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What to Expect When You’re Expected to Teach
The Anxious Craft of Teaching Composition
Anne Bramblett, University of New Hampshire
, Alison Knoblauch, University of New Hampshire
ISBN 0-86709-535-0 / 978-0-86709-535-7 / 2002 / 128pp / Paperback
Imprint: Boynton/Cook
Availability: In Stock
Grade Level: College
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A student demands to know what authority you have to judge his writing.
Another student sits in your office reading her essay aloud and crying.
What you hoped would be a stimulating classroom discussion falls flat.
Do these scenarios sound familiar? Have you been at a loss as to how to respond? Do you feel like you're faking it and like you've made huge mistakes? Then you might be a new teacher, and you certainly aren't alone.
Anne Bramblett and Alison Knoblauch are fresh from this experience and know how daunting first-time teaching can be, despite the best preparation. They have collected essays that address the anxieties and problems of beginning teachers and provide a welcome reality check for those who expect success from day one. Honest, often humorous, and most of all empathetic, these essays remind you that lesson plans fail, students will challenge you, and classroom discussions often go nowhere. Most of all they dispel the "Myth of the Super Teacher" who enjoys only success. They reveal the dark secret of teaching: not everything works, certainly not all the time.
|
 Table
of Contents
| Preface |
| Acknowledgments |
| A Note to the Reader |
| Introduction by Thomas Newkirk |
Silences in Our Teaching Stories: What Do We Leave Out and Why?
As I read the literature on whole language/writing process classrooms, I wonder if we are not creating the role of ’super teacher,’ one more ideal, without cracks, that creates a sense of inadequacy in all of us. Are there silences in the narratives we tell of our. . . classrooms? Are we telling everything? Do these consistently upbeat stories capture the emotional underlife of teaching? I think not. |
| Part 1: "This Is Duct Tape": Holding It Together During Your First Semester |
| 1. |
Forty–Eight Eyeballs, Carrie Heimer
"The ball is in my court. I’ve never taught this class before. I haven’t had much opportunity to brainstorm with other instructors about it because everyone else is just as busy as I am, and they seem busier. I don’t want to ask how to teach the class I self–assuredly said I would teach, and I don’t want to be standing here while my new students all sense a Springer moment brewing." |
| 2. |
My Imagined Community, Anne Bramblett
"I launched into my first question. . . only to realize with horror that my plan had failed: their eyes were averted, their bodies slouched deep into their chairs. . . . Suddenly my classroom community became a hackneyed scene from a Sunday Western. It was me against them, staring as we fingered our guns. Who would the silence break first?" |
| 3. |
Waiting for Surprise, Michael J. Michaud
"The fact that so many of my students write essays that center around the importance of teamwork and overcoming adversity seems to confirm that Little League and varsity coaches alike are getting their messages
across. . . . I would be proud to have a son or daughter compose an essay that shows the way he or she learned the value of hard work and team effort. So why is it I wonder each time I receive another sports narrative, that I cannot stand reading such essays?" |
| 4. |
Minimum Requirements, Alison Knoblauch
"She remembers back a few years. . . to her own college career and her amazement at how few hours there truly are in the day. So she gives them time in class to revise, gives them so much feedback, suggestions, even meets one on one with her students to discuss their papers. And what does she get? In a word. .. mediocrity." |
| 5. |
Teachable Moments, Chrissy Cooper
"If you have a clear vision of yourself as a teacher, have clear expectations, and clear lessons, you’re halfway there. The other half of teaching, however, isn’t learned through teaching classes–it’s passed along by practicing teachers, and it’s learned on the job." |
| 6. |
Life and Breath, Kathleen Toomey Jabs
"When I called her name, Melissa slid out of her desk, stood up, nodded at some of her group mates across the circle, and held up the ventilator. ’I have cystic fibrosis,’ she said, ’and this is part of my treatment.’" |
| Part 2: Making Connections: Exploring Student–Teacher Relationships |
| 7. |
Within the Silences, Christina A. Hitchcock
"Most teens have more expendable income than I have, and most Gen–Xers are much more savvy than I am about e–commerce, e–trading, e–everything. Up–and–coming corporate types are driving up the price of real estate everywhere, and I can’t buy a pair of shoes that don’t have three–inch platforms. These kids don’t just have control. They have bona fide power! Or do they?" |
| 8. |
The Personal Is Pedagogical, Joseph P. Montibello, Jr.
