Why I enjoy teaching (when I do)

We've had the now-infamous "why we teach" meme; I was thinking today of a related topic - why I enjoy teaching. Not in the sense of, "I enjoy teaching because it brings light to oh-so-many lives," but in the sense of, "Today, at this specific place and time, class was fun." Because truthfully? Not every class meeting is fun. Plenty are, but not all. What makes the difference?

The thing I've realized is that it's not just about student preparation and performance and so on. Sure, it's pretty much a given that if students aren't prepared, class will NOT be fun. But I have taught classes (individual sessions, that is, not a whole term) where the students were prepared, bright-eyed and busy-tailed, engaged, and willing to talk about the material, and class has gone well, but for me, it hasn't been fun. It's even possible that it was fun for the students, just not fun for me.

By not fun, I don't mean painful or unpleasant or anything like that - I guess I really just mean, well, boring.

It seems I've reached a point in my (so-called) career where there are some things I've taught often enough that oh my god I am SO BORED with them. I know that even if I've read a text seventeen hundred times, it's the first time for my students, but sometimes it's really hard to remember that. And yes, one can change the readings around, and I do, but even so, after teaching a course six or seven times, certain conversations get a little old. Because there are certain conversations that you have to have when teaching a given subject, regardless of the specific texts you're teaching. They're conversations that I consider absolutely necessary for students who are approaching this all for the very first time, but when you've had them so many times before....

Take the Crusades, a subject completely outside my research interests but which I teach due to a variety of circumstances. The Crusades is a perennially popular medieval topic - it's one of the few medieval topics students have heard of, plus, you know, blood and guts - and so I've taught it a lot, probably more than I've taught stuff in my area of research. It's not that I don't want to teach the Crusades; I like teaching it - the students get into it, and there's lots of good stuff to talk about - lots of drama and conflict and all sorts of fun stuff. It's got built-in relevance in today's world, and it serves as a great entree into considering the impact of religion on society in lots of ways (something else relevant to today's world, but also great for introducing students to some of the peculiarities of the Middle Ages).

Anyway, it seems to me that if you're discussing the Crusades, you have to - HAVE to - discuss the question of why people went. I don't think you could possibly NOT talk about that. It doesn't matter which texts you're reading, you have to talk about it. But can I tell you how uninterested I currently am in discussing why people went on Crusade? (Not that I'm teaching the Crusades this term - hypothetically speaking.) It's not at all that I think I have all the answers about why people went on Crusade or that there's nothing else to be said on the question. And it's not that I don't think students are incapable of coming up with new observations on a text, either, because I do - each time I teach a text, a student comes up with something I hadn't thought of. It's just that I, personally, have reached the limits of my own interest in the subject. I've considered the question enough times that I've come up with an answer that works for me, and I'm good with that. I'm ready to move on.

Except, of course, that if I'm teaching the Crusades, I can't.

I was thinking about this today because I was thinking about how much I'm enjoying one of my current classes, and I was realizing that it wasn't so much that the students are so great or that every day goes swimmingly (though the students are pretty great and the class meetings so far have gone pretty well, but not in a way that's radically different from other classes I've taught). It's more that I'm enjoying this so much because I haven't worked through this all in my head, I don't know exactly what I think about it all, and so I get to work through all the issues with the students. To put it bluntly, I'm getting just as much out of this course as they are.

My relationship to the topic of this course is very different from my relationship to the Crusades. While this class isn't explicitly on my research (at all), a lot of it is set in the right century and country. I do find things in the course readings that I note down as relevant to my research. It's also pretty focused on a specific phenomenon, rather than a chunk of time or geographical region. Beyond that, though, I've only taught this topic once before, as a course aimed at first- and second-year students who, it turned out, were all pretty much fulfilling requirements. This time round, it's an upper-division course that fulfills no requirements. (That I know of.) So obviously that leads to a very different kind of class dynamic, one that's immensely more satisfying than in the previous incarnation.

