This semester, I walked into Professor Gleason's course as a second-year graduate student with a two classes to teach, my first ever in my career. Before I walked into the classroom where I taught, I had almost thirty years of experience of sitting behind a desk and learning from either a teacher, a professor or an instructor, so as I walked in as an instructor for the first time, I had preconceived notions of how to do things properly. As in there's a right way, and I thought I had learned it and was going to stick to those styles and teaching methods.
As I taught, concurrently I took Professor Gleason's Practicum course and learned a great deal; not necessarily learning I was wrong, just that there are a myriad of ways to teach, for students to learn, that there have been many changes in education since I first took a seat in a classroom in 1984.
Process is a major theme I gained from the course, readings and assignment, specifically when it comes to teaching writing, the method of scaffolding, which ultimately is a process in which the students participates in, grows from and gains vast confidence and experience. Scaffolding assignments and maybe even the entire semester benefits not only the student, but also allows for me, the instructor, to follow more closely my students' progress and allows for me to get to know them. Scaffolding can even be applied conceptually to students' vocal participation in courses where that's a requirement, such as the two I taught this fall.
In the beginning of the semester, I encourage students to speak up in class, that's it's part of their grade and end with, "not everyone in life has the ability to speak; it's a privilege, so use your voice." The concept of process, of unraveling skill and comfort in crafting this skill of public speaking applies. Some students who are shy may use nonverbal communication or subtle forms of communication and I learned this semester that those cues are just as valid as raising one's hand. A student will, if positively guided, come out of their shell but for most of those students it's a process and it will happen if they are persistent and courageous. It may take a semester, it may take an entire academic career, in either case, it's a process.
Another style of teaching I intend to implement is multimodal learning. This is where my proper and right ways of learning and teaching clashed with current educational practice standards. I gained valuable insight and changed my stance with how I will approach a syllabus or assignment or the classroom in general. I learned today's students learn in a myriad of ways and there are multiple literacies. Allowing students to share their work orally, digitally or with traditional writing mode allows for them to gain confidence as their comfortable withe using their strengths instead of trying to fit a model all are to fit into. This profoundly shifted my perspective. Technology is part of our everyday and it's not leaving, and to leave it outside of the classroom is to leave everything learning within the classroom behind and with it, the students' education.
A powerful lesson was that of how important it is to know our students when grading their writing. I spoke quickly in class, assuming a specific background of a student without knowing anything about them, thus making judgments about this student's work based on that assumption. Getting to know my students is probably one of the greatest things I can do as a teacher. I know I care enough people, I know I have enough skills from my education to teach writing, I know I convey information in a fun, friendly way, and correct compassionately - what I don't know are my students' stories. This I don't know. If I am to teach them or coach them, I need to know at least in some way, where they are or wanting to go.
Last, as I read, "From Silence to Words: Writing as a Struggle," by Min-Zhan Lu, I immediately applied what I learned from that article into my everyday teaching during the Fall 2014 semester. At City College I have the invaluable opportunity to teach students from multiple cultural and geographic backgrounds, and as I taught epics, plays and epic poems from Western Civilization, I consistently and conscientiously framed the discussion and any of the comments in a globalized perspective. In addition, I encouraged my students from other countries to add their knowledge and stories of their home culture to open discussions of comparison, survey and deep consideration of what it all meant to them in their everyday life in 2014 living in a globalized society. Especially when teaching Dante's Inferno, this reading helped me and reminded me this work is in the eyes of the writer and his time and culture, and I constantly reminded the students of this fact, never to speak for the writer or as if he spoke for everyone but to frame it within his lens.
I walked into the classroom a new teacher and a new student to learning how to educate, and I came out a different teacher with my experience as a student. I maintain the lessons I learned as a student; however, without a doubt, the new lessons I learned as a student this fall I intend to implement all throughout my career. Just as there are many ways of expression of art or genres of literature or colors in the light spectrum, there are many ways to learn and grasp knowledge, to teach and convey knowledge, and these students who are in my classroom will be from an array of backgrounds, bringing with them a different perspective, shedding new light on material, and we will have the opportunity for only the privileged of this world: sharing knowledge with one another in a classroom.
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