About Teaching

Some of you may have had the good fortune to come across my pity-party this morning, but I quickly came to my senses and removed it. I got some work done, cooked a yummy dinner, and am now drinking a glass of wine. Most, if not all, of the world is right again. Until it's not. At which point I will whine, mope, and eventually kick myself into shape. Like I did today.

Anyhow.

That's not what this is about. I want to talk about teaching. About what a strange semester it has been for me as a teacher, and about how things are shaping up for next semester.

I'm teaching two classes right now, and they couldn't be more different. One class is small, engaged, and fun. They have some trouble with reading comprehension from time to time and struggle with the paper assignments (which I can't really blame them for--they're tough [I didn't write the assignments, so it's not like I'm patting myself on the back here]), but they care, and they ask questions, and they tell me if they think I'm full of bullshit.

The other class is everything this one isn't (ha-weird how that happens when I said earlier they couldn't be more different. duh). There are too many students and most of them couldn't care less about...I don't know: the topic of the class, their grades, their classmates, etc. But more than that, this class is set up to be different because I'm co-teaching it with another grad student. I don't know if any of you out there have done much co-teaching, but my partner and I hate it. We've had many conversations about how much we hate it, and many conversations about how to make it better, and it's just not working. I've talked to some colleagues who are co-teaching the same type of course and they enjoy it, so I don't know what the problem is. Maybe it's a personality thing, maybe it's an experience thing (for example, back when I was Mary's teaching intern, I didn't hate that--but Mary was the expert and I was the intern; we had very separate roles.)

As frustrating as this class is, it's been instructive to me. Watching someone else teach on a day-to-day basis has helped me to see how students respond to certain things, what types of activities work and don't work, without having to be the one standing in front of the class. It's easier to see (when you're not running the activity or discussion or lecture) whether the silence and blank faces is a sign of zoning out or of confusion, for example. And having a co-teacher to give immediate feedback is nice, too. But I'd still rather do it alone. Then again, I'd rather do most things alone.

Teaching at UIC, on my own or with a partner, is totally different than teaching at UA was, though. First of all, the student body is much more diverse and (sweeping generalization here, there are certainly exceptions) more down-to-earth. It seems fewer of my students this semester are in school because Mom and Dad said they had to, and more are here because they have some sort of drive. There are fewer non-traditional students (only one who is clearly older than me, and one who is definitely close to my age), and fewer single parents. More than half of my students are bilingual; many, many of them weren't born in the US. They make me feel so much more sheltered than anyone else I've come across in my short time in Chicago. And they think it's funny that I'm from a small town (eh, most people think it's funny that I'm from a small town, I guess). One class was shocked the other day that I'd never heard of Cabrini-Green...and I'm sure there are a thousand other things here that are common knowledge to the locals that I'm just not aware of. Back in Akron, most of my students grew up the same way I did. Some even went to my high school. It's just different...

And it's better. I don't know if it is because I have more experience or because the philosophy of the First Year Writing Program is worlds apart from at UA. My boss at UA, Bill Thelin, wrote a book called Writing Without Formulas, which I taught. Here, I teach a book called They Say/I Say, which is filled with formulas. At UA, I used a student-directed, "democratic" classroom style; students voted on paper topics, I never planned more than a week ahead, and while there was more room to adjust things as the semester progressed, there was never much driving the course from week to week. Here, I have to turn in a complete syllabus (with daily plans) before I'm allowed to teach a course. My classes are theme based and there are a number of projects I have to complete whether my students are interested or not. I admit, I rebelled a bit at first--doing things Bill Thelin's way made me feel like I was in charge of my own classroom--doing things Ann Feldman's way helps a lot when I don't know exactly what my way would be.

And so I've drank the water...and I'm going to be working in the comp office next fall. I'll be reviewing other folks' syllabi, answering student and instructor questions, and I'm not quite sure what else. I think it'll have something to do with color coding and Microsoft Access...they were pretty excited when I told them about my administrative background...but I don't have a ton of details yet. The downside is that it'll be longer than I hoped before I teach poetry. I've been peaking at the course listings and many, many of my first-year classmates are teaching non-comp classes: film and lit, intro to rhetoric, American lit and culture, intro to fiction writing, etc. My courses aren't listed yet, but folks who work in the comp office typically teach comp, so...I don't see Intro to Poetry Writing in my Fall 2009 teaching assignment. Sigh. This will be great experience--not to mention great on my CV--but I am conflicted about not getting into that poetry classroom as quickly as some of my friends are getting into their fiction classrooms.

Conflicted--that's how I feel a lot about my life at UIC. But let's not get into that right now.