Last teaching log

Today is the last day before Thanksgiving break. I have already received several e-mails from kids who have told me that they cannot make it. Normally I would never hold class before a break because I too like to get more time off. I think it is interesting that most teachers will not give days like this off because they NEED to have class. Quantity Quantity Quantity.

Another issue that has come up is a student that has missed a lot of class. She has been in a car accident, her grandmother died, she had the flu, among other things in this short semester. She also did little to no work for her group project. Now, I feel like she deserves to fail the class and might from grades alone, but I worry that she is gonna come after me for giving her an F. Why is it that I have to worry about things like this in a college level? These kids are here for a service and they feel like they can complain when they get bad grades. Once they complain they think that somehow everything will be ok.

On the other hand, I really hate bad teachers who make the system even worse for people like me. I feel like we should have more power to deal with situations like that, but at the same time I had a friend who was sexually harassed by an older professor here this semester. Now, how can profs get more power when there are horrible people that get to teach? I am really disheartened by the state of affairs in higher education. In my experience, I have had terrible teachers, people who have harassed their students, those who could care less and just teachers who could care less. Why can't higher education be more about teaching and less about ourselves?

My students have been pretty good for the most part this semester, but I am still excited to done with this class so I can improve on the next class. While I have no control over the syllabus, I can still adjust the ways that I teach the material and subvert the class in other ways. I am glad that I will actually have an idea of what the class is about and possibly be able to teach it better. I think that I will be in a much better position simply because I have read the material once and have heard from other teachers about their techniques.

While many of my posts have been cynical, I think overall I am pretty excited to teach again next semester. I just wish I had more time to become a better teacher.

Wishing students were more proactive

I enjoy teaching. I would like to spend the rest of my life teaching in some form or another. However, I do not want to babysit. The reason I didn't get a degree in education was that I didn't want to deal with issues that arise when you teach younger people. The issue is that many teachers in college treat their adult students as if they were children. I get coddled students who expect me to remind them when things are due and to hold their hand as we enter the journey of them doing nothing and me presenting them a service. I feel like there needs to be a standard which pushes students rather than helping them to fail.

I wish my students would come to me more often with issues dealing with class or their general life. Everyone should feel comfortable to come to a prof and ask them for help. I think the problem is that now that we have the internet, no one expects to have to deal with someone at a face to face level. WE can send an e-mail to someone in power without formatting it or checking it for spelling. Students do not know how to play the game anymore because they think that they own it. Because some of them pay for their education, they look at it as a service rather than a privilege. Whatever views they do have, this is not going to get them very far in terms of getting help. Students need to be taught how to deal with profs and how to interact at the college level.

why I don't like teaching a class that was built for me

Today I realized that my students have another paper to do. Now, I have known this for a long time, but I assumed that the creators of this class would know the type of work load that my students and I would have. Soon after giving them a busy work paper, we are expecting them to write another busy work paper AND have a final exam. I feel like this is completely unnecessary and a waste of my time and the students. While the students had nothing to do for over a month, now they have 5 or 6 assignments due back to back. I feel like the work load could have been spread out much more efficiently and that perhaps we could make them more useful. The topics of the class are obviously meant to make BGSU feel like this class is worthwhile to fund into the future. I think that this is crap and that we are not doing justice to the education system. I would rather the department fail than to lower our standards in order to appease the powers that be. I am tired of being told that my views are not worthy because people have put a lot of time into this class. If someone puts a lot of time into something, that doesn't mean that it is good. I think that people take education too personally and then are unwilling to learn from their mistakes. So, I get to teach a class that is built for the department to look good while my students scratch their heads as to why they have to do all of this worthless work. I suppose that I should tow the party line and simply do what I am told (which is mostly what I do) but I feel like there should be a safe forum for us to voice our opinions on this. As a TA (we don't even get to be called instructors even though we TEACH this class) we have no power and no say in the class. Some would argue that we do have lots of say and power, but they are delusional.

How do I come to terms with a class that I feel like isn't structured in the proper way? Subvert the class itself? Quit school? Protest in the streets?

I imagine that I will just continue it and try my best to implement some cultural aspects to my course.

That felt good to rant!

