Teaching Journal: New semester, fresh anxieties

September, a time of beginning for those of us at all connected to schools in North America. A slight chill in the air as summer battles it out with the coming fall. The smell of brand new books. Students clad in their latest fall school clothes, still looking prim and glowing with anticipation (before the doom and gloom of midterms hit in October). New classrooms to get used to all over again.

And then there are the anxieties, those nagging voices in the back of the head. I hope I don't have any trouble-makers. I hope they are all big talkers. I hope they do their readings and assignments on time. These words tend to overwhelm the more excited questions: I wonder who will awe and inspire me this semester? I wonder what amazing knowledge we will create together in this room? I wonder who will rise to the occasion and surprise me from the sidelines?

I have just nine students this semester. It's a fourth year seminar, which tends to make the enrollment very low, according to a faculty I ran into in the first week of school. It risked being cancelled but here we are now! Yesterday, five showed up for class. Sigh. They seemed keen enough last week, what happened? First blow to confidence.

Three of the students are "returning customers", one from earlier this year and two from last year. The one from earlier this year wasn't technically qualified to take the course (not enough credits under the belt) but I allowed him in because he impressed me so much in the previous course. The fact that two from last year, my very first teaching experience that had huge ups and downs, came back and stayed should tell me something. But the voices of anxiety make a formidable force and expel all positive and more realistic assessments.

First real class, three dense readings, half of the class present. I was nervous before class. Barely slept, barely ate, overly caffeinated. I must have been thrown off by the low attendance. I whisked around in front of the black board with a chalk in my hand, dust everywhere, writing and making long uneven arrows across the board surface. Song and dance, I'd joke to describe teaching, but there I was. Then several awkward moments of silence while we gather our thoughts and try to figure out what all of it means. Sometimes the lines on the board seemed just that, lines on the board, terrifying and incomprehensible. And then a thought emerges shimmering from the murky depths and we're on our way to somewhere safe and recognizable. More or less.

It's a tough class to be in as a student. Four hours (much too long) of sitting very close to the front in a tiny group of five, highly visible and under a lot of pressure to contribute (it takes me less than 10 seconds to make significant eye contact with each one). We went for about 2.5 hours of discussion with a break in between. By the end there were lots of blank faces, idle scratching in the notebook, heavy silences. It's hard not to take it personally. It's hard not to read into it. "Oh no, they don't like me. Oh no, they think I don't know enough. Oh no, they think this is a waste of time." It's hard to remember that boredom is a necessary and unavoidable part of learning. It was a huge part of my learning as an undergrad! When the class adjourned, I felt raw with anxiety, excitement and confusion. "Was it a good class? I think it was a good class. I hope they weren't too confused. We talked about some great stuff... but was it too much? Or too basic? Do they care?"

What saved the morning was when the student from my previous class this year stayed behind to tell me that he got a book I listed in the recommended readings and asked for a suggestion on how to approach the book. And there I was, in my favourite place in all of teaching-land, talking one-on-one with a student, geeking out. A familiar place that I know is safe and rewarding.

I've heard many people talk about how stressful and emotionally trying teaching can be... though I've heard very little talk about exactly what makes it stressful and trying. For me, it's the social aspect of teaching. It's like being at a potluck party where no one knows one another and I'm the host who has to figure out what we'll do together. I need to come up with games and activities, connect people who share interests, come up with conversation topics when there's a lull, provide comfortable space for my guests. And outside, I would have needed to coordinate with everyone so that dishes don't overlap, there is enough food for everyone, people know where and when the party is, etc. etc. It's a huge task! All the while thinking: I hope this party doesn't suck! And the thing about parties (for me when I host them) is that if I feel that they weren't fantastic, they're no good at all. (Can we say issues?)

But, like a party, the guests rise to the occasion. They can entertain and charm one another. They'll figure out who they get along with, what they want to do and fill their glasses when they run dry. And guests bring their own crap to parties: anxieties, desire for attention, people watching, networking, etc. What I found so far in teaching is that, for the most part, students care about you if you care about them. And they share in your caring about how the class runs and about the quality of the discussions. And, once in a while, you get a handful who love learning and are just so happy to be there that they are willing to commute for an hour to get there.

I guess for me, as someone starting out (or even gearing up to start out) as an educator, my task is to figure out what kind of educator I want to be and can be as well as what I perceive to be learning. Yesterday, I was beating myself over some details that I didn't know, such as whether or not men who come out as having sex with men can donate blood. But is my role as educator really to know all that stuff? Is it my primary function? I know in my heart that my role is to guide and facilitate learning, provide conceptual direction and feedback on writing and thinking. It's amazing how these conventional notions of what it means to teach and what it means to learn (that education means the passing on of knowledge in neat packages of information) creep up and hit you in such profound and visceral ways. Because I felt it in my stomach, a feeling of dread that I didn't do my job.

