Semester #4

Wow. It has been a while since I have thought about posting. All of my prior posts occured during my first semester of teaching. Now I am in my fourth semester.

I guess that makes sense since I had started this to help new teachers know that they are not alone, to let them know what other new teachers have gone through. One of the scariest things about starting out (and possibly with starting out on anything new) is the feeling that you have no clue as to what you are doing and that you are the worst teacher in the history of teaching.

The fact that you are having those feelings probably means that you are not the worst teachers. The worst of the teachers dont even feel anything.

Anyway, just to get everyone up to date.

I finished that first semesrter. LOTS of work but very worthwhile. Unfortunately, I did have to fail some of my students. Departmental rule, they have to pass the final, so my hands were kind of tied. All and all it was a good semester though and it was a great learning experience for me.

My second semester I decided to try teaching a new course. Wanted to make my portfolio as broad as possible. I think that was my first mistake. Hindsight is 20-20 and I now see that I should have gotten more teaching experience under my belt before trying something new. That second semester also brought a new reality, the reality of cheaters.

My first class was just a really amazing group that I got really spoiled. It really came as a shock when I started catching people in the act. And dealing with the consequesnces of the cheating is a real mess full of crying and obnoxiousness.

Needless to say I am really glad that the second semester is now ancient history.

That brings me to the third semester. I went back to the basics and tought the same class that I covered my first semester. Things went much better this time. I had another really amazing class and it was just a great dynamic.

Some students didnt show up from day one, so i am not sure why they didnt just drop the course. But other than that it went really well.

Now on to the fourth semester. I am now teaching the same course as the first and third semester. I once again have a really great class. Its interesting because about half the class have already taken this course, they are repeating because they failed the first time around. I think the fact that they have seen all the material before is actually really helpful. This is probably the strongest class I have had so far.

What I have learned so far

Teaching can be fun
Teaching can be frustrating
Teaching can be rewarded
Teaching can be a lot of work

You can get out of it what you put in.

Every semester is different, even if you are teaching the same material for 20 years, the students and the dynamic is different. So stay on your toes

Knowing when to push

I think as teachers we have to walk a fine line between motivating and pushing. It is definitely our responsibility to motivate our students. Unless we are teaching reading, all of our students should be able to read a textbook to give them they same informations that we can provide.

Our value add is our enthusiasm, our love for our subject areas, and our desire to share that love and enthusiasm with others.

But while we try to get our students learn, we also need to be on a question to learn our students. Each student is different. Each will come with their own issues, family life and baggage. Some students need us to be empathetic, while others need us to push them to accomplish more. We have the tricky job of knowing at each opportunity which student is which.

Case in point. I gave my last exam of the semester last night. One student ran in late straight from another exam. It took her a little bit of time to settle down and start my exam. After a little while (while most of the other students who came on time were still in the middle of their exams) she hands me her exam. I took one look at and saw that it wasnt even half filled in.

I asked her what she was doing. She told me her mind was blank and that she couldnt do anymore. From looking at what she already had been able to do on the exam and from seeing what she knew in class, I KNEW she could do more. I pointed out some of the problems that I knew she would get right and I made her finsih her exam. I didnt accept her giving up on me.

Well, I graded her exam and in the end she got an "A". I posted all the grades online last night and this morning she sent me the following email


OH MY GOD THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING ME STAY IN CLASS AND FINISHING THE TEST. YOU ARE THE GREATEST... YOU ENCOURAGE ME TO TRY WHEN I WANNA GIVE UP. I CANT BELIEVE I GOT A GOOD GRADE AND ALL BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE IN YOUR STUDENTS AND IT MOTIVATES US TO THE BEST WE CAN. THANK YOU A GREAT DEAL, I DONT KNOW WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE THIS SEMESTER WITHOUT A GREAT TEACHER LIKE YOU...THANK YOU FOR ALWAYS BELIEVING IN YOUR STUDENTS.

