Hot for Teaching

Ugh. Sorry for being away for so long, but there's a good reason: I'm finally writing my diss, really putting words on paper, and I'm excited about the direction it's taking. Which means every other kind of writing seems kind of superfluous right now.

But I don't want to lose the, like, three people who read this blog.

Teaching has been exhilarating lately. Despite having taught various courses and hundreds upon hundreds of students, I've never had a class of around 30, for which I get to teach literature--not freshman composition, not lit and film, just literature--twice a week for majors. What a significant difference it is to have students who want to be in class, and who actually take notes regarding things that I say.

I'm happy for the opportunity to teach every term, mostly because it helps pay for school. I've been in graduate school since 2004 and I do not owe a dime for it--and that's because I've been able to teach. The problem is they usually stick me in Freshman Composition. It's assumed that because we study literature, that we automatically know how to teach writing. Now I probably know better than many grad students in other fields, but I do not consider myself an expert in teaching writing--it is truly a field unto itself. Literary criticism is an entirely different animal than teaching basic composition to students who can hardly write a sentence.

And so in my composition courses I rarely assign literature because what I hate even more is teaching people who don't give a crap about it. Which is why this term has been so great. I literally run out of time every single class, because I have so much to say and so little time to say it. I have to curb the urge to simply lecture the entire time, because it's such an intoxicating feeling. It's in front of a class like this that I realize how much I've learned--how many different ways I can take a lecture depending upon what associations I happen to be making that day with the material we cover. I'm usually quite fluid with my words, but I'm working on overcoming what I think is a monotonous tone when I lecture--and my low voice doesn't help. I like to pace, because it helps me think, but sometimes it prevents me from making eye-contact with students, which I'm also working on.

So far, the students have liked Dickinson the best, and for very good reason. What an amazing poet she is.