But seriously, I really enjoy this class because I'm learning lots of cool shit. Some of that's coming from me, but a lot of it is coming from them. I didn't change the readings, so it's not that the material is new to me - but they come up with things I hadn't thought of, and I put that stuff together with things I already had thought of, and the result is something entirely new to both of us. This is one of the few courses I've taught where I feel like the students and I are collectively doing research, and coming up with what I consider honest-to-God scholarly arguments.

I hope this doesn't sound dismissive of my students' efforts in other courses. I have had many, many students who have produced really great stuff in my classes. I've had a lot of students who are way smarter than I am. But the structure of many history courses just doesn't allow for what I think of as really scholarly thinking. For instance, I used to teach the first half of the World Civ survey. I actually enjoy World History a lot, for some of the same reasons that I enjoy the Crusades. But it just seems to me that given the parameters of your average World Civ course, you're not able to address the material at what I'd consider a scholarly level. This has nothing to do with the abilities of the students; it's just that scholarship doesn't do what a World Civ course does. Comparing and contrasting the Roman and Han empires is a valuable classroom exercise and students can learn a lot from it, but in Intro to World Civ, we're never going to make that comparison in what I would consider a really scholarly way - in a way in which I learn just as much as the students, and what I learn is NOT about how better to teach the course or put materials together or emphasize themes, but is an actual understanding of the history that I wouldn't have had otherwise. At the intro level, that's because students are simply learning how to do this thing called history. Upper-division courses aren't always better, though, because they're still often divided into bigger units than your average scholar tries to tackle in their work.

Graduate seminars are probably a whole different kettle of fish. I know my program had an "Intro to Medieval History" sequence, which might not have been much more fun to teach than the undergraduate medieval survey. But there were also always those seminars that reflected the instructor's current research project, like Modernity and Violence, or The African-American Experience in South Africa - cool stuff like that. In some undergraduate contexts, you can teach courses like these; the one I'm teaching now is along these lines. But there's still always that need to teach World Civ, Western Civ, Intro to US History, etc. etc... and if you develop a cool topics course, it often ends up as a permanent addition to the catalog and a warhorse of the departmental offerings. In heavily teaching-oriented departments (as opposed to a doctoral program, perhaps), there's not always a lot of incentive to keep developing new courses, because the chances of connecting them all to your own research interests are not good, and it's a hell of a lot of work. (It's not that developing courses like these isn't work for graduate instructors, too. But if you can turn your current research project into a graduate seminar it seems to me you're making it serve double-duty in a way that's less common at undergraduate, teaching-oriented institutions.)

Obviously, me learning history is not what teaching is about. Producing scholarly work - the kind of scholarly work that teaches me something new - is not a realistic expectation for most college classes - again, not because all undergraduates are incapable of doing so (though many are, and we have to work with a range of students), but because the structure of their courses doesn't allow it. Nor is it the point. The point is for students to learn a whole bunch of stuff that, by now, I've known for a long time - but that doesn't matter, because they don't know it yet.

But me learning something new is what makes teaching fun. I take great satisfaction in my students' learning and progress, but it's not always fun.

The course I'm teaching now, though? Fun!

Comments

[Ancarett]

I'm with you on teaching new material to jump start new interests. My senior seminar on the Pre-Industrial Life Cycle remains a great deal of fun to teach (even on the fourth or fifth iteration). As a bonus, that study netted me some publications -- teaching to create a new research interest rather than just teaching what I research.

I'm just amused -- after not teaching the later Middle Ages for six or seven years, I finally taught that period again. After such a long break, I was positively giddy with happiness to be returning to the subject and focused all their major work around the Crusades. It'd been a while and felt fresh (especially with all the scholarship that's been added to the field since the late 90s).

[Sisyphus]

I agree --- that's why I thought I never could teach high school, where the texts you choose are mandated and whatnot. I get tired of things pretty quickly and want the freedom to be learning at the same time my students are.

