The Pitfalls of Teaching (early in a semester)

Randomly, the things I dislike about teaching early in the semester . . . when I typically love the job.

• Trying to engage students when they'd rather by doing ANYTHING else than listen to me.
• Making stupid little jokes that I think are funny, but they don't. They just look at me.  They don't even pretend to laugh.

• Feeling like the teacher in Ferris Bueller's day off . . . the character played by Ben Stein: "Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?"
• Forgetting that these students are 18 or 19 years old, have (for the most part) been pretty sheltered in their views and experiences of the world.
• Having to answer the question "does this work have a grade attached to it?" about 10 times today.
• Understanding that these "typical" students would much rather have a passive learning experience-- "just tell me what I need to know so I can write it down experience"-- but knowing that they need an active learning experience that will help them actually learn the material and help them learn to use it later in their college careers
• Not really knowing what to say (that would be polite and instructional) when students today insinuated that male aggression (the rape and battery of women, for example) is "natural." (Women across the room nodding their heads in agreement.)  What was just as bad . . . the belif that thereis nothign wrong with this behavior, or that it should be expected (and although unstated, understood) excused.  I know (I'm certain of it) that there were folks in the room besides me who disagreed with these ideas.  But no one but me said anything.  Where was Twisty and I Blame the Patriarchy when I needed her?
• But then, many of these same students agreed that it's "natural" to be afraid of people who are different.

It'll all change. It always does. The first few weeks of the fall semester-- with all these brand new first-year students-- is a bit exhausting. It is mighty interesting, though, the change in perceptions and expectations (my own and the "typical" first-year students') from the students (the SAs) I taught the past three years.  Vastly, radically, stunningly different.

It all become dissertation fodder.