"We each have our own subject position that we bring to the classroom every day, and we teach from that position whether we are conscious of it or not. Just as we ask students to be aware of themselves, shouldn’t we spend some energy looking into our own backgrounds? The personal is the pedagogical whether we like it or not." |
| 9. |
It’s Not What You Signed Up For: Zen and the Art of Teaching Freshman English, Olga Lambert
"As I read her paper, she talked about how angry she was at her parents, but her eyes were dry. Now, however, she was bawling, and [ was convinced that it was all my fault. Why did [ have to make her talk about something so painful in front of two strangers? What if she was deeply traumatizedby this?" |
| 10. |
Boundaries of Caring, Nancy Eichhorn
"I flinched when I read Samantha’s essay because I struggle with this boundary to care. There was a time I cared too much. I tried to take care of a student and the end result was disastrous." |
| 11. |
Becoming a Witness, Andrew Lopenzina
"I was surprised when I got around to reading his first essay. . . . When I finally read it, I jumped up from my chair and did a small victory dance around the kitchen table where I’d been working. I had one student who could actually write, and it was that same annoying kid who kept needling me in class." |
| 12. |
"Gap or Rap": Class Presence in My First–Year Writing Class, Emily M. Hinnov
"Class is something that is difficult for everyone to talk about. Even now, when my bitterness erupts at friends who have trust funds and I am embarrassed by alternately voicing and concealing my ’white trash’ upbringing, I don’t know how to handle this issue in a college classroom." |
| 13. |
A Language in Letters: Learning to Communicate Honestly Through Grades, Kelly Myers
"I walked into my teaching career at twenty–three years old, not long after walking across the stage with my college diploma. . . . Obsessing over the threat of a GPA –devastating B+ was not at all far away. But then suddenly there I was, holding GPA devastators in the palm of my hand. There I was, sitting at the big desk with a grade book and no idea how to use it." |
| Part 3: Challenging Authority: Facing Resistance in the Classroom |
| 14. |
The Gospel According to Luke, Alexei Di Orio
"Luke’s conference is the only one that I remember clearly months later, though, because he directly, though no doubt unintentionally, challenged this authority that I was desperately trying to muster in my class. His resistance to the process of revision struck at my rather deep insecurities concerning my qualifications to teach the class. I couldn’t offer him a satisfyingly concrete, empirical answer to his recurrent question, ’What’s wrong with my paper?’" |
| 15. |
Serving Byron: Case Study of an Obnoxious Student, Kuhio Walters
" . . . I started my work at UNH viewing my class as a more or less homogenous front–all white, all middle– to upper–class, all fluent in English. Any relationship with a new student population must begin, I suppose, from such a reduced perception. But it was notfar into the semester before I realized there was more complexity here than I knew what to do with." |
| 16. |
"I’m Just Basic": Reading Resistant Writers Within a Discourse
of Resistance, Megan Fulwiler
"My high school English teacher, Mrs. Schermer, made a deal with me about writing. The deal was that I could write the way I wanted to half the time, but I had to write her way the other half of the time. . . . I knew what she wanted and I understood the ’deal,’ but I continued to subvert and resist her assignments. . . . Now that I’m teaching college composition, it’s time for payback. And Jeff is my payback." |
| 17. |
"I Am an Excellent Writer": One Composition Instructor’s Puzzlement About Bullying and Plagiarism, Freda Hauser
"And (I ask in a hushed voice) can you teach someone to want to ask questions? I wonder (and feel blasphemous): is he teachable? Are there students who, because of their socialization, are not teachable? Or, is it my identity