And of course, since survey courses usually have the "thesis," so to speak, of "this topic exists! And it's important!" And that usually doesn't cut it for published research.

Speaking of my R1 at least, profs at research heavy places are _more_ likely to keep grinding out the same old topics courses year after year rather than develop new courses ... it still takes them several years to write a book, so they keep with their current research topic as long as they can ... and I think that they don't value the teaching and creating of new courses in the same way as at other institutions.

[Susan]

This is why it's so hard to teach a class on something you've written about too -- I love the way you put it "I've come up with an answer that works for me, and I'm good with that. I'm ready to move on."

I know lots of people who design upper division seminars or grad seminars to explore issues relevant to new projects -- because it's fun and they learn.

Really interesting--I just said over at Dr. Crazy's place that I have really been loving all these posts about teaching (the joys and struggles). But your post has me thinking about the whole issue of how most colleges are staffed. Seems to me we are moving to a system where more and more instructors are, in fact, teaching the same things over and over--that is college is becoming more like high school. This may not be true at R1s and liberal arts places, but my sense is that between the use of contingent faculty and the ongoing vocationalization of higher ed, we are headed to some pretty rote assignments. Can't be good for higher ed.

[Craig Smith]

Sorry--that was me who posted that last comment--thought I was signed in!

[history prof]

WHen you teach "World history" do you do third world (Africa, Asia) as well in that class? Or is it pretty much European history (England, France, Germany, Russia). Just curious.

[Boris]

You may be bored with it (and God knows there are topics that fail to interest me these days, as well), but you owe it to your students to feign interest. Or, better yet, rework the way you teach the Crusades so that it's interesting and provocative not only for them but you, as well.

[history prof]

I'm really really interested in the material. However my main focus lately seems to be preventing the athletes from texting during class :)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Boris - Do you really think I would walk into the classroom and act bored? That's a good way to kill a class dead. I do feign interest, and it's not really feigned, because I'm interested in the students, if not always the subject. No one has ever faulted my enthusiasm or energy in the classroom. I was just realizing yesterday the difference in my personal, internal reaction to the materials we were reading - not my reaction to the students or in the classroom.

history prof - yes, World History means the whole world - Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia et al., everything. I don't teach World History as Western Civ in disguise, and in fact, those courses really bug me. In fact, Europe plays only a very small part in my pre-1500 period course (because for most of that time it's a complete backwater). In a semester-long course, medieval Europe gets 2 lectures. Ancient Greece and Rome each get 1 lecture, if I remember correctly. And there's a Renaissance/exploration lecture at the end, but that's usually globally-oriented, too. The Black Death gets its own lecture, but it's treated as a global phenomenon (which it was), and as part of the impact of the Mongol Empire. Then there are some discussions of European sources, but always in tandem with non-European ones. (My World History course suffers somewhat from the "if it's Tuesday, it must be Han China" syndrome caused by trying to be comprehensive; I have about a lecture's worth of material for all ancient societies/religions! Though in my defense, that's largely following the lead of the textbooks out there. If I ever teach it again I want to make it more thematic.)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

history prof - yes, there is that! ;-) I don't think I have anyone texting in my classes (they're really small this term), but I am very suspicious of what they do with their laptops...

[Belle]

I teach both sections of World, and cannot teach is as European/Western with a fig leaf. Just can't. But given the parameters of the course, we have to pick & choose and things get left behind. The frustrations are what keep me reinventing the course, seeking those wonderful moments you talk about. I've yet to teach a class that even touches my research interests; what a concept. These posts help me a lot right now, as I'm reworking a teaching portfolio, and such musings are just what I need to help me articulate what I do and why.

So thanks!

[Boris]

NK - "Bored" was the wrong word and I don't mean to imply that you would actually walk into the classroom visibly disgruntled! But I do hope that you can find some way to kindle or rekindle your own interest in the question/topic.

[history prof]

They're texting under the desk. Trust me.