So... here's to taking a breath and remembering what it means to teach, to learn and to educate. And that guests will rise to the occasion and it's not entirely on me. As I said yesterday morning, learning is about the co-creation of knowledge.

When life throws you a curve ball

Earlier this month, I had been looking forward to some time to focus on writing and to recuperate from the semester of teaching but those plans went right out the window. My personal life took an unexpected nose-dive. It's been a very tough month. Luckily, the chaos hit in the final week of class and I've had three weeks to wallow in my sadness but I also blew away those three weeks that I had planned to complete revisions on a chapter and to do some RA work. One week remains until the start of a new semester. I am to teach yet another new course, this time a fourth year seminar on pharmaceuticals. I just hope I pull myself together this week.

Earlier this summer, I went from scrambling to be ready to put myself out in the job market this year to making the difficult decision not to. This significantly freed up my daily schedule but I was determined to continue the daily writing routine I had set up in the summer. I found the space, (workspace at my advisor's research hub), times (late morning to late afternoon) and days (weekdays only, not weekends) that work for me so that I consistently wrote everyday and still managed to enjoy the weekends. I did this while balancing the responsibilities of teaching and RA administrative work. We all know that finding a routine like this is like finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow: it's rare, much sought after and when you find it you hold on to it with your dear life.

But then you can't plan your life like you can plan your schedule. Life doesn't allow for micro-managing. It likes to throw you curve balls: personal tragedies, injuries, accidents, etc. What do you do then? And what do you do when you're on a tight schedule?

One of the things I try to be mindful of when teaching is to not perpetuate neo-liberal demands on the individual without regard for structural forces. With general increase in tuition costs and decline in the guarantee of employment after graduation, university and college students these days face major pressures. They often work full-time, have various family responsibilities and get sick quite often. Let's face it. Life as an undergrad is extremely stressful. As an instructor, I want to see myself as a facilitator in learning, not a gatekeeper for diplomas and grades or an enforcer of penalties. With grading systems in universities and the role of post-secondary education in social stratification, it's impossible to fully dissociate my from these roles. But I try to do my best. I make a point of being lenient on late assignments so long as the students explain their reasons. I think this effort on my part creates a climate of trust between the students and I and produces good work from the students.

I want--and should--apply the same kind of leniency based on a critical stance in relation to neo-liberalism on my own work ethic. It's really hard not to feel like I'm slacking off and wasting my time. I often have to remind myself that I'm taking the necessary time to heal and recover from a very stressful event. As my best friend reminds me, not only is it necessary, it is feminist to value emotional well-being and to withstand capitalist pressures to primarily define myself solely in terms of work.

So far, I've taken some steps to help those around me be aware of where I am. I've told my advisor that I'm facing some challenging times in my persona life and I asked a professor for additional time to do RA work for her. In other words, I've asked for help... and I tried to do so in a way that is professional, respectful and honest. So far, everyone has been very kind and generous, which is not always the case. I have also been very lucky because not everyone would be so accommodating. I'd like to think that asking for help when times are tough (because, let's face it, they can't always great) and allowing myself to be a bit vulnerable actually makes me come across as more mature and professional.

Teaching Journal (9): Course evaluations

When I saw students' comments in my course evaluation last semester, I realized that students really don't know how to evaluate a course or the instructor. The comments were all over the place, from sweet but relatively unhelpful praises about me to complaints that the course did not sufficiently deal with new information technologies when I explicitly told them in the introductory class that we will look at old technologies and science in general. There were also contradictory comments about there being too much writing on one hand and the feedback they received from me being very helpful on the other. And I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, either, but there is no dialogue between the two comments so there's no way for me to know what they mean in the context of an entire course.

I see two immediate problems with end-of-semester anonymous course evaluations.

1) Seeing the evaluations after the course is over means that the instructor can't make any changes to address concerns. During the very first course I taught last year, I gave out mid-semester evaluations for feedback but I quickly realized that I'm too much of a novice to improvise mid-semester to meet the needs of the particular group. And so for two semesters I haven't administered the mid-semester evaluation. But perhaps I'm now experienced enough to try this out again.

