Identity Crisis: An Inventory

As my time as a mentee comes to a close, I have been thinking a lot about my teaching philosophy. I believe my style and values will adapt and change over time, but I appreciate having a baseline.

So I start with what I know I am:

1. Funny: Though it usually takes some time for people to understand my dry, sarcastic sense of humor, I find it one of my most invaluable qualities

2. Organized: I create lesson plans and prepare for class ahead of schedule when teaching. Students will always know my expectations for class and assignments.

3. Creative: I enjoy putting thought into lessons to make them interactive, fun, and memorable. My interest in art, music, theatre, etc. plays directly into my teaching plans and style.

Then I move to what I know I am not...yet:

1. Professionally Communal: Yes, technically I am a coworker/colleague, but I struggle immensely with this identity component for professionalism. Part of the reason is because I am a rather open person. I hate the way people tiptoe around things, rather than address problems. Also, bureaucratic nonsense makes my head spin--but what's worse is how people all claim to hate it, yet do nothing about it. All in all, my biggest struggle in life is just dealing with people!

2. Experienced: I have been a partial teacher for exactly 13 weeks. I have been a student for 18 years and a tutor/instructor to writer for 5 years, but my classroom game is weak. Luckily, to quote Lewis, "Experience, that most brutal of teachers, but you learn, my God, do you learn."

Additional Struggles:

1. Recurrent Severe Major Depression- It's a bitch.
2. Career Path Uncertainty-Where am I going? And why???
3. Mixed Identities as teacher/student/tutor/human-When to be who where and for how long....(confusing, right?)

Now that I've crafted a sketch of what could be seen as the crazy cat lady librarian (Meow), I'd like to sum this up with a nice examination of conscience (as we former Catholics remember).
My identity will change over time. I hope to continue to add to my positive qualities, as well as work on my shortcomings. With time, maybe I will be able to accept the nonsense of other people by relaxing my contrarian, existential attitude. With time, I will gain experience and understand my life's purpose. With time, I will become the teacher I always wanted. As Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros said, "Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow."

Take a Look--It's in a Book

I often say I am the English major who doesn't have time to read. I know I am not the only person to ever notice how when you study a field you love, you stop having time to enjoy it for a while. I know I loved reading as a kid and watching The Reading Rainbow and Wishbone on TV all the time. I felt excited by the adventures and problem/solution motifs of the books on those shows. I had to read in school and I participated in summer reading programs for the library, but then I grew up. And if I hadn't have been an English major in college, I don't know that I would still be able to appreciate the rainbow anymore.

bell hooks writes about the "Joy of Reading" in Chapter 22 of Teaching Critical Thinking. She states, "Teachers in every educational setting are the individuals who bear the greatest ethical and political responsibility for promoting the power of reading" (132). My question for this program is: How can I promote the power of reading when literature is not a requirement (or even allowed for GAs) in the 100 level ENG courses?

My mentor and I have talked about this a great deal, as she is a writer by trade and wrote for a living before teaching, and I am an MA literature student and writer. She got special permission to use Devil in the White City for here ENG 104 course next semester, which means reading will get a much needed jump start in the college classroom. But what about us first-timers?

Well, I am currently working on my ENG 104 syllabus and finding a way to frame the semester. I work best when there is a frame and direct application of theory/rules/etc. to the outside world. Therefore, I am developing assignments and readings around Alice in Wonderland. I am working on one assignment now that looks at a specific character from wonderland in order to examine a cultural problem (i.e. the Mad Hatter and mental illness). Hopefully, my students will not only be interested in their research, but also in the ways that literature connects to real life.

I think bell hooks is absolutely correct in asserting that teachers have a responsibility to promote reading, and there are ways to do it. The question is why did institutions stop valuing the beauty of the reading rainbow?

Can't Please 'Em All

Chapter 9 raises some worthwhile points about observation and assessment. Throughout the comp tales, we see observation in the form of experienced professionals to new teachers, teachers to students, colleagues to teachers, and teachers to self. Each of these create a problem of hierarchy and intimidation in the academic sphere.

