On Teaching: The Last Post for the Day

This is my fourth post today. I've done my best to sum up a transitional time that has been both amazing and difficult. This wouldn't be complete, though, without at least a brief mention of my first week of teaching. My class meets on Thursdays and Fridays from 9 am until 10:15. There are, for the time being, 16 students in my class, though that number is fluctuating as kids add and drop. I thought I would have a difficulty with names but I knew them all by name by the end of the first day.

The students here are phenomenal-- intelligent and earnest. My first week of teaching was wonderful. I felt very comfortable being up there, and I felt very comfortable telling them who I am. I have a speaker phone and laptop. Ostensibly, a captioner types what the students say and it comes up on my laptop, but so far it's not working. Instead, I have a circular discussion and I roam around the class during discussion. I haven't had any problems with lip-reading so far, even with the international students.

I'm amazed at how natural everything feels. I'm not afraid to make a fool out of myself. I feel a certain wonderful authority as I roam about asking my questions about Seamus Heaney and Eudora Welty. I love analyzing the reading and drawing answers out of the students. So far, I'm amazed at how much the students are participating. This was my big initial fear, but I think I'm asking the right questions and being engaging.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot to learn. I have a lot of reading yet to do. For example, we'll be going over scansion in the fourth or fifth week of class, and I don't even really know what that is. I'm comfortable in the realm of fiction, but I have a long way to go with poetry. The amount of work and preparation necessary for each class is absolutely mind-boggling.