signed up for am. lit. at all, but since my b.a. and m.a. involved courses from american and british literature...you know my areas of specialty, barely, were english renaissance and psychoanalytic theory. Great.
Grad school, compared to community college at least, is just wierd.
I actually wrote a paper about copraphilia in Joyce. That's eating excrement. I wrote about Milton's self-deception, his isogesis, in his divorce tracts and about a bird in a Hardy novel and a painting by Turner and the brother and sister in Hard Times (refuting the ridiculous charge of incest some critic or other tossed out). I did co-write a Bahktinian analysis of a Richard Ford story, who is an American. I don't remember what else I did, but I spent much more time in the British canon than the American in graduate school at least, yet even the papers I wrote...they have very little application to the survey class. And frankly, I don't remember them.
I know once I do each survey the next time will be much easier (and I get them each three times). But for now I have to ease up on myself. Relax. The students learn on their own, too. The ones that scare me most are the Engish majors and the Honor students and they self-teach. They don't need me to tell them all high and holy truth.
I am going to wear jeans tomorow. Maybe even my Vans, the ones Mikey told me to get, but I don't know if I can bring myself to do the tennies just yet; how comfortable they would be.
Well I'm rambling, and I hate to ramble when I know how precious blogtime is; there are lots of great blogs out there, but I needed to talk. I learned something; it's time to ease up. I'll let you know how I do.
t
First week of school is complete anxious chaos. Am. Lit. (first half) for the first time and I'm only one reading ahead of the students; Honors Comp. for the first time (though I have taught some of the texts before, and read almost all, for some it's been years); a new basic grammar class (hot on the schedule heels of Honors); and Freshman Composition, online for the first time. My usual online Advanced Comp. classes are back next semester; for now I'm creating this online class as I go, typing out lectures that I've been doing in the classroom for years. Actually, that's not such a bad experience, but I should have done it over the summer. Instead, I taught summer school for the first time since I was hired full-time. Bites. Gnaw and bites.
I guess things could be worse. But here's the rub: I love to feel competent, look competent, even in the eyes of 18 year old kids. Especially, maybe, the smart ones who tend to be more demanding, whose approval makes me feel even better about myself as a teacher. I'm not an Am. Lit. scholar by any stretch. We might have one or two Am. Lit. Ph.D.'s but the way the system works we can all teach anything on a rotation basis, and I wanted to teach the American and British surveys (it will be years before I get to the brits). Those classes always fill and they're interesting. Last semester I pulled off a pretty solid second half of Am. Lit. in my not too humble opinion; this semester I'm starting a bit more behind and there is so much background I'm learning for the first time. Who were the freaking Pilgrims, anyway? And what the heck do I make of Cotton Mather and his witch hunts? This man would not like Harry Potter.
So even though I'm tenured I am stressing stressing stressing (I will be evaluated this semester, every three years now, though it's purely formative; even a poor evaluation, though it would sting like roadrash on the hands, wouldn't affect my job security or my pay).
Most of it gets back to wanting to look smart, competent, confident, knowledgeable. One kid dropped my Honors class after the first day (for who knows what reason; maybe he doesn't want to do Honors) and I'm questioning myself already and we did almost nothing in 50 minutes. You see. Trying to please a room full of people is exhausting, and while I've gotten better at holding more to my own standards, those are pretty high standards. Pretty high.
When I was a young teacher, my first five or six years in the classroom (most of those as an adjunct, a freeway flyer,) I was more like a popular peer than a professor. One guy in one class kept calling me 'the Fonz,' because my status really was like that. I knew less then than now, but I dressed like a student, looked like a student, was popular and connected to my classes in ways I'm not anymore. Now I tend to dress up (ties aren't uncommon) and I feel a large gap, a canyon, between myself and them. This seems healthy to me; it's a professional boundary; I am after all 40, not 30 anymore. You student, me professor, you write, me grade. I actually expect respect simply because of my position though students seem more inclined to the consumer model than ever. Not that I'm not still popular and at least a little hip, but it's not what it was, I'm not who I was, and I'm harder on myself in the classroom than ever.