This was an amazing success story that made me feel really good. But my point above stands. I pushed in this cased because I was able to judge that in this situation it made the most sense to push. I knew that this particular student needed a little push. There are others in the class that had I pushed the same way it could have just upset or even worse just broken them. It would have definitely put them in a position where they would have hated my class, my subject, and maybe even learning.

Sometimes we get caught up in being all we can be for our students that we forget about what our students really need us to be

The fourth test

Wow! I am almost at the end of the semester. Originally when I started this blog I intended to write every week or even multiple times a week, but then life got in the way.

So, now I am in the process of giving my fourth test and so I have a few minutes free to type up my thoughts.

This semester has been a complete whirlwind of emotions. I love it; I feel overwhelemed; I think I am not doing a good job; i think I have done a good job; I want to quit; I want to make this my career.

Many of my friends and family have asked will I do this again. I keep going back and forth. My students are asking me to teach a different required class next semester so that they can take me again. The guilt of dissapointing them is what will probably push me to continue on in this quest.

People (including my students) are telling me I have been doing a good job but I am not conviced. I sometimes listen to myself as I try to explain certain things and I realize that I am not always doing a good job. I guess the final will be the real test. It is a departmental final which means I will get a sense how I did compared to all the other teachers of this material. If my students do well then maybe I was able to get through and teach them something.

What I have realized it that most of my job isnt the actual teaching of my syllabus; most of my job has been the task of dealing with the emotional feelings and fears my students have towards the topic I am teaching.

I got a really good class. All my students are responsible adults. Most have jobs and families and they arent afraid to work hard. None of them are stupid and all are capable of learning the material. All in all they have good attitudes and that really makes a huge difference in my ability to teach them.

Well I better get back to proctoring the exam

The First Class!!!

Last night was the night and I lived to tell the tale!

Pretty good class .... pretty god group of students. They are a bit nervous about doing well. Hopefully that will get better over the course of thesemster.

Have to figure out better time management. I didnt get a chance to cover everything i needed to cover. Hopefully next week I will do better.

I think there may be a chance I will survive this semester. I just hope I can cover everything I need to!

First Day - morning before

So ... today is the first day of teaching!!!

hope i am ready. I woke up at 5:00 and am already blogging at 5:30 (I normally sleep to 6:30).

Went to the school last night for a trial run. Found my classroom, my mailbox, and most importantly the copy machine. Printed out a bunch of stuff but still tweaking the syllabus. Hope the copy machine is working tonight!

I hope all goes well tonight ... now i will start looking online for colored chalk. All they give us is white and yellow and I love COLORS

Creating the syllabus

Class starts Wed night. it is now Sunday, 2am

I guess that gives me 66 hrs until I am on.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I am so nervous. Actually its a whole combination of emotions. Nervous, excited, psyched

I found out last Wed that I need to come up with my own syllabus. They had sent me an instructors syllabus and i naively thought i could use that

I spent all day Thursday working on version 1
I spent all morning Friday working on version 2
I spent tonight working on version 3

maybe soon i will be satisfied with what I have. Actually I would have probably just stayed with version 2 except for the typos ... too bad i dont know how to spell

Good thing this is a holiday weekend. I think thats the only way I will be ready on time. I still need to prepare my first lesson.

Hopefully its too early in the semester for anyone to bring in the rotting veggies to throw from the back of the room

Well, time to get back to work (or maybe to sleep)

Orientation Week

So last week was orientation week. Bunch of meetings for new adjunts as well as returning adjuncts (people don't like when you call them old)

I probably asked myself a thousand times over the course of the week what am i getting myself into.

I feel out of place in that room. It seems like everyone there is an experienced educator. Those that have full time jobs outside of the college have full time teaching jobs, or have just retired from full time teaching jobs.

My day job is in software development. No wonder I dont feel like i fit in

One thing i have to say is everyone at this college is REALLY nice and helpful. They really do seem to be there to help us succeed.

We were told about many services available on campus that were created to make our lives easier such as the mentorship program and the copy center.

Even though I am supposed to be the teacher here there is LOTS to learn!