I teach English at a local college, and I really enjoy it. I love expanding minds and I love giving students the opportunity to either learn to love writing and reading, or at least learn to respect it and not hate it.
Here is the fun stuff. Every semester I have student drop out the first day because I "scare" them and make the class seem too hard. On the very first day I go over the syllabus with them and then have them write two paragraphs about themselves, stand up, and read it out loud. This has a purpose but most students hate it and some become afraid because they worry about how much talking in class they have to do. I do require a lot of student participation, if a student doesn't participate I worry they are not learning or that they might be falling through the cracks. Honestly the class is not as hard as it seems at first. And I am not as scary.
I started the class with 25 students, which is the max. Just before class started I was down by two. After the first day of class I am down two more. This is not counting the three who did not show up for the first day. So already, I've gone from 25 to possibly 18 depending on if the three who missed the first day come on the second. Oh my, I just mathed the heck out of that!
The class I am teaching is required, so I do wonder what other classes are like. Maybe I am a hard teacher. Maybe I do ask a lot out of a 100 class. I don't feel like I do, but maybe I love English so much I don't know what is hard anymore!
Besides all of this, I love teaching. It is a lot of work, and I don't think there is a teacher out there who is paid enough for the work they do. If you don't love it, you won't enjoy it. I don't teach for the money (although getting paid is nice), I teach because I want to share what I love with others!
Here is the fun stuff. Every semester I have student drop out the first day because I "scare" them and make the class seem too hard. On the very first day I go over the syllabus with them and then have them write two paragraphs about themselves, stand up, and read it out loud. This has a purpose but most students hate it and some become afraid because they worry about how much talking in class they have to do. I do require a lot of student participation, if a student doesn't participate I worry they are not learning or that they might be falling through the cracks. Honestly the class is not as hard as it seems at first. And I am not as scary.
I started the class with 25 students, which is the max. Just before class started I was down by two. After the first day of class I am down two more. This is not counting the three who did not show up for the first day. So already, I've gone from 25 to possibly 18 depending on if the three who missed the first day come on the second. Oh my, I just mathed the heck out of that!
The class I am teaching is required, so I do wonder what other classes are like. Maybe I am a hard teacher. Maybe I do ask a lot out of a 100 class. I don't feel like I do, but maybe I love English so much I don't know what is hard anymore!
Besides all of this, I love teaching. It is a lot of work, and I don't think there is a teacher out there who is paid enough for the work they do. If you don't love it, you won't enjoy it. I don't teach for the money (although getting paid is nice), I teach because I want to share what I love with others!
RSS Feed