living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Wednesday, July 02, 2003 Done with teaching-a sentiment On my last class, one of my students asked me what I’m going to do after done with teaching—I kept telling them through the summer that it will be my farewell teaching to UB, and probably last time in my life. But I don't really have the sentiment until the moment she asked me. Well, I’m really not sure what I’m going to do, so I told them I would have my dissertation done and got the Dr. degree, then think about what I’m going to do. Since last week I finished the last lecture, my nightmare (literally) seems stopped all of sudden. I had this hallucination during midnight for quite a while. Right before I totally woke up from nightmare (all kinds of), at the moment my eyes are open, I see someone with high hat standing in front of bed and leaning towards me. The image of this hallucination originated from a crappy horror movie I watched when I was really little, so it was scary enough for me, and it followed me over years and years. Come and go, it left me sharp heartbeat and sudden sit-up at empty dark nights. Well, since it went away from last week, I assume that teaching was one of the triggers to bring back the man in high hat. Well, that explains how much pressure I suffer from teaching in past two years. I even don’t need to seek interpretation from a shrink. Oh, no, teaching is not only a nightmare; it was such a thrilling experience and so far the most challenging thing in my life. Before this, the most challenging thing was writing feature stories in English for Xinhua news agency 7 years ago- stories about oceanographic exploration in South Sea of China, farms raising turtles (as food), so and so weird topics. Writing in English of something even hard to understand in Chinese is a pain on neck, but it is not even half as difficult as teaching in English of some simple things. I realized it 7 years later. When standing before those kids from another culture and speak different language, you felt that you are going to sink and be devoured, not by the students, but by your fear and jitter. The fear never goes away. When, at the start of my teaching, I spent 5 hours to prepare a lecture of 50 minutes, I was so nervous because I was afraid I could not remember the words on notes; Then, when finally I could facilely repeat and paraphrase texts I prepared beforehand, I was still nervous since I could not come up with cool expression when I tried to be creative and tell them a cool story just coming into my mind. I know I’m making progress, but for different phase of progress there comes a new challenge. The first year of teaching only came with frustration since I was struggling so hard to cope with my language, to deliver the knowledge I just memorized the night before the class, and to face blank faces of those young kids. After two semesters, I realize repeating textbook and notes are such a waste of precious classroom meeting. To be honest, for education in social science, especially for undergraduate school, I hardly see the necessity of memorizing this or that communication scholar's categorizing and theorizing human behavior. Well, for a fair play, an exam needs to give to see who spend time on studying. But what’s the good of this dogmatic knowledge for their future and life? Then when I try to expand the topic little by little to reality, politics, technology, culture and social issues, I surprisingly found how much more, to some degree, I know about this country, than my students. I came to realize how busy my undergraduate students are, on working 40 hours/week to support themselves, on socializing, on sports and movies. The time for them to focus on their education is so limited, not to mention to be enlightened about the society and the world. We are not in an elite school, I guess that’s problem for most of colleges around the nation. Then I realized the sacred mission of a professor. A professor, at least a professor in social science, should be a critical opinion leader to college students in their days of youth. If they don’t want to study the boring textbook anyway, some of which is even boring to me, don’t overwhelm them. Instead, show them the world is not made up of only pop culture and sports; Share with them what you are reading and what questions in your mind; make them think and raise their interests to explore more on certain serious issues. For communication students, the first and foremost qualification is speaking and writing well, which I, as a foreigner, am not good enough to teach. But the second and third, which are not less important is an open mind and critical thinking (especially on media literacy). And these, which are what I assume I’m teaching, can hardly be achieved from textbooks and notes. An open-minded and knowledgeable professor is what the world wants, lalala… Suddenly, I felt so proud of myself, and it is perfectly justifiable now for me to surf and read as much as I can. And gradually, I found I read much faster and more efficient, and develop the skill to repeat to my students something I scanned for just once, instead of after several rehearsals. Teaching enforces my ability of English reading in an unexpected way. And that is really a surprising bonus. (just realized some parts of this paragraph can be used in “teaching philosophy” in future) I still could not think of a better career for me than teaching in college: reading and learning all the time and telling what you know to your students, sense of achievement if even only one student really learn something about how to think and what to think about, a stage for you creative performance (if you like it to be creative) and never lack of audiences, plenty of free time in the summer, traveling to cool resort for conference presentation which is paid by school, free access to library and the Internet, not worried about losing job if I’m so lucky to get a tenure. And lots of other good things…. However, if teaching is always correlated with nightmare and hallucination, I can’t handle it. I know clearly language command is the huge hurdle, no, huge dam that so difficult for me to leap over. Julia and I always talk about what good talkers we are in Chinese and what an awkward and boring speaker we are in American classroom. Maybe going back home and teaching in mother tongue, like Julia has chosen to do, will be a great enjoyment. Sure, but it is something I will think about maybe 5 or 10 years later. posted by lmeimei @10:43 PM| permanent link| | |
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