My first evaluation as a teacher this semester went very well. I received almost entirely positive feedback and felt that my teaching was "up to code." Since receiving the first drafts of papers for the unit I taught, I have come to realize the ugly truth behind evaluations, observations, etc. of teachers. Though I believe I taught a good unit filled with creative lessons (i.e. dirt pudding), my students' papers have been...sub-par...to say the least. I got positive feedback from my mentor, observer, and fellow GAs, but the proof, as they say, was not in the pudding as far as the papers were concerned.

Someone recently told me that course evaluations are to make better teachers. If I had been in a laughing mood, I would have been on the floor. Perhaps this is the more cynical side of me coming out, but these evaluations and observations seem to be nothing more than vestigial organs from a primordial era of teaching when everyone did it the same way. Now, everything is subjective from the efficacy of a teacher's style to the involvement of the students. I understand there are many factors at play here, but the argument stands to reason that observations don't really prove much.

Perhaps I'm just bogged down by the fact that judgment is modernity's answer to a call for a capitalist aesthetic in everything from education to movies. I'm tired of telling people what they need to improve on and how to change. And I'm tired of being told those things, as well. Yes, there's always room for improvement, but my measure of that should come from me--not from some subjective outsource. I guess I will just take my grandma's advice and "thank them for their time and move on about my day. You can't please 'em all, and you shouldn't have to."

Graduate Assistants: They're Just Like Us!

Recently, I've noticed several absences in my mentor's class. And the students who do attend class complain about being tired and how much work they have to do and how busy they are all the time.
I listen and give them advice on balancing their schedules better, but I have come to realize most of the time they just want to complain. They don't want help or advice. They want someone to rub their tummies and tell them they work so hard and it's okay if they don't have things done or if they don't show up for an entire week.

I know I am beginning to sound rant-y, but these issues have really got me thinking of some bigger things. Namely, I have been thinking about how these students don't even see how their professors and other people also have lives and struggles and busy schedules. I am taking classes, writing 5 times longer papers, teaching, and tutoring among my personal life. And while I find myself frustrated sometimes that it takes so much effort to break through their self-interested mindsets to show them "Grad students (and other people) are just like us!" I also find myself understanding this struggle.

It's easy to get caught up in our own lives and not appreciate the lives and struggles of others. It's easy to be so busy that you forget that there is a very real world going on outside of our worry and our doubt and our work. I guess I am reaching this strange phase of existential crisis where I am wondering why in the hell I am going through this whole school thing for many many more years BY CHOICE. In doing so, I am pretty much guaranteeing that I will always be behind on reading, spend way too long creating lesson plans, not have time to email my grandma, and develop ulcers from worrying about how broke I am.

I remember thinking I had those problems as an undergrad, but in hindsight, they were really much smaller. Being behind on reading meant a chapter or two, not an entire novel. Worrying about money meant skipping seeing a movie with friends, not being late on a rent payment. As I grow, it always seems the worries that seemed so rational and huge at one time are easily replaced by much more difficult problems. And that type of endless cycle makes a person wonder why we do it.

The logical side of my brain went to grad school because she didn't know what else to do instead and knows that a MA degree means more than a BA. She chose English because that's what she is best at and doesn't mind spending time on. The romantic, naive side of my brain became a graduate student because he (yes, my romantic brain side is male) loves to learn and to teach. Nothing makes him happier than explaining how to create an essay or rewording something to make it sound amazing. And I listen to the romantic, naive side, because if I didn't, the world would have no color, no spark, no life.

My mentor recently asked our class: Are you a college student yet? Many of them didn't follow the abstract question until she explained it further. She meant: Have you become active participants in your learning? Do you understand how to balance the new-found freedom and hold yourself personally accountable? Have you grown up?

And I find myself asking the same question: Am I a graduate student yet?

