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.

Stream-feed: 11:56 p.m.

I'll be passing out syllabi tomorrow, and I'm kind of nervous since I've never really taught an actual literature course before. There was English 300, lit & film, but that was four weeks during summer, and we mostly watched movies. There was that 400-level post-Joyce Irish lit class I co-taught with another professor, but that wasn't really my class. There's the surveys I've TA-ed for and of course the myriad composition classes. But nothing like this one and it makes me anxious because being a literary critic and teaching literary criticism are two totally different things. What do I teach a sophomore or junior about literary criticism; even more importantly, what do I leave out? Where to begin? Do I start all sentimental and get all teary-eyed about how much I love words, language, and stories, and hope they pick up on my enthusiasm? Or do I go in there like a cold practitioner? I've made certain choices, I've chosen my texts, thought about the ideas, terms, theories, techniques, etc., I've learned and practiced over the years, but what is the best way to communicate these things other than just assigning readings and "discussing" the readings. It's not the little, detailed questions they'll ask me that make me anxious, but the big ones that are much more difficult to answer...why study literature? why is something good or bad? does goodness or badness even matter? what distinguishes literature from other pursuits of knowledge, truth, pleasure, love....I have answers for these questions but some of them are so tenuous. I change my mind about the answers to these questions constantly. I know that I know a lot more than they do, and I'm confident in what I know, but getting a PhD also means that yes, I have some answers, but it also means I have many more questions...more questions than my class will ask...anyway, I'm excited, at least, that I'll be able to teach the texts and authors that I love for reasons that extend beyond their capacity to receive literary analysis...I always appreciated enthusiastic teachers--ones whose lectures were living evidence of an extended love affair with what they study. I'm not exactly ebullient in front of a class, but I'm pretty fluid and sometimes I surprise myself when I utter a phrase and I'm not sure where it came from. Lecturing helps me to realize how much I've learned....but I also hope to engage with students more than I usually do this term. That will be easier given the fact that I want to be teaching the course, and am not being forced to teach the course..........Took care of Ada today. She began the day next to me in bed and played with my eyebrows with her index finger. She played, ate, swung in her...swinging chair? (don't know what else to call it)....rocker I guess...crapped twice, fell asleep while I watched Big Love, awoke hungry, laughed at me, played some more, waited for mom to come home...a pretty typical day but wonderful for its normality--a normality I like and can live with. It's amazing how much she smiles, as if Wordsworth were right--that children are purer and closer to wisdom than adults who become corrupted in their age and more distant from the simple truths that children know. I don't believe that sh#@ but sometimes I think Ada's living in a completely different realm than me and her smile is the only bridge between where I'm at and where she happens to be floating. I'm fine with that. I fully plan on communicating the standard cliche to Ada that she should stay young as long as she can because youth is full of illusions but aren't illusions so comforting, so necessary? Art is of course illusion, even the gritty kind intent on exposing our illusions, which is a kind of art whose intent is to replace one illusion with the illusion that complaining about the illusions isn't in fact an illusion, when in fact it really is. M. Arnold said, aptly, that literature is a criticism of life. I agree, but that criticism is no less an illusion than the illusions its intent upon correcting...perhaps a better illusion though...an illusion of one's own making, enjoyed consciously for its artifice...and not because one is ignorant that it's an illusion in the first place.

The Freshman

This might be my last term teaching freshman composition. I just received word I'll be teaching English 380 next term, a class required for the University's English majors. I've taught lit courses before, a summer lit and film course, for example, and I've assisted in a couple larger survey courses, but I've never had the chance to teach my subject area, during the school year, to a group of majors, and design and conduct the course myself.

It's a "literary analysis" class, which is much different from teaching composition almost every term, and cringing three to four times a term when I have to sit down with a stack of 50 papers and wonder why and how some of these students got into college. Once in a while, at least, the writing is so bad that cringes turn into laughs.

I always try to remind myself, however, that these kids are 18. It's difficult for me to remember my exact mindset when I was 18 years old, but I know that the stuff I'm asking them to think and write about, are the exact same things I was not very interested in 12 years ago, either. Man I feel old writing that. I usually just hope I'm able to teach them something. Usually I think I do, but only if they want to learn something. In a class full of business and nursing majors, however, that isn't always the case.

So I'm hoping that teaching majors will at least have the advantages inherent to teaching students who actually want to be in the classroom. Which will mean they'll also have a teacher that wants to be standing in front of them.

PS. On a sidenote, my efforts at becoming more calm are working, for now at least. As anyone reading this blog knows (is anyone actually out there?), I have been pretty obsessively keeping up with the presidential campaign. That is still true, but I've decided that given Obama's poll numbers right now (which are about as good as he can hope them to be), I'm just going to relax on the political posts for awhile so that I can keep my blood pressure down. Let's hope they're mostly accurate, as they mostly were in the primary campaign. Or else, two weeks from now, I might just finally erupt. Serenity now, Sam. Serenity now.

Upcoming post:
A review of Oliver Stone's W.