Blog Entry #1

The first week of teaching is behind me now and it was quite fun. As I expected, I had a little anxiety before going in, but once each class started the butterflies dissipated and I got a "stage buzz," that exhilarating sensation that actors and comics get from performing. My thinking of teaching as performing might seem anathema to the ideal of student-centered learning we espouse, but there's always an element of performance whenever you're standing in front of a group of large people expecting them to listen to you.

"First Day to Final Grade" has been fun to read, but so far I'm finding that it hasn't told me much I don't already know. The book is tailored to graduate students who are maybe a year or two out of university and don't have any teaching experience. Given my background and age, the advice about how to maintain a professional distance from your students and preparing for class is a bit entry-level for me. In fact, I find myself wishing that I had read this before my student teaching experience during my final semester of undergraduate study. Then I really could have used it, as I was terrified of teaching and was only a few years older than the high school juniors and seniors I was teaching.

The book has helped me recall much from my teacher training days, though. For example, there was a section on establishing classroom rules (generally referred to as classroom management in the primary and secondary contexts) that was useful. As our TA orientation provided similar advice, I was able to include everything I wanted in my syllabus. I also borrowed liberally from the syllabus we received for this class, Introduction to College Teaching, as it set clear guidelines for what is expected in class and how to handle late assignments.

I think the most striking thing that I have learned from the book and my graduate colleagues is how much teaching at the university level differs from teaching at the secondary level. I'm not referring to the increased difficulty of the subject matter or that the average college student is more motivated than the average high school student. I'm referring to the different attitude that university teachers are supposed to have toward their students. In my training as a secondary school teacher, I felt exhorted to be committed to my students in all aspects of their lives, to be willing to help students at any time of day or night. But now, professors and graduate colleagues alike are warning me not to get involved, not to respond to e-mails too quickly, not to give out a home or cell phone number.

This advice ran counter to my years of training and the perception of myself as a Great Teacher. And as we all know from popular culture, Great Teachers are unwavering in their commitment to students. Just look at the John Keating character in "Dead Poets' Society," who succeeded in getting teenage boys (boys, no less) to memorize and recite Romantic poetry. Then look at, say, John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind," whose most notable interaction with a student was to marry one.

I imagine that this dichotomy in teaching attitudes is attributable to the fact that high school students are, by and large, children and university students are, by and large, adults (at least in the legal sense). As a society, Americans believe that there's nothing we shouldn't do for our children, and nothing that adults shouldn't do for themselves, so this sudden cliff-diving of teachers' sense of responsibility should be too surprising. Except perhaps for the students, whose first year of college (and the independence that comes with it) is often quite jolting.

I'm married, have three kids, and am regimented to a full-time teaching and class schedule, so I'm certainly not arguing against a "sink or swim" attitude toward university students, but it has taken me some time to feel completely comfortable with it. As the semester began, my reflexive response to many student requests was something like, "Well, let me see if I can..." or "I'll try to..." instead of "Why don't you..." or "I suggest you...".

I must also say that the admonition against assisting students too much has been tempered by an expression I've heard some say that a teacher should put no more effort into helping a student than the student is putting into the class. This sounds like a fair compromise, but I wonder how easy it will be to implement practically. So far in my classes, I'm not sure I'm able to gauge how much effort my students are putting in, though this will likely become more apparent as we start work on more difficult and time-demanding assignments.

"Teaching Tips" seems geared more to new professors than to graduate teaching assistants. Nonetheless, I found the six biases that the authors share at the end of chapter one valuable, as their philosophy of teaching seems to mirror my own.

Bias (or hypothesis) number 4, which states that one of the most important goals of college education is to equip and motivate students to continue learning after they complete their formal schooling, is my favorite. When I was a student teacher taking my high school juniors through "The Scarlet Letter," I often wondered whether the goal of a high school literature class was to expose students to the so-called canon of great literature, or to help them find the joy of reading. I must say, it's the odd 16-year old that gets joy out of reading "The Scarlet Letter." At the time I believed the time might be better spent reading something more relevant to students' lives, though I suppose one could argue that the ignominy of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and childbirth is certainly not an uncommon experience for American teenagers.

The authors of "Teaching Tips" elucidated this goal of education in chapter two, when they described the process of figuring out what you want your students to be able to do and know by the end of a course. This chapter will be particularly helpful in navigating us through the final project for Introduction to Teaching. The project requires us to construct a course from the ground up.

I have also started "My Freshman Year," an anthropology professor's foray into the life of a first-year college student. The author, writing under the pseudonym Rebekah Nathan, goes to great lengths in her preface and, it appears, throughout the book to maintain complete anonymity. The unversity she teaches at and then attends is called "AnyU" and she even declines to use last names of the people she thanks for helping her. But then publisher Penguin Books, in a little "about the author" blurb, writes: "Rebekah Nathan is a pseudonym for Cathy Small...a professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University." Whoops!

Despite that lapse in congruity, I'm hopeful that this book will be able to help me recall at least some of what my students are experiencing. It's been over twenty years since I was a college freshman, after all.

It's Not Even The First Day!

When I completed my bachelor's degree in 1994, I believed I would never set foot inside a classroom again--at least, not as a student. Now, in 2009, I am back as both student and teacher. I'm a graduate teaching assistant at North Dakota State University in Fargo. As you might imagine, I'm excited and a bit anxious.



My new colleagues and I spent last week in a communication department orientation that attempted to give us some grounding in teaching, as all of us will be lead instructors in our sections of fundamentals of public speaking, COM 110. Much of the advice given to us reminds me of what they used to tell foreign English language teachers in Taiwan, where I spent a year teaching at what is called a "cram school."


Much of east Asia was (still is, presumably) so desperate for English tutors that virtually any American, Canadian, Australian, or British person can get a job teaching the language. When a new teacher would express any doubt about his or her abilities, the head of the school would say, "You're a native speaker. You know everything you need to know about English. Of course you can teach it!" This, it turned out, is not really true. Native speakers certainly know when something "sounds funny" or is otherwise non-standard, but that's about it without at least some training.


In order to teach in US public schools, for example, a lot of training and testing must be successfully undertaken (sadly, this process still doesn't ensure that all teachers are great). My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Science in Education. The "in Education" means that when I graduated, I was automatically certified to teach in the state of North Dakota. I had to pass an exam and have a good GPA to be admitted to the education program, took two years of education classes, observed in many classes, and spent 12 excruciating weeks of my final semester as a student teacher at a high school to get that certification. So I do feel somewhat bemused that when my concerned colleagues at NDSU are expressing doubt about their qualifications to teach, they're told: "You have a degree. It's more than your students have."


I never did go on to teach in North Dakota. Instead, I spent a few more years teaching English overseas. I even taught linguistics at the teachers college of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa (that's how desperate THEY were) for a couple of years. And in my last job, I trained dozens of people to become entry-level radio journalists (see photo). So I'm not uncomfortable as a teacher or trainer, but to be up in front of American college students will be a new experience. Should be fun.