It's been -- in many ways -- a rewarding semester. I brought a class back from the brink of chaos, brought on by my colleague's careless comments. I really developed a great rapport with my other class. I've learned what to focus on next semester (what us teacher-types call "scaffolding" and what I've been calling "habits of mind"). I've made real connections with the men at the Center for Male Engagement and started some nice work relationships/possible friendships with other colleagues, particularly Melissa, Elisa, and Mary.
I taught my heart out. I reworked my reading course with pretty nice success (although the real measure is how they do on the final exam next week). I really thought a lot (and continue to think) about how I want to teach grammar. I reworked some writing assignments with nice results.
Teaching is like gardening; you always get a do-over. Squash cross-polinated with the zucchini? Plant them in separate plots next time. Tomatoes didn't thrive in those new pots? Try more egg shells next time. Nasturtium takes over? Find a new way to contain it. Same with teaching. I like the endless opportunity to tweak and adjust as I learn more; I like the intellectual challenge of it. Funny that I went to a pretty high-falutin' graduate program where teaching writing was considered the grunt work you do along the way because when you're a "real" professor, the graduate students will do that stuff while you do the "real" teaching. As it turns out, I find endless fascination with my craft.
That said, this semester has been hard -- heartbreaking even. Despite teaching my heart out, despite spending a summer reflecting on what worked and what didn't, revising my syllabus, revising my assignments, tweaking the way I teach things -- despite all that, I felt like I bumped up against something larger than me.
Some of my students just can't process the stuff I'm teaching. If I taught a new essay form, drawing pictures of paragraphs and speaking out loud the information and wrote what I said on the board in the form of lists and with sentence templates, there were still going to be students who tried as hard as they could and just couldn't use that information to write their own version of the essay -- even after (in one case) three tries (although the third try was much improved).
That's been a new experience for me. I still believe my students can do this stuff, but this is the closest I've ever come to pedagogical despair. I put this material out there with three different intelligences in mind, and people still aren't going to get it. I wish they were lazy. I wish I could take that easy way out, but it really just lets us teachers off the hook when we say such things.
I think I've found a plan. That scaffolding thing. I have already worked out some new grading rubrics to help my cause, and I have a new plan for how to use grammar to get my students in the habit of doing homework, and I sent an email to two professors at UPenn's Graduate School of Education (I got a MSEd there before going on for my PhD in English). They haven't replied yet, but at least it's a try. I also sent out an email to our resident brain expert for some advice.
It's just that every time I think I've built the perfect way to teach this stuff, my students find a new way to misunderstand. Every time, I think, "aw jeez I should have thought to say this," but how would I think to tell a student not to put a space between a word and a punctuation mark (like this: a mark between a word , it's meaning , and the definition . ). Why would he start doing that after not doing it all semester??? Or the student started putting the phrase, "Martin Luther King said" in quotation marks? (I asked and she said, "aren't you supposed to put quotes in quotation marks?") How could I think to mention this? There is just no way to anticipate all the ways they are going to misunderstand.
So while I feel pretty good about the stuff I taught and the way I taught it, that first part has only made me feel more demoralized. I was clear. My teaching was clear. My lessons were clear. It wasn't good enough.
And when I bring in more of this scaffolding, it's only going to reveal more obstacles. That's what I love and hate about teaching.
Tags: teaching
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