The Balance of Teaching
I have fifty writing students this semester. I’m completely overwhelmed this semester with these fifty students, trying to keep all this writing moving forward. It’s too many writing students. Not enough stapling. It’s way, way too many sentences; quicksand.
About five, maybe seven of them are really, really into it. A couple more are stunningly talented, but not that into it, because they aren’t interested in their talent, they have plenty of other good occupations….
Some of the art of teaching is figuring out how to disperse my energy and how to fold my guilt about not doing enough into something that could be actually useful for someone else.
Each day in class I notice I’m talking a lot. Am I teaching enough?
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I know this feeling . . . I talk and talk and talk until I feel I have stunned my students with information. But is it sinking into their heads? Am I doing it right? Maybe it’s good that writing teachers don’t get confident. Keeps us on our toes.
Heather – I’m so interested in the fact of this post. It relates to my thoughts on the Grad School Project and What is School For. What is very beautiful about this semester is that each class i have with the lovely Stacy Doris, she asks, What did you learn? The class is on memorization. We memorize poems and then translate them (textual, linguistic, thematic, etc.) and then analyze prosody. Each class she asks, what did you learn. This question denied any swift thought. And made me realize how rarely, in life, we are asked. What did you learn.
Maybe more so than what you can teach, what learning can you facilitate.
Sure, chicken and egg. BUT, it seems to me the learning comes from the embodiment and the Living of the work, in the student. More so than what a/the teacher can impart. It’s what’s walked around in. Living here, in Berkeley, with Literature PhDs, I see this everyday – this information all stuffed in the head as much as humanly possible. But what is it doing in the world? So much information, less knowledge, and where’s the wisdom?
Some musings on learning. I miss being in your classes, but i still walk around with them.
XO
Ah! My precise dilemma. How do I do some teacherly good without abandoning my necessary life. I’m never satisfied with the balance. Fifty-five students this semester. One has just decided he definitely does not want to teach, and yet he is the most perfectly suited to. He notices others in the class, helps them out in ways they are are not even aware of.