2) Anonymity means that the students are protected to make honest comments but it has also come to (unnecessarily) mean that students complete the evaluations in isolation from other students. There are already issues of reliability when administering an evaluation survey on one day during the 13-week semester. But to have the evaluations be only a solo affair adds to the problems. How about a focus-group style evaluation where students can draw on the pool of memory about the entire course, rather than relying on their own limited memory? I do think that anonymous and individual evaluations are also useful but should not be the only type of evaluation that is meaningful. Isolating students during evaluations takes away from the idea that seminars are driven by group learning.

Even when I was an undergrad, I was never taught how to complete a course evaluation. The survey is considered self-explanatory and the comments are seen as peripheral. Now that I'm teaching, I find the comments the most interesting (and frustrating) to read. It's when I am most challenged and also the most meaningfully acknowledged for my efforts. This semester, just before administering the course evaluations, I invited all the students to recall my objectives for the course (which are to help students become critical scholars and engaged citizens) and to consider this when doing the evaluations. I also told them (may for the first time) that the department takes the evaluations very seriously. I asked them why the evaluations may be important for the department to arrive at the idea that they help to meet the learning needs of students. To this end, I asked them to consider their own learning needs and limitations and be aware of them when evaluating the course.

I left the room as part of the ritual of anonymous evaluations and wondered if I came across as too defensive and trying to sway their comments in my favour. I was stricken with fear. I haven't seen the evaluations yet but will find out whether or not my words helped students to comment in a meaningful way. I need to figure out a better way of doing this, I think.

Teaching Journal (8): Reflection activities--benefits and pitfalls

I tend to make up assignments as I go. A risky process, I'm sure. But I'd like to claim that the spontaneity allows me to meet the needs and interests of students as they arise. *ahem* I gave four reflection assignments during the summer semester for the second-year seminar, "Introduction to Power and Regulation of Self and Society." Here is a breakdown of the process and results of each.

1) Borders: I asked students to think about different kinds of borders that they have encountered in their lives. I defined "border" as more than just a geographical border between nation-states; they can be cultural, symbolic, social, political and economic borders. The objective of this assignment was to understand how relations of power manifest themselves as limitations and barriers of all kinds that apply to different people. By locating some of these borders in the life of the students, they would be able to objectively examine their own unique experiences. Many students ended up writing about crossing the border to go to the US but some talked about borders with respect to mental health, gender roles and class status. And it turned out that the became the defining theme of the first third of the entire course and I could refer back to the assignment during class. It's great when things magically fall into place! Success rating: 5/5

2) Single Story: I screened the video lecture of Chimamanda Adichie called "The Danger of the Single Story" and asked students to choose a newspaper article that portray a single story and discuss the context and possible consequences of such a narrow narrative. I adapted an in-class activity I gave during a third-year seminar into an actual assignment for a second-year course. The objective of this assignment is to understand the concept of stereotype as it relates to relations of power and to analyze concrete examples from everyday life, i.e. newspapers. I think that this activity is appropriate as an in-class activity for a upper-level class, since they should be able to exercise critical thinking with relative ease and speed. Meanwhile, this is appropriate as a take-home assignment for a lower-level class so that it allows students time to think and write with care. The only problem was that I didn't have enough time during the class to discuss the video after showing it, which resulted in some mis-reading of the video for the assignment. I'll need to remember to give myself enough time for discussing the video before students write the assignment. Success rating: 4/5

3) Walk-About: I asked students to bring a digital camera device to class and sent them out to the Vancouver downtown area to photograph spaces that they think are safe and then unsafe for the poor and the homeless. This activity followed readings and presentations on the spatial politics of class, poverty and criminality. I explicitly asked the students not to photograph people. I mostly did this because I knew from my very first teaching experience that photographing people for a class assignment opens up a can of worms in terms of ethics. I also didn't want students to objectify the poor and the homeless by photographing them, which would be against my personal ethics. Students went in groups for about 45 minutes and returned with lots of photos. We discussed what kinds of borders we see, why they photographed the things they did, why they think the spaces they captured were safe or unsafe for the poor. The objective of this assignment was to understand the relationship between space and power. One student approached me afterwards and explained that she is involved in the Downtown Eastside community and has always felt uncomfortable about students going to the area to take photographs. She had asked to conduct the activity solo rather than in a group as I had asked. I was impressed that she asked me to meet her needs, which was to avoid contributing to the imbalance of power and objectification of people living in the DTES. I explained to her that I had specifically asked students not to take photographs of people for the same reason, but I did feel somewhat caught for potentially partaking in the objectification of the DTES. What did I learn? I will give this activity again but more explicitly integrate the notion of power in the relationship between the photographer and the photographee, particularly when their relationship outside of photography is already so skewed through relations of power. Success rating: 4/5