Or so it seems. I'd muddle through new books and readings back then all the time (though I never had lit. classes). Yet my discussions were often electric, or so I remember them. But I was an underdog, a 'part-timer.' Now that I've climbed a floor or two into my ivory tower, distanced myself more from my students' world, I expect myself to possess the wisdom of an Ivory Tower Man, to teach and field questions like one.
Maybe I should go back? Put my earrings in, the ones that have been out now for six years since I took this job. Wear jeans, hip shirts (you know I used to teach at CSULB in colored t-shirts, real t-shirts without collars, short sleeve for hot weather and long sleeve for cool, jeans and unlaced boots; I can't believe this now) and take a more egalitarian approach. My college is conservative, but it's not the east coast; and again, I have tenure. The new dean is fairly casual himself and one of my genuine friends at the college.
But whatever I do, I need to realize I am not the god of literature nor do I have to appear to be. Yes, I want to do a good job in my classes, but whatever happened to...'I don't know, I'll try to find that answer by next session?' As it is, I slam myself full of background info and research off the web before each lit. session (and in the survey, it's a different author almost every single class meeting!) try to sound brilliant and then ask questions. That last part, asking good questions on a reading, is really an art. I have to find something the students can connect to, but in some ways I think I'm trying too hard these days to do the work myself, not letting their minds run enough, though I do still have good discussions.
Of course I could teach more theory, the major theoretical schools, and then toss those in when I run out of other things. I barely cover theory now because I don't like it, but this is another idea. And how Ivory Tower.
Or I could not have signed up for am. lit. at all, but since my b.a. and m.a. involved courses from american and british literature...you know my areas of specialty, barely, were english renaissance and psychoanalytic theory. Great.
Grad school, compared to community college at least, is just wierd.
I actually wrote a paper about copraphilia in Joyce. That's eating excrement. I wrote about Milton's self-deception, his isogesis, in his divorce tracts and about a bird in a Hardy novel and a painting by Turner and the brother and sister in Hard Times (refuting the ridiculous charge of incest some critic or other tossed out). I did co-write a Bahktinian analysis of a Richard Ford story, who is an American. I don't remember what else I did, but I spent much more time in the British canon than the American in graduate school at least, yet even the papers I wrote...they have very little application to the survey class. And frankly, I don't remember them.
I know once I do each survey the next time will be much easier (and I get them each three times). But for now I have to ease up on myself. Relax. The students learn on their own, too. The ones that scare me most are the Engish majors and the Honor students and they self-teach. They don't need me to tell them all high and holy truth.
I am going to wear jeans tomorow. Maybe even my Vans, the ones Mikey told me to get, but I don't know if I can bring myself to do the tennies just yet; how comfortable they would be.
Well I'm rambling, and I hate to ramble when I know how precious blogtime is; there are lots of great blogs out there, but I needed to talk. I learned something; it's time to ease up. I'll let you know how I do.
t
Comments
You know better than I the heart of a teacher is what matters, though I suppose outward appearance helps project.
Wear the jeans occassionally. I may be known as the 'guy with the tie', but I still wear one of my four earrings. Enjoy the semester and your students. Peace.
thanks for the comments; coming from such an experienced group, they sink in.
I'm still stressed, but that's my own stuff and will have to pass with time.
I especially like the idea of challenging the student's initial response to the text...it's a good place to start.
Thanks crew.
t
Ask God to show you the line between working hard and trying to justify your existence. I realize you need to prepare and do a good job, but you can't know everything. I was a nerdy, hard working overachiever. The teachers who had my respect were not the ones who found my questions to be platforms to display their intellect but openings to educate me.
When you enter your classrooms if your commitment is to illuminate minds and not shine the light on yourself, your students are going to "get" that and it isn't going to matter what you wear or if you have the entire canon of American and British Lit and every criticism memorized.
I love it when a really smart person says, "I don't know." Or ASKS a question BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW! Exciting.