i started teaching spring classes yesterday, which is always fun. i love the first week. and the second week. most all weeks, actually. i [gulp!] love my job.
there's always this precious moment of stillness the first day, when everyone is now seated, all is quiet, and ALL EYES ON ARE ON FRONT OF THE ROOM. i'm busying myself with, oh, writing my name on the board, and then also writing the list up there of what we'll be doing that day. i LOVE this moment, hate to break the solemn potential of a class before it has become a class. this moment is so sweet ("stay gold ponyboy, stay gold") because soon we'll get to know each other and there will be the equally-treasured familiarity and joviality, where no one ever shuts up when class starts until i clear my throat like, 15 times and fake a stroke and then they're all laughing and paying attention. [aside about the list of stuff on board: i've always done this, for myself, as well as for students. one student wrote under 'instructor weaknesses' on my evaluations from the fall term, "sometimes sylvia gets a little off track and likes to just talk with her students socially, but if she puts her list up on the board, everything goes well." lol. he or she is dead-on. and if this was the only weakness they he/she could come up with, things are OK.]
well, two first-classes over with, four more to go. four more unique moments to treasure. but these moments, fleeting as they are, give way to what is also THE MOST IMPORTANT CLASS of the semester. numero uno. you know how they say in a job interview, the, uh, "hirer" decides in the first 30 seconds if you're going to get the job or not? i feel like in the first 60 minutes of a class decide the students are going to love it or hate it. and try as i might to be more ... professorial ... i think "if the students love it, they will want to come to class. if they love the class, they will trust me and the advice i have to offer. if they trust me and listen to my advice, they will become (hopefully!) better at the subject ..." and on ad infinitum.
cicero and quintilian had lots of advice on teaching students about speaking, quintilian in particular about teaching students in general. he did some wonderful writing about the importance of character, how to be a good speaker, you needed first to BE A GOOD PERSON. which, cheesy as it sounds, is true. (i don't tell my students this. maybe i should). so how to teach this? i guess i don't think you do "teach" this. you model it.
so, for those of you doubters out there, those of you who think i'm teaching the easiest classes in the world (maybe a little true), there's a method to my madness. it revolves around liking my students (loving them?), and being accessible and funny and wishing in my heart (while i'm teaching) that i could hug them all and smile and tell them: "you're doing JUST FINE. you've made it this far, so you're in good shape. you're going to be WONDERFUL, just wait."
but most of them already are.
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2 comments:
are bad speakers bad people?...what about hitler? good speaker. not so good person.
quintilian would've said hitler was a bad speaker. but i understand your confusion. i think i might've posed that same question to my rhetoric professor, in 2004. :)
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