Teaching off the Cuff

So, the last class I had I decided to talk about Facebook. The topic of the day was interpersonal and relationship issues. I had a lecture prepared, but I abandoned it to talk about my thesis and their views of relationships on Facebook. We, as a class, talked for over an hour on this subject. I really enjoy being able to not follow the strict outline of a lecture and to get the input of the students. Importantly, I learned a lot more about their views on Facebook. Now, I can say this is simply about my own personal research, but I am genuinely interested in what my students have to say about these issues. I think this is an important part of teaching and makes the students feel like they value their opinions. Also, it helps me stay relevant. While I was a college student only a few years ago, there is a greater and greater divide between users of technology. Technology is changing at a very fast pace and the way that I understand something like Facebook might be much different than those who are in college now.

In this way, I can let the students move the discussion wherever they want (within reason). I am there to mediate, but not control. I help the discussion when it dies down, but I try not to lead it too much. I think this may be easier when you are talking about something that excites you. The kids realize how important the subject is to you and will follow along with it.

The conversation went really well. I still have issues with trying to get people who never talk to participate, but at this point you can't really expect that much. I just hope to make the class somewhat interesting and significant to their lives.

Why I like to teach

I often have a lot of negative things to say on this blog, but I actually really do like being a teacher. Perhaps I would like to have more control over the content of my class, but I really do like being in front of people and communicating with them. I especially like the point of the semester where you can talk to your students about their lives and joke around with them. I think it takes awhile for me to become comfortable with my students because I try and put up a wall so that they don't think that I am their friend. I enjoy being friendly and getting to know them, but I don't want them to think that I am going to give them good grades simply because I like them. Many of my peers seem to think that it is ok to hang out with undergrads. I find this to be a bit weird. These kids are not my friends, they are my students and that is an important distinction.

While I am all for breaking down hierarchies in education I still think in a college environment one has to be very careful. I do not want to hang out with my students. I don't need the reassurance that I am cool. Perhaps it is a bit different in grad school, but still there are some walls that need to remain.

However, you can still be a mentor to these kids without being best of friends and I really like being in that position.

Teaching While Being a Graduate Student

I know I have talked about this before, but I keep thinking about how hard it is to give my full attention to a class when I have so many other things going on. Especially when it is a pre-fabricated cookie cutter class. I feel like I am just working with the system, being part of the factory mill that is undergraduate education. If you speak up about the system, people take it personally and become offended and nothing gets changed. You can subversively add some interesting things here or there, but the reality is that you are teaching a class that really doesn't have much substance. Now, the powers that be would argue that you are given a lot of freedom to make the class whatever you want it to be, but they would be wrong. I feel like some live in this delusional world where everything is great and never needs to be changed. Critism is only allowed if it isn't about the system itself. I guess that I have become frustrated with the academic structure of BG.
Recently I read a book about FDR and how he managed to changed the structure of American government because he had the War and economy on his side; people were desperate for change (granted he did a lot of illegal/unethical things). Now we are in a similar situation with the colapse of higher education as we know it, but we are not willing to take chances, to change the way we look at education. We would rather go down with the ship with our hands in our pockets than actually try and push the system. I am frustrated because here is the perfect chance to really change the world, and we aren't doing it, myself included. I mean, the likelyhood of me getting a job in four years is pretty slim. My friends department is shutting down around him, cultural studies is being put on the back burner, and we (young CS academics) are mostly screwed, so why not buck up against the system? Perhaps it is because our assistantships are always held over our heads?

Perhaps I will teach this class differently next semester.

Group Work

I have never had a group assignment in a class I have instructed by myself before. I have TAed for classes where groups had to make videos and whatnot, but I never really had to facilitate the actual project. In comm 1020, I get to do this for the first time and I am somewhat pleased with the results. I have had 3 groups present and, for the most part, they have put a lot of work into it. However, I found out after the presentation that one person did not contribut to the group. I had to inform their members that they should have told me earlier in the game because there really wasn't much I could do about it now.

I really dislike assigning group projects. Perhaps this is something uniquely american, but I feel like they are just a waste of time. I was always put into groups where I would do the most work and everyone else would get the credit and yes this is how real life works, but school really isn't real life. I think low stakes group work is great, but big graded projects are just silly. It means more busy work for the instructor, more work for the students and not really a lot they take from it other than "boy I hate working in groups". I would much rather have more individual presentations. Also, trying to grade a group project is like hell on Earth. How does one fairly grade a group of 5 people? Also, with speech presentations, how do you even remember what people said?

It is a frustrating situation.

