Finding My Teaching Style

Hey Everyone,

I have it in me to blog again. If you've gotten a chance to speak to me you've heard that I haven't had the most fun teaching my class. I have had great days and really days where I'm frustrated with students for not having read. I find myself not in my comfort zone and I'm not a big fan of lecturing (I wasn't as a student). I'm also coming to a place where I'm not very familiar. Purdue is a state school where most of its students are from Indiana and an occasional bunch from Illinois. Adjusting to the location hasn't been too difficult as a student but as an instructor I guess its something different. I LOVED my teaching experience over the summer with my high-school students from Newark and other parts of New Jersey but I don't want to attribute things only to location. They chose to be there and had been committed to the nonprofit for three years already. My students now have to take this class to fulfill their "diversity" requirement which I personally find strange although I understand the merit it in.

So I'm sitting here trying to think of creative ways to engage my students some of which do regularly read an d are somewhat interested in the material. I keep saying this but I am infinitely more grateful for the wonderful professors I have had at Duke. Don't get me wrong I've also had Professors that I didn't care for but they really aren't the majority. I try to think of what it was that I really liked about some of my classes and try to enter them into my classes. They seemed to happen to effortlessly for them. Not so much for me. I find myself stumbling through lectures and really not enjoying going into the classroom which I know has to affect my students. I guess I'm still trying to find my teaching voice and style. I already know how I will change some aspects of the syllabus for next semester and adding articles that I LOVED as an undergrad and would love to teach. This semester I just used the core readings (most of which I hadn't read and am now reading and creating lesson plans). In case you didn't know one of my majors was African and African American Studies at Duke.

So in thinking of what my teaching style is I definitely want to incorporate a lot of the theory I'm learning now within feminist discourse. I want to find a way to decenter the classroom where the teacher isn't the focal point of the class. I try to do that now with my students submitting discussion questions every week. I want them to feel like they are a part of the class as opposed to always being spoken to which is one of my issues with lecturing. Don't get me wrong there are some GREAT lecturers out there and sometimes a professor has to to cover a lot of information and/or cover the reading that the students so obviously haven't read. Either way de-centering the classroom is something I try to focus on and need to find my way of doing that consistently. Another tactic I have learned is successful is group work. As an undergrad I HATED group work. It was probably one of the most annoying things but I've found (past summer and this semester) that for the most part my students really get a lot out of group work and its proves for dynamic discussion. So now my students have group projects and I try to incorporate it at least once a week (from now on).

I don't know, this is a work in progress I guess. I'm not a great teacher yet and I know it but I guess the most I can do is keep trying different things and cross my fingers hoping that it might work. I hope through it all I make some connections with my students (which I think I'm beginning to do). We'll see where I'm at when I'm done teaching my first class. The director of the African American Studies Research Center is coming to observe my class next week Friday and I'm a little nervous about it although I know it'll go faster than normal. We'll see how that goes.

PS: I'm reading on campus well obviously not right now but was before writing this and will after finishing this. This is my life lol. At least I'm reading stuff I really care about. I'm a lot more confident in being a student which I know I've done for far longer. But I can say I'm participating a great deal in my classes and I'm getting through most of the reading. I still need to work on my writing skills but that will always be a work-in-progress.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!