4) Research Journal: I had to miss two consecutive weeks of class, one of which overlapped with a holiday. I cancelled one class and scheduled a information session with the campus librarian on how to access the library's resources for research. I also asked a friend to introduce Community Health Online Digital Archive & Research Resource (CHODARR), which is a community-based free-access archive of research and community literature related to different groups in downtown Vancouver. I asked the students to explore both the library and CHODARR archives, write down the kinds of key terms they searched for, and then discuss the differences between them. The objective for this assignment was for students to reflect on their own research process and also to understand the relationship between knowledge and power. I prepared a short lecture about CHODARR for my friend to give to class before they did the activity, which explained CHODARR as a project that seeks to address the imbalance of power between researchers and marginalized people in downtown Vancouver who are often the objects of research on additions, mental health, HIV/AIDS and housing. Unfortunately, many students missed this introduction because they arrived in class late (which was another issue throughout the semester) and the resulting reflections was a broad range of critical insights about the links between power and expert or legitimate knowledge, to unreflective criticism of CHODARR as limited and unsuited for their own research. I will give this assignment again but will make sure that I provide a more robust introduction and allow time for discussion beforehand. Success rating: 3.5/5

Return, refocus and reflect

I tried out a different web-space through my university but publishing a blog with iWeb turns out to be rather inefficient and takes up a lot of time and web-space. And so back to trusty Blogger! I've moved all the posts I made earlier in the year below.

It's been a very interesting and trying year so far. I've taught two courses back to back as a sessional instructor (and am teaching another one in the fall), finished a draft of a dissertation chapter, did some administrative work through my RA position and made some tough decisions about going on the job market. I decided not to, after a long and painful deliberation. From all the great advice I've gotten over the years, it seems that entry-level tenure-track and post-doc applications consume all time and energy, so much so that my advisor has told me to write off the semester when I put together job applications. "Don't even think about planning do any writing on your dissertation during that time because it won't happen" were her exact words. The mental, emotional and temporal demands of putting together job apps are so particular and strenuous that it makes doing any other work virtually impossible. My dissertation as it stands is not ready to win the confidence of my committee for them to write stellar recommendation letters for me. I decided that it's pointless to waste time and energy putting in a mediocre application and have to do it all over again in less than a year. Instead, I decided to devote the time to put forth a solid dissertation and win the confidence of my committee.

This was a very tough decision. To say that I'm eager to graduate and start working is an understatement. The year of teaching and the summer of teaching+writing+doing administrative work has helped to raise my confidence about my ability to deal with the demands and pressures of the job. I feel ready to get out there and start my professional life! But alas, I will have to put it on hold. That is the hardest part. Ultimately, though, I feel very good about my decision. I will be happier and healthier for it.

Teaching Journal (7): Going outside the curriculum

It’s easier to identify and address the needs of students who are struggling in the class than to be attentive to those of students who excel. Whether it’s giving feedback on assignments or expanding critical thinking through class discussions, guiding and challenging students at levels A- and below seem to be more obvious. But what about the A to A+ students? How to challenge them?

I have about five students in my class who operate at the level of MA students in terms of sophistication in thought and in writing. I felt that I can do more for them than just give them good grades and write encouraging comments on their papers.

Luckily for me, my graduate department is currently organizing a conference that is open to undergraduate students. I announced the call for papers in class and then approached the five students individually by email to encourage them to apply, suggesting that they modify their final essay proposal (which they submitted earlier in the week) into a 150-word abstract. When their abstracts are accepted, they can present their final paper (12-15 pages, a good length for a 15 minute presentation with some revision) at the actual conference.

One student declined because he is unable to attend the conference in June but appreciated my encouragement, that it is “an award in itself.” (Same student spoke a lot in class today, though he is normally shy. I wonder if it’s because he felt encouraged by my invitation to apply for the conference?) Four responded that they will apply and I helped three of them over the weekend to modify their proposals into abstracts.

I also explained to the four what to expect at a graduate conference, providing a detailed outline of who speaks when and how the discussion and Q&A period works. I had to remember what it was like being an undergraduate, not knowing what to expect and feeling insecure and intimidated at the prospect of presenting in front of a group of graduate students. I can’t attend the conference, which is unfortunate since I won’t be able to provide them with moral support and “protect” them if they face hostility in the Q&A period. But I plan to ask some of my peers to “look after them” in my place.

