I'm so relieved that today's the end of my teaching for the spring. I can say goodbye to my 24 students, and "relax" for the summer. No more lesson planning, no more grading, no more second guessing myself, no more awkward silences in class as my students stubbornly refuse to answer my questions...
Teaching has been hard this year, and now that I look back on it, it's been hard the whole school year. I was really unprepared to teach a class on my own, particularly a class that is not directly related to my research interests. I mean, I know how to write, I know what works well in a paper and what doesn't, but that does not mean that I know how best to communicate those skills to students. Furthermore, the focus of the class is unclear, is it simply to teach writing skills, or to provide students with critical thinking skills? The official answer would be both! Impossible to do both in just 10 weeks. You will either produce better writers, or better thinkers in such a short period of time, not both.
That, however, is what I have been trying to do all year. Produce better writers and better thinkers...no wonder I am exhausted!
It just goes to show that my department does not really care to fit its students more directly to their research interests. At the least, it seems they don't care about fitting me with a class that I can really teach. Case in point is the teaching assignment for the fall quarter. I am stuck TA'ing for an introductory 100 level general humanities course, whereas I would much rather be in a religion course, or quite frankly, a philosophy course - after all, it was only my goddamn major!
Now I made my preferences very very clear some time ago as to what I wished to teach in the fall, and it's now apparent that no-one was listening. Students with no seniority get the assignment that I wanted, and I'm stuck with teaching the intro course, or going back to teaching that schizo-writing course.. Not much of a choice, is it? Yet, I remember the official line being that students with seniority get their pick of what to teach...The summer teaching jobs? Gone, without so much as a "Oh, by the way, would you like to..?"
Suddenly, I am very aware of "my place" in this department. An awareness only sharpened by a recent email;
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How snarky is that? I'm even more irked now because I was not given the code...
So what can I do? I feel taken for granted here, and yet, I need the money to pay bills and buy luxuries like food and underwear...Am I just being paranoid, or is there really an attitude of "Oh, he'll do anything, just give it to him"? Or am I not sufficiently "American" in my attitude and not pushing hard enough to get the things that I want, or deserve?
posted by WM @ 11:19
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