Reflections on teaching (1)

Teaching is a roller-coaster ride, ranging from moments of surprise and fulfillment to intense anxiety and disappointment. I had a really good group of twenty-eight students and taught a course that is directly in my area. And yet it was still extremely difficult. I had persistent nausea for two full months. Here are a few lessons I learned (that weren't so traumatic that I am able to share publicly):

1) Don't assign too many readings. I got carried away in my course design and assigned way too many readings. Readings are a bit like Powerpoint presentations in that, if you get carried away, they end up leading the class, not you. I'm sure the amount of reading I assigned (despite the warnings I received from seasoned instructors) reflected my insecurities. I had two 2-hour sessions per week. I wish I had assigned one or two really good readings per class and then included a list of recommended readings for all those articles that are really good but ultimately not as important.

2) No mid-term test, unless really necessary. It really depends on the discipline and the nature of the course, of course, but for an anthropology seminar like mine, a mid-term test was unnecessary. In fact, I think it made the students anxious for no reason. Ultimately, many did well and the test served the purpose I had intended: it gave the students the incentive to learn the materials and it gave me the chance to assess their reading and writing. But the same objectives could have been attained by assigning two Concept Papers instead. Besides, assignments are much easier to grade than tests! The single test was much more difficult to grade than the gazillion assignments. People just don't write as well under pressure, which makes grading like pulling teeth.

3) Do as little work as possible; get them to talk. This is not a cop out. It's actually really really hard! Seminars are all about talking... but not the instructor. After teaching this seminar, I've decided that lecturing is the easiest way to teach, but also not very interesting, especially in a seminar. When students don't talk---which they are known to do---it's a nightmare. And oh did I ever have nightmares! When students carry on conversations with one another... it's magic. Students learning from one another with you there to moderate is the best scenario I can imagine in a classroom. But to make this happen requires a lot of creativity in advance and during class.

The best class I had was in week 2 when I brought in images I printed from the Internet. The students got into groups to discuss one image then opened up to the larger class and just... talked. It was fantastic! And they really enjoyed it. It took a heck of a lot of time preparing (e.g. looking up images, choosing, printing, etc.) and a whole lot of work thinking on my feet to respond to and summarize the students' comments. So I did very little work in terms of getting them to talk, but to get to that point required a lot of work. Other methods I used were film screening, image slide-show, group activities and free-writing exercises. The students presented on their individual final essay projects and I made the presentations very informal so that they doubled as starting points for discussion in class. (Those were very good days as I needed to do very little prep, just "perform" during class.)

Final thought for today on teaching: grading. I hated grading when I was a teaching assistant and tutor marker but I hated it more as the instructor. At least as a TA grading felt like "part of the job" that I was doing for someone else, but as the lead instructor grading felt extremely limiting... and also irrelevant to my teaching. I had students who are great thinkers but are unable to articulate their thought into writing. Some students write beautiful analytical pieces but are weak at writing methodological sequences. Some students are really good at identifying main arguments in an article but don't fully understand reflexive thinking. Some students took risks that didn't always work but still they pushed their own limits. To compress all these different talents into one single grade that appears in their transcript is totally wrong and completely idiotic. As an employer, what is this one figure going to tell you about your job candidate?

I actually miss the grading system in grade school that assesses students based on different abilities, such as writing, reading, participation, arithmetic, gym, etc., that may or may not translate to subjects. I can assess undergrads based on reading, reflecting, analytical writing, critical writing, sequential thinking, creativity & risk-taking, linking with the everyday, etc. and still assign a value to their abilities. I'd prefer to not give grades but at least this way the evaluation scheme makes sense in the real world!

Responding to Comments

Another set of revisions to do by Monday. The past two months have been a series of edits after edits. I'm a little tired and look forward to defending the prospectus and moving on to the dissertation. Revisions for one person is one thing but to meet the requirements of two more people? Especially when they conflict? I was asked by my advisor to address suggested changes and comments under one of three categories:

1) Accept suggested revision. Some are very easy: it's just a matter of removing a word or adding one. Some are tougher: I need to clarify concepts that I use to address a misreading. Some are quite difficult: I have to restructure an entire section around a different term.