Hell Cycles

Comp Tales 98 and 100 offer an interesting look into confidentialty within the classroom. We have discussed--briefly--in 601 how to spot troubling writing and ways to handle the situation, but I felt for the professor in Tale 98. She technically did the right thing, but never getting to know what happened to that student caused her so much grief. I think she handled it well on her end, but the administration could've done a much better job handling the psychology aftereffects for her. While 98 does not offer a common experience necessarily, protocols for responding to troubling writing and efforts to debrief teachers are important issues.

Comp Tale 100 gives us a much more common scenario with a parent criticizing a professor for his daughter's failing grade. My mentor and I just talked about this issue when I interviewed her. I saw this cartoon by Daryl Cagle in a newspaper once, and it has stayed with me. It captures the changes ideologies and pressures put on educators to appease parents and students, not evaluate effectively.

I believe there are these cycles of pressure inside and outside the school. Internally, the government pressures the school for standards. The school pressure the teacher to perform. The teacher pressures the student to learn. And student scores influence the very government standards that started this whole messy cycle.

Externally, you have the economy pressuring the parents. The parents pressure the child to ensure he/she makes it to a good school. The cost of the good school pressures students. And the number of students in debt after college influences, again, the very system that created the problems.

I don't have an answer. I don't have the end-all-be-all solution to these multi-faceted hell cycles. What I do have is experience. Like many of you, I have experience at many different spots in the cycles. And I think that my advantage in dealing with the cycles is from understanding the point of view of the people at the other stages. That's my best advice: Consider the people to your right and to your left, where they came from and where they plan to go. Maybe then we can stop yelling at each other long enough to hear.

But today he smiled...

As an educator, there is nothing I want more than my "Oh, Captain, my Captain!" moment. I want to be the professor who opens my students' eyes to a whole new realm of understanding and possibility. I want students on desks, chanting support.

Now, I realize that will probably never happen. Students are way too interested in being cool to stand on a desk or recite Whitman's poetry. However, my experience with one student is just as great as the ones in "Dead Poet's Society." Let's call him Joe. 

From the first paper, it was clear that Joe struggled with the mechanics of writing, as well as organizing his thoughts. It was one of those unfortunate cases that emphasizes the failings of our education system. Students slip through without proper skill acquisition. 

When the first paper was returned, Joe was devastated by the D+ tattooed on his paper. In that moment, Joe had a choice: He could get mad, or he could get to work. 

For the next paper, Joe made three appointments with the Writing Center and met with me outside of class. He took more notes during lecture and asked questions after class. He maintained a serious disposition, focused. During our meetings, Joe and I practiced outlining and then worked on creating the introductory paragraph and transitions. He came back the next session with two more pages written and a sense of urgency to capture the rest of the ideas. 

The paper wasn't perfect, but he had acquired skills for outlining, transitions, and citations. His effort earned him a C for the paper. With revision, he even amped that up to a B. 

Happy with his improvement, but leery of the argumentative essay to come, Joe began to sit in the front of the room and brought his computer everyday to take notes and do research when a thought came to him. He continued to meet with me over the course of the assignment.

During our first meeting for assignment 3, he showed up with an outline, six credible, highlighted sources (even though the assignment only required 3), and an introductory paragraph. Needless to say, he had been doing his homework. We got to work crafting a more elaborate outline and discussing his concerns for organizing his argument. He left with a tangible goal in mind and set up another meeting. The final meeting was also fruitful, and he left with enthusiasm to finish the assignment.

Here we come back to the beginning of my tale. 

Joe walked into class today with an energy in his step. He walked right up to me and said, "I got that essay to 7 pages before I was done!" (The assignment only required 4 pages.) The pride resonated from his statement. This was his "barbaric yawp." He asked when he'd get it back to work on the revision. His normally fierce disposition was exchanged for excitement. He even answered questions during class about the challenges of the argumentative essay. And I smiled to myself, thinking of his progress.

Joe even smiled and laughed. He had been intimidated and stressed by ENG 103. But today, he smiled...