Review Guide

For the first time ever I gave my students a study guide for the test. In years past, I have never made one because I thought it was the students responsibility to study on their own. Perhaps the fact that somebody else made the study guide helped me into the decision, but I am still kind of wary of it. I figure that I could use this as a time to experiment to see if it actually helps kids do better on the midterm. Somehow, I still feel like it isn't going to do any good because these students don't read/know how to study for a college exam. I have only done Popular Culture exams in the past, but I don't really expect anything different from these. I would love to be proven wrong and I hope that this attitude doesn't somehow influence the way I teach. I do think that I have dumbed down my lessons over the years simply so that people could pass the test and the class. One has to keep in mind their audience while teaching and Bowling Green students are not the most inspired I have been around. Another side of it is that the majority of students that take these classes will never use any of the information again, no matter how hard we try and make it relevant to their everyday life. So, why is it important for them to do well in a class they don't care about? I grew up thinking the opposite of this and wanted to excel in all my classes, including the ones that I didn't like, but perhaps I have to be open to newer ways of thinking about education.

We will see what happens with the study guide. Perhaps I will use it from now on, but somehow I doubt it. I really don't feel comfortable being part of the reason why higher education is turning into elementary school. I really would like to work for a place that pushes student to do their best. Failing shouldn't be an option. Failure should mean dropping out unless their is some emergency.

teaching philosophy

After spending some time thinking about why I teach the way I do, I have concluded that my family is very central to the way I teach. In class I often refer to experiences I had with my family and relate them to communication. I think it is really important to give personal stories to students in order for them to better connect to some of the ideas we teach. Also, it helps them to realize that you are a human and that perhaps if you relate some of these issues to your life, then they can do the same thing. The more personable you are as a teacher, the more likely the students may be to realize that education is not just a one way flow of information. I think it is important to push education to a new level where everyone admits that everyone, including the teacher, can learn from these lessons.

I have had some trouble with this in my current class because not many people participate. However, recently I had them all bring in news articles and give impromptu speeches. It seemed like the kids really liked learning about what was going on in the world and that they were much more vocal in terms of responding to the presentations. I think that because the articles were mostly about events that mattered to the students, they really have some connection to it and enjoyed talking about it. There was one article about the girl who died after she was given the cervical cancer vaccine that really got a response. I think I need to think about how I can further connect this class to their lives.

Teachin talk

I think it is interesting to think about how dynamics change from class to class. While this is the first time that I have had to teach 1020, I have taught Popular Culture for a few years and used a similar syllabus. Now, something that is very successful in one class may bomb the next year. In fact, you really never know how something is going to go over with an intro class at BG. Interestingly, when I go to my gifted summer camp, most of my lessons work very well. Perhaps this is because of the culture of learning in the camp because they tend to jump on the opportunity to try something new. Also, I have done some activities where I have taught in front of a group of my peers and they tend to really like my activities. I think teaching introduction classes are very challenging at this school. I am also curious to talk to my old professors at St. Lawrence University about their experiences teaching intro classes because I may be romanticizing the whole experience. Maybe teaching intro classes anywhere kind of sucks and we just remember our own great experiences because we enjoyed learning.

My own class is going well. The kids really like the group activities and hate the lectures. I feel like lectures are a very important part of an college education, so occasionally use them when I think they need some help figuring something out. The issue is that if I am not jumping up and down and/or showing youtube videos they just roll their eyes into the backs of their heads and stop listening. Even the best of my students look bored out of their mind. I try and make it as interactive as I possibly can, but no matter what I do they do not like it. I understand that we are supposed to work to every one's learning abilities, but at the same time I feel like they need to work with me. I can't make everything super interesting to everyone all the time. I find the stuff I am talking about to be very interesting and I think I show it, but at the same time it doesn't really help. We tend to blame ourselves, or the system, or the parents, or the states, or the governments, but when does the responsibility go to the actual student?

