Classrooms

"Classrooms can be places where learners attempt to reduce knowledge to that which can dazzle or deceive. Too often, learners are more concerned with the appearance of knowing than with the genuine investigation which will enable one to come to know, deeply, a subject and our world. In our antiquated educational system, teaching has been reduced to and cheapened into a privatized delivery of facts and data. Classrooms are too often places of violence where questioning has more to do with conquest than inquisition." (Nancy Lynne Westfield)

The date is approaching--August 24, 2010. That's when I'll stand in front of my 19 freshmen students for the first time. As teacher. Instructor. Professor? No, I'm not there yet. They can just call me Maria. I don't know exactly why I have written that I'll "stand in front" of them; I guess that's just a metaphor for me to fulfill my role as teacher while, in turn, they can fulfill their roles as students. But maybe I won't stand anywhere.

I've been thinking a lot about the kind of teacher I will be. I know I have goals and objectives and ideas--all of the things that I want to be. The longer I ponder these things I realize that, despite my deliberate intentions and reflections weeks (months?) before I start to teach English 101, things are going to be out of my control. I firmly believe that I'll learn more than my students will, and this totally gives me goosebumps. But I love learning, and while the prospect of trying to guide 19 young minds through the writing process and hopefully leaving them with at least one or two words of wisdom is outright frightening, I'm very much looking forward to it. I'll be reading and writing like never before. I'll leave comments on papers in the margins with a green or purple pen--I've learned to stay away from the treacherous red ink. I'll have office hours, and, chances are, no one will come to them. I'll have to get to the classroom early to set up the technology because, let's face it, if you're not using YouTube or some kind of new media to teach, you are behind on the times. (Needless to say that I will be having my students use YouTube for their first unit on pop culture!) And I'm sure there will be other numerous things that I've not yet anticipated.

I've heard that the class syllabus is supposed to say a lot about the instructor. Accordingly, the words on my syllabus were chosen carefully. It's the (initial) space wherein I can adamantly announce my teaching objectives until I start to deviate from my initial plans because, as a first-time teacher, it's a given that I will deviate. And here I'm not referring to the content of the course--homework, feeders, unit projects, oral presentations, etc. I'm concerned with the kind of teaching philosophy that is embedded in my syllabus; this is why the words are important. I know I sound really strict, but I don't like that word. Ideally, I want my students to think of me as demanding? Why? Because I want to teach them how to write and how to do it well. I want to be demanding because I care. And I think to be demanding is also to demand a lot from myself: time, energy, time, energy, time.

I would hate my classroom to become a space wherein the banking concept of education manifests itself; that would be horrifying. Ultimately, I know that, for some students, this will be the case, but I will do my best to fight against it. I've had amazing teachers and professors, and there will always be someone that is (hyper)critical and negative, sometimes for the sake of being so. My goal is to not let that someone (if I should encounter a student like that in my class) influence anyone else. Negativity and pessimism can be fatal in the classroom. And, for me, the classroom is a place of meaning; wherein the student can choose to be mediocre only if he/she wants to be.