2) Reject suggested revision. Sometimes people comment to, well, comment, not so much to say that things need to be different. And sometimes it's a matter of a difference of opinion based on different disciplinary requirements or on particular intellectual "schools." But I need to fully explain why I reject a suggestion. I need to deal with this now so that it doesn't come up again and again later on after the prospectus.

3) Accept the suggestion but do it for a later stage, i.e. for the dissertation. And make good on this promise.

In addition to the revised draft, I will submit an addendum which outlines my reasoning for rejecting certain suggestions and includes notes on what I'll do for the dissertation that I will not do at the prospectus stage.

the bigger picture

At somewhat late in the stage of my prospectus I had to make a big structural change. I had to abandon one of the central concepts in my dissertation (Bourdieu's notion of illusio) for what had initially been a peripheral idea that I had dropped (nomos). It just made better sense this way. When talking about the organization of perception, illusio is a trait of the habitus and nomos is an extension of the field. Since I'm not interviewing doctors but looking at a semi-official document (The Medical Post), which is an expression of how doctors present themselves to one another as a collective, it makes more sense to examine the structural organization of perception rather than the range of dispositions in individual doctors. It's a tough decision, though, because it means discarding a lot of what I've painstakingly written and rewritten and starting afresh. I can't simply replace one with the other, either. Nomos must be stitched into the discussion and this will probably mean that I have to alter the structure of what I've written already. 

Editing lesson #2: For the sake of the bigger picture, I must break apart, discard and rebuild the different components of my argument... so I don't get too attached to any idea! I never know if or when I'll have to abandon it.

the art of editing your own writing

I never really learned how to do this. most of my undergrad (and grad) days were spent scrambling to finish the first and only draft of class papers by the deadline, press print then submit without looking. It was a tight-rope routine that I somehow mastered and grew accustomed to. Well, needless to say the magic has worn off. The quick-fix tricks don't work now that I'm preparing myself for the big leagues. And here I thought that coughing up the first draft was the hardest part!

One of the most difficult things is taking criticisms. So far they have been very constructive and helpful. It's hard when your advisor asks where you voice went and that reading my writing felt like trudging through mud (or something to this extent). The (not so) funny part is that her experience reading my writing was exactly my experience writing the thing. So lesson one: If I have an unusually hard time getting something down on paper, chances are the reader will have an unusually hard time getting through the paper.

This doesn't mean that I've totally regressed in this process. I seem to have done a lot of conceptual work, thinking through complex ideas and grasping them with relative success. The problems that I face now are that 1) with my existing writing skills, I can't express the complexities of my new thinking to do them justice and 2) in order to express these thoughts, I'm trying to imitate the writers that I draw from but butchering their masterful convoluted writing styles in my mimicry.

So I have to find my voice again so that my writing sounds like me, not a cheap version of someone else. At the same time, I need to improve on my technique, rooting out bad habits from the past and find new ways to express what I'm thinking into words. Or, more accurately, structure my writing to accurately organize the structure of my thoughts. The work I need to do are stylistic, structural, syntactic and grammatical. Woah...

But first, baby steps. Facing my first fear: Reading my own writing and breaking it apart.

new year, new goals

It's a new school year and the beginning of my fourth year as a doctoral student. How time flies! September is a time to lament over how little i've accomplished in the last year and swear to do more in the upcoming year. Ah~ the timeless ritual!

Goals for this school year:

- Finish and defend prospectus by December (gulp)

- Teach in spring (fingers crossed)

- Submit at least ONE article to a publication (pulling hair)

Another goal is to read at least 10 pages per day---an article, book, book review, essay, presentation, etc. (I first wrote 20 then changed it to 10... Gotta have modest goals. Goal setting 101!) In this spirit, I read an article today by Emily Martin on pharmaceutical sales reps. Yay! I keep forgetting that this is a key area for me and that I have to keep myself up to date. Oops. 