[CCPhysicist]

Very interesting. Wandered over here from Dr. Crazy's linkback, and I think I need to find some time this weekend to comment on both of those memes.

My observation is, just wait until it is 15 or 20 or 40 times! This is a big problem teaching physics, since it's not like physics has changed much since Newton ... but how we teach it has changed a lot in just the last decade.

I hadn't actually thought about it this way before, but the problem you write about might be why I have instinctively not wanted to teach my main class during the summer. I teach something quite different, and that helps me forget just enough about how I approached something so I don't teach like I just rewound the tape and started over. And the other class, which requires more "teaching", sometimes gives me new insights into what I need to work on.

It also helps to cultivate senility.

The result is that I found a totally new way to teach something this semester that really works. I also found a new way to motivate my students that seems to *really* work, although only time will tell.

[history prof]

I've been teaching the survey for 13 years. Same presidents, same laws, same wars. Over those years I've gone from writing on the white board to overhead transparencies to PPTs. I've developed in-class group projects, kept some, dropped others. I've introduced new readings. I've found websites that the students respond well to. For my Internet classes I do the discussion/homework questions "by hand" every time (new stuff). It keeps me fresh and interested in the material. If you look at it like "oh, God, this topic AGAIN for the UMPTEENTH TIME!" it gets really boring. But if you go in there with something new -- maybe an idea from a journal article or book, something that needs to be tweaked from the fall -- and sell it, the students will respond.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Boris - sorry, I was kind of in a bad mood yesterday morning!

The thing I should probably clarify is that I don't, honestly, go into the classroom thinking, this AGAIN!!!, because of the things that people have mentioned - I change readings, I change the way I teach a particular text, update lectures, use PPTs, change the activity around, use new texts, etc. So I'm always interested to see how students respond, whether activity x works better than activity y, etc. etc. And each term we end up emphasizing different things, because there are different people in the room and they're interested in different questions. I'm always engaged and invested and interested in how the students respond and so on. AND I don't want to underestimate the benefits of teaching something one is actually FAMILIAR with - it is also very nice to walk into class to teach a text you've covered a bunch of times, rather than frantically trying to decide what the hell you're going to do with something new. It's just that teaching this particular class, I realized the difference between making stuff interesting for the students, and making it interesting for me - interesting as scholarship and learning, not as a vehicle for student learning. Perhaps it's not so much that I'm completely bored with my teaching topics as much as I'm not use to them giving me the same kind of excitement as my research, which my current course actually does. I just think there's fresh, and then there's fresh.

And to follow up on Craig's point (and his post over here, I do think there can be a problem when academic jobs entail teaching the same thing over and over and over and over again. Granted, it's inevitable, because some student needs don't change - here I'm thinking especially of composition, which is probably going to be required of most students in most universities forever, because most students need to learn how to write better. English profs (in some places, specifically comp/rhet people, in others, comp/rhet and lit people) are unlikely to stop teaching composition. In history it's a little different because while there are schools that require everyone to take, say, world or western civ, there are also a lot of schools that have moved away from that model. But I do think that the faculty experience has got to be very different when teaching 4-4, in which each term you teach 3 sections of western civ and then you get a token course in your field (there seem to be a lot of jobs like this), from teaching 2-2 and both are in your actual research area. And it's not even so much that the 4-4 model is necessarily so bad, and that such faculty are oppressed, and I certainly DON'T mean they're less interested in their material and hence not delivering the same content to students (I would worry about that for *me*, but that does NOT mean all faculty are like that). But I think grad schools still unconsciously assume the 2-2 model, and train students to get intellectual stimulation from that kind of model rather than the other. If that makes any sense.

[Craig Smith]

And think about faculty at CCs (which is where I taught). Try 5/5 load with not only no grad classes, but also no upper division classes. It is one of the reason that I think really good CC faculty members are true artists!

[historyprof]

My CC load this year has been 6/6 :)