I'm coming up on ten years since I took my first full-time teaching gig. That's something that really makes me stop and think, because it doesn't seem like ten years. Other times, it feels like I've been doing this forever -- and I mean that in both good and bad ways.
These ten years have taught me so much about teaching that I could never have learned as a student. It's one of the funny things about education that you can only do so much in a classroom; for the rest, there's no substitute for actually doing it. For instance, you can learn only so much about flying an airplane during ground school, but there's no substitute for actually getting into an airplane and putting your hands on the yoke and getting up in the air. That is an education within an education. It's the same with my classes: I can lecture about how to write a radio commercial, but I really don't think the students really grasp the concept until I give them a few copy platforms and tell them, "Write." They always bomb the first few, but that's part of learning. Once they get it figured out, they get it. I could never get that across in a lecture, or in any other way.
And so it is with teaching. I took a required course in educational methods as part of my doctoral work, and though it was helpful, it wasn't the same. It was abstract. No, for me the real learning began the first day I was sent into a classroom, told "good luck!" and the door slammed shut. In that painful, disastrous first year, an education. My second year, a new institution and different students...but, fortunately, an institution and higher-ups willing to wait through my rookie mistakes. And, yeah, I made them, by the dozen. But, over time, I started to figure it out.
It's funny to think about how much I've changed since then. Ten years ago, I really had this rigid idea of what the students should learn, what they should know, what they should be interested in and care about. All that did was frustrate me. I never really understood the "lead a horse to water, but" thing until then. I complained, I made bad jokes. Sometimes I took my frustrations out on my class. Part of it was frustration, and part of it was fear. I wasn't much older than they were. They saw a rookie instructor, and some of them saw fresh meat. I tried to act tough, but that was the wrong move.
Over time, I've evolved. I've learned that the things I worried most about back then turned out to be the things that have seldom happened. I dreaded confrontations, and at my first job I had a few (sometimes my own doing, sometimes not). Over time, I figured out how to defuse the problems that did come up, and how to head off potential crises. My average since has been pretty good. Not perfect, mind you, but not that bad. One of my mentors in graduate school had a philosophy that was basically "it's more important to solve a problem than win an argument." I've found that of endless utility since.
The other good thing? Over time, I came to be more at ease in a classroom. I used to be nervous. I used to dread interaction with the students. And I feared that one would see through me. Well, I'm sure some did. But, over time, that too gave way. I've learned there's no shame in saying, "You know what? I'm not really sure myself." (Or a graceful deflection, such as when a media law student asks about a bit of arcana and I reply with a smile and, "Well, that's why they hire lawyers to handle these things and not communications professors.")
I've also learned to quit being other people. I tried really hard to model my classroom interaction after the people who mentored me. But it didn't work, for a number of reasons. Some of the things they were able to do, you can't do any longer. Or you have to have a certain gravity to you that I didn't yet have. At some point, I quit trying to be those people, because it was making me feel ridiculous and it wasn't working. I learned to be me. Yeah, there are elements of my mentors I still use, but it's stuff that fits with my own style.
Above all else? I've learned to have fun, and not take myself too seriously. Once I felt comfortable with the job, and felt comfortable with the material, I learned to let go. Or, some days, I throw out the lesson plan and go with what will best serve the class. That willingness to improvise has been good, too. "You know what? We were gonna do this today, but instead, given what's going on...." On the really good days, sometimes the class becomes like doing improv. There have been days when it's just fed on itself, and we laugh until it makes me cry...but, darn it, it works.
And that's what's best: learning what works, and making it continue to work. That's how I'm able to go home at the end of most days and feel I may have accomplished something after all.
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