Rant

I suppose that I should talk more about my own class experiences for teaching Com 1020. I have had an average experience with it. Most of my kids do not respond when asked questions. The same four or five kids answer all the time, which in most cases would be great, but it gets to be monotonous. I find the material to be very simplistic and not challenging to me or the students. I think I am disappointed because thinking that this was a speech class, I had assumed that maybe, just maybe I would have gotten a group of talkative students. I guess I forgot that this is an introductory class. I by no means want to disparage my students, they all seem to be pretty bright individuals, but I think the culture of Bowling Green is to just send students out with the least amount of information possible. When I taught introduction to Popular Culture at BGSU, the standards were much higher, and yet I still felt that the young adults needed to be pushed more. Perhaps my judgment is clouded by the really high expectations my teachers had in undergrad. I am more in the line of thought that a lot of the students that are going to college are nowhere near prepared to be here and that we should challenge those that do have the skills to handle high levels of academic work. In my experience, growing up in a small farming community, everyone was being pushed to go to four year intuitions. Not everyone is ready to go to a four year University right out of high school. This is not to say that they should not go at all, but I think we should all find our own spaces rather than being coddled into staying at a school for years even though one is almost failing out. I know that many students here have full time jobs and have many other things going on in their lives, but at the same time, why does that mean that I need to lower my expectations? I had four campus jobs and I still managed to make Dean’s list most of my four years in college. I think that we can find all the excuses we want for these students just to make ourselves feel better about the level of participation we receive in the classroom. I would love to work at a place that was challenging and interesting. Why can’t I work with kids that are really interested in higher level theory? Who want to be there to be pushed to learn? I am not saying that we should just have a ton of busy work (like many graduate classes). I am talking about quality over quantity. I want to see people who really want to be here and are ready to be challenged to think in new ways. In my two years here, I have only seen a couple of students who really feel this way. On the other hand, maybe I am not looking in the right places and perhaps I am forced to teach silly classes that do not attract those types of students.

9/7/09

This week I would like to focus on inexperience. I rarely have felt inexperienced in teaching because I have served in many roles as a mentor. However, in coming to the Communication Department at BG, I feel really under-prepared. The most shocking thing is that it doesn’t really matter because so little is expected from BG students. During my teaching presentation, I was critiqued because I did not go in depth as much as I could have. Well, that is as in depth as the department and the class expects me to go. I have never taught a class where it is almost expected that students will get A’s for doing the bare minimum. I believe that we are doing a disservice to our students because we are not preparing them for the real world or higher education. We give them the most basic information and expect nothing from them. As a teacher, it is more frustrating because I do not know the context to fill in the gaps that are missing from the readings. I don’t have the time or energy to really get to know all the material beforehand. Perhaps that sounds lazy, but my priorities have to be elsewhere if I am to survive in graduate school. After grading most of my kid’s first speeches, I am amazed to find that the system is set up so that they receive an A or B no matter what. I feel like I am unwillingly becoming part of a system of “dumbing” down of America. Why do we not push students to do their best? Why do we just push students through the system? I think that I would like to work for a school that has high expectations of their students. I think that some people are not prepared to go to college at 18 and perhaps it is not a bad thing to let them flunk out. What is the point of education when we are not really pushing people to do their best?

8/31/09

I have been teaching or TAing different courses for years now, and yet I am still nervous whenever I go into a classroom. I think I was particularly nervous this year because I have never taken a Communication or public speaking class before. For the first time in a long while I do not feel as comfortable with the material and feel like I am slightly behind the curve. Cultural Studies is, in some ways, much different from Communications which makes it kind of difficult to transition. Luckily, the new text book for the class uses a lot of popular culture references which allows me to more fully use my background. Interestingly, I didn't find out that I was going to be teaching my own class until a week before it began. While I read all of these books about how to be a good teacher and after our discussions in class about what it means to be a good teacher, I chuckle to myself because the system is set up so that it is very hard to be an effective teacher. Often grad students do not find out what they are going to teach until right before the class starts. Even if the material is all set before you get there, it still does not leave time for one to become comfortable with the course content. On top of that, grad students are put into a position where teaching is the LAST priority. I love to teach, but at the same time, teaching is not what keeps me in grad school, my grades matter much more than my teacher evaluations. So, we get thrown into a class that we may be uncomfortable with and we are expected to research and write at publishable levels while teaching a possibly new course. The reality is that we have a lot of factors set against us going into these classes. While I pride myself in being a good teacher, I feel myself being “lazy” simply so that I can prioritize my life. How can I be a good teacher when I am reading the material with my students and have 300 pages to read for my other classes?
With all this in my head, my first day of class actually went really well. I am always amazed at how students automatically assume that you know everything about the material you are teaching. Obviously, I have read the chapter for the day, but not anything beyond that. Also, the benefit of being in the classroom for a couple of years is that you can actually sound like you are well versed in the material. Sometimes you will catch yourself talking and you think “wow, I actually know what I am doing”, but then you trip over yourself because of this. I had the kids do a brief introduction because I make it a priority to not keep the kids the full class. I think that often teachers think that quantity of time in class and doing homework is more important than quality. I never could understand professors that would have a fit if there was a snow day because they often made the syllabus and can change it. One of my favorite classes consisted of six, two page papers. We had a good deal of reading, but it was more reasonable than my higher level classes. I got a lot out of the class because I was forced to talk about political theory in such a concise way. The Communications 1020 class is set up so there is a ton of work, but not much of it is that challenging or substantial.