A cool teaching moment

To post in a more positive vein, I thought I would talk about an encouraging student moment today.

I met with a very good student from one of my classes - her writing, while good, has room to improve, but her class participation is wonderful - thoughtful, prepared, and suspicious of received wisdom in a good way. Anyway, we got to talking about the course in general, and she told me that she and her best friend and a third student had all specifically arranged their schedules to take this course together this fall, as they'd been in the first part of this course sequence together last year and wanted to continue the experience. She told me how the three of them, as well as her roommate, sit in one of their dorm rooms and argue about the issues raised in this course. And that she and the best friend, especially, write their papers together - not in the sense that they do each other's work/share the work (their papers are never at all similar), but in the sense that as they write they continue to argue about the topic, question each other, and push each other to make their arguments stronger.

This is the kind of thing that makes teaching rewarding.  This is the kind of thing students are SUPPOSED to do in college (especially at a liberal arts college).

(Now, I have to point out that this is not a phenomenon for which I can take a whole lot of credit - the students were like this last year, and since this is the not-history program I teach in, where the course has been in place for generations, it's not like I can even take credit for much of the course, since I'm teaching within certain fairly strict parameters. So at most, I can probably congratulate myself for not completely squelching their enthusiasm - but some days, that feels like an accomplishment! And in the meantime, I get the fun of teaching this group.)

Now I'm off to read the assignment for tomorrow's class... (Sleep? what is this sleep you speak of?)

Comments

[Jane]

How awesome! I think you're giving yourself too little credit here. Because the point is that YOUR class is the one that's firing them up, and therefore YOU do have something to do with that. You are an effective teacher! Hurray! :)

[What Now?]

Oh, how rewarding! I love it when students get fired up about course material. Like you, I think that most of the credit actually goes to the individual students, but I do think that there's an atmosphere created in some classes that inspires more of this excitement. Whatever the reason, enjoy it!

[Rana]

I agree - give yourself more credit!

You should also give yourself credit for being the kind of teacher with whom students feel they can have such conversations. That is deeply, deeply cool.

[yankee transplant]

I am not a teacher (obviously) and I was never a good student (as you can tell by my lack of diploma), BUT: I am here to tell you that you NEED to take more credit, because only a really great teacher would inspire her students to carry on outside the classroom. If the course were presented in a dull and uninteresting fashion, they would ho-hum their way out of the room and write only what would get them the minimum acceptable grade. So, yeah, what Rana said, too.

[Professor Bastard]

Yeah, what Yankee Transplant said about what Rana said.

It's especially gratifying to see the students working together . . . skills so rarely developed in a meaningful sense.

Here, wanna cigarette burn-free donut?

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Aww, Prof. Bastard, you kept it burn-free just for me? I'm fucking touched.

And thanks, everyone, for such nice words! I still think my accomplishment is more one of not dampening their enthusiasm than anything else, but I'm fairly pleased with that. ;-)