I also ordered Lorraine Daston's Objectivity (I've been drooling over this for a while now) and Annemarie Mol's latest The Logic of Care. I think they're gonna be good. :D More books to add to my pile of books-I-haven't-read-yet-what's-wrong-with-me. :(

breaking the writing habit

i've known for some time that i'm a certain kind of a perfectionist when it comes to my writing. i don't write in drafts---i've always written in such a way that by the time i write something down, it's my final (or close to final) draft. this worked well during my days as a student when meeting deadlines and getting good grades were my priority. often, it was an acutely exhausting process... but it always worked. i think i had this unacknowledged snobbism that drafts are for whimps (LOL).

according to my advisor, there are two extremes in approaches to writing: editing as you write and free-writing. 

the first approach means that you're already editing as you write. this is what i do. i think of a sentence, may even type it out, but quickly start modifying it in my mind or on the page before moving on. the benefit of this approach is that you don't have to do too much major editing later. the drawback is that it takes a long time to produce the first draft. this is also what i'm facing right now as i try to produce the first draft of my prospectus. it's taking much longer than it should and it's because i can't write the next sentence, even though the idea is already in my head. very annoying.

free-writing is basically thinking in writing. you don't hit backspace, you keep typing as thoughts pop up in your head. the benefit of this approach is that you get something out and you can write a lot in a short amount of time. the drawback is that you have to edit quite heavily, often making major structural changes.

i'm learning to how to edit less and free-write more. it's really tough. to make this learning curve a little less steep, i'm going to take advantages of a habit that i already have. when i'm stuck while writing, i take a shower and talk to myself outloud. i'm going to try audio-recording this process. maybe not in the shower, though! pace around the apartment perhaps? my MA advisor told me she would walk in her garden with a recorder and speak into it. sounds nice to me! i'm going to try this. i have a fairly good feeling about it, too! wish me luck!

putting together a course

...can either be a very simple task of cutting & pasting from notes or a challenging experience on par with preparing for a qualifying exam! for me it has generally been the latter, mostly because the courses i apply to teach for tend to be just outside of my primary area. so putting together a course outline and syllabus for the Cultures & Images course has been yet another challenge. here are some tips and insights i acquired through the experience and from talking to some wise folks.

1) look at other people's syllabus: if you can get a hold of a previous syllabus, that's great! if not, then find a comparable one for reference and to "borrow" ideas. many academics have their course syllabi online and departments sometimes post an entire syllabus for some of their courses on their website. browse through key scholars and departments in your course topic. E.g. Loic Wacquant posts his syllabi on his personal website: http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/#courses

2) go down the memory lane: for ideas on assignments and to write your cover letter, it's also good to remember the courses you enjoyed as a student and reflect on what made those classes unique. was it the pedagogical method? types of discussions? fun assignments? readings?

3) ask for help: send an email to previous instructors for the course and ask for advice. i happen to know a previous instructor for C&I fairly well and she sent me one of her syllabi which is amazing! not everyone will do this as syllabi are like gold, as are journal article drafts... but it's worth asking to get any advice, such as student attitudes in the past offerings of the course.

4) do more than asked: call-outs for sessionals/instructor contracts vary from position to position and department to department... but they're all looking for the same thing---a cover letter, a detailed outline AND syllabus (with weekly breakdown), detailed assignments, letters of reference, curriculum vitae and evalutions from previous teaching. my home department tends to omit one or more of these from their call-out but at the committee meetings all of these components count. so make sure you have everything in your application, even if they're not specifically asking for it in the call-out.

5) ...but don't do too much!: remember that this is an application and that you'll have time to tweak the weekly contents if and when you are hired. don't write the lectures, don't read too much in the area. just read enough to get the gist of the debates and the key players.

and some more wise words for the everyday scholar...

6) categorize your everyday reading into syllabi: this is an advice from my senior advisor. when you read anything (books, articles, reviews, etc.) categorize it as you would in a course syllabus. for example, if you read something in science studies, mentally or in writing, document where it fits in a weekly syllabus for an imaginary class called "Science Studies"---perhaps in "Postcolonial Science Studies" week, or in "Actor Network Theory" week? i really wish i had done this more... because this is very useful when it comes to putting together a real syllabus for a course.

all in all... putting together a course is a lot of fun! it's a lot of work and there are no guarantees... but extremely satisfying when you're done!