The abstract submission was indeed a challenge for these students. Even the student who has excelled in every aspect of the course so far expressed feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. So this whole process is not part of the curriculum at all. It’s definitely “extra” curricular work that’s not part of my job description. But it’s immensely satisfying for me to know that I’ve provided these students with meaningful and (hopefully) exciting challenges that they otherwise would not find in their regular undergraduate program. And it really was minimal work. I just had to email them and to read and edit three 150-word abstracts. With such little initiative and creativity I get such a sweet reward.

Teaching Journal (6): Plagiarism

I had my first plagiarism case of my career. I had assigned concept papers for my class, which are basically key-term papers in which students are to paraphrase an author(s)’s major concept in their own words without writing a reflection or using direct quotations from the author. I knew it would be a difficult assignment and some students struggled more than others. A few were extremely successful.

I was grading the second batch of these papers when I came across one paper with a flawless introduction. I was very impressed then moved onto the next paragraph, only to discover that the style and tone were significantly different from those of the introduction. It was as though two different people wrote the two paragraphs. Out of curiosity, I Googled the introduction and found, to my dismay, that the words were taken directly from the author’s abstract in the journal publication that preceded its appearance in the edited volume that I assigned for the class. He had changed a few words here and there but the structure was exactly the sam. Now that I discovered the plagiarism, I had to do something about it...

Luckily, I had attended an academic honesty workshop last year, conducted by a faculty member in our department. I knew from this workshop that there is a process in place that doesn’t jump to punishment and discipline. First, there is a warning; second, there is penalty for the assignment. Each step increases in severity until it reaches expulsion, I believe. I contact the student about the incident, careful to avoid using the word plagiarism, and requested a meeting at my office to which the student responded quickly. I found the form, after doing some searching on the web, at an office I can’t recall right now (in Maggie Benston Centre) and prepared my documents before meeting with the student. I didn’t know what to expect. For all I knew, he may be defensive or angry...

When the student walked in, I knew from his expression that he was terrified. I calmed him down by asking how he was, how his midterm went earlier in the day. I brought out the paper and explained how I discovered that he used the words of the author without citation. I then asked him to tell me his story. He explained that he found the assignment difficult and he researched the paper and came across the author’s abstract. Since he wasn’t allowed to use quotations, he took parts of the abstract and changed some words, thinking that it is allowed. He simply didn’t know the “rules”.

I suspect that at moments like these, an instructor is left to either believe the story or disregard it as a lie with differing consequences in the disciplining process. It’s a strange moral dilemma that places the instructor and the student in a dance of suspicion: “is he lying?”... “is she buying it?” When it comes down to it, the assignment was difficult and the student very well may not have known what to do. I could picture him huddled over his computer trying to figure out this difficult reading, particularly as a student whose first language didn’t seem to be English, and trying to meet an assignment deadline. And he had no support. This was before I had conducted my writing exercise using Peter Elbow’s video. Despite my attempts at explaining the assignment several times and providing an example with one of my own key-term papers in class, the students were left to their own devices. It just doesn’t seem realistic to me for the situation to be pared down to either lie or truth.

Then an amazing thing happened in the meeting that caught me by surprise. The student confessed that he didn’t actually understand what he was writing, pointed to various parts of his own paper and asked: “What does this mean?” We talked about his writing process for assignments and I discovered that over the years he has developed a formula on how to summarize readings without fully understanding them. I suppose the formula had worked for him so far but this assignment exposed the cracks in his process. We discussed the meaning of the concepts in the article and I suggested trying a different writing process: to write in his own words first, much like free-writing, then revise what he has wrote.

At the end, we returned to the plagiarism question at hand. I asked him what he thinks should happen. He answered that he should fail the assignment at the very least; he knew that academic dishonesty was serious, even though he didn’t know he was partaking in it. I responded that I disagree with his assessment. I gave him a warning, asked him to redo the assignment without penalty, completed the form and kept the matter between the student and I (there was no indication on the form or anywhere that the instructor is obliged to report all incidents to the department). He was surprised and we talked more about the assignment and how he can approach it. We also chatted about graduate school as he was mildly interested in pursuing a Master’s degree.

So my first plagiarism case became a teaching opportunity, rather than discipline or punishment. The same student now approaches me in class (until then he was shy and hung at the far back of the classroom) to ask questions about the final paper, runs by his ideas with me through email and has expressed interest in taking my summer course. I guess a cynic would claim that he wants to take my course because he’s pegged me for an “easy” teacher, but I’d like to think that I gained his trust as an educator. In a way it is reciprocal: I showed him that I trusted the sincerity of his mistakes and gave him guidance instead of punishment, and now he is trusting me to be his teacher again. That to me has been one of the greatest awards so far in teaching. To win that trust---because it’s not a given, nor should it be---is more affirming than hollow positive comments on student evaluations.