Pondering The Teaching Front
I still remember my first day as a college instructor. Trinity remembers it pretty clearly as well since she was there. More on that in a bit.
After six years of academic limbo the Boss assigned two classes to yours truly. I had spent the summer working forty to fifty hour weeks at World's of Fun, which really chewed into my prep time. When I wasn't working I was slamming my way through Eric Foner's book on Reconstruction.
Terrified does not begin to describe my state of mind. In fact, I do not think there is a word to accurately describe my mental state. I've been to war, been in danger, engaged in more than my fair share of physical altercations and struggled with more than one aggravating problem in my writing career.
Nothing chilled me so completely as the prospect of my own classes. I didn't realize, and I still do not think I fully grasp, how much of a zap six years of limbo put on my confidence as a historian. My time as Birmo's research consultant certainly helped some but I was in full fight or flight mode.
To work Trinity into the picture, it is worth pointing out that she was the only person on campus to notice just how badly rattled I was. She said, "You did a pretty good job of hiding it from everyone else. But I knew."
She put her hand on my forearm and said, "You'll do fine. You have trained for this."
Really? I've been out of it for six years thanks to a screwball interpretation of district policy at another campus. I was certainly a historian but I had focused on topics which drew my personal interest in the service of pushing forward on my writing career. Needless to say, if you asked me about Andrew Carnegie's business practices on August 24th, 2007, my response would have been, "He was that robber baron dude, right?"
Six weeks or so later, I gave a lecture on Carnegie which yielded a very positive eval from the Boss. Up to that point, I lived in perpetual fear that my first semester would be my last. Detractors in my previous college experience had always argued that I was not college material in the first place and certainly not someone who had the personality for classroom leadership.
So I have been at this three years now. I still have a lot to learn and a lot to improve upon. I do not have what anyone might call formal training as an educator. All I have is what I remember from my own experiences as a student. What works, what didn't, what I liked, what I absolutely hated, and unfair practices by other instructors that I swore not to repeat in my own classroom.
What is funny, I think, is that I find from the ones who have all of that educational training that I am pretty much doing what I am supposed to anyway. I use visual aids (granted, they are stick figures, but the students are endlessly fascinated by those). I tell stories (which work in most classes). I find a way to generate resonance in most students (granted, you always lose a few no matter what you do).
On the other hand, I am a lecture based instructor, like my peers. I lecture, you take notes, I answer questions, you study on your own time in prep for exams which demonstrate your understanding of the material. I'm supposed to be engaged in discussions with my students in the Socratic method but I have had too many encounters with the Deadly Wall of Silence to think that is a good idea. Besides, two students dominate while everyone else tunes out and it becomes a bull session of nonsense.
Three years. And it appears, so long as I do not make any serious mistakes or annoy my Boss (something I try very hard not to do, in fact I try not to bother my Boss at all) that I should be at this for some time to come.
I love my job. I love teaching history. I don't just like it or tolerate it, I love it. I love going into a motivated classroom and going over the material. I love it when we cover the boring material and the students are still dialed in because I was honest with them by saying, "This will be boring and you'll want to fall asleep. Don't do it or your grade will suffer."
I love it when they tie the past in with the present as many in my American History 120 classes are doing with the health care debate. We do not discuss politics per se in my classes and I definitely do not give my personal opinion on those subjects but if the students are drawing distinctions, even incorrect ones, then at least they are THINKING!
Granted, they do stupid things. All humans do but on the whole, I do not feel our students are stupid. Poorly prepared and perhaps on campus for not quite the right reasons, but they aren't stupid. I identify with them because at one point, I was one of them.
And I know what it is like to have people say you aren't college material.
It is a funny thing. If you had asked me back in 2007 where I expected to be in 2010, I would have said that I would be working on my first novel right about now. I would be an established writer with maybe a dozen or so stories to my credit. I may still go down that road, I certainly plan on doing that.
But three years as a college instructor? I wouldn't have missed it for the world. It is the best job I have ever had.
One other thing.
Contrary to what some might say, I think I might be good at this sort of thing.
So it goes.
The Commanding General wants to go to the campus kite festival today so I've got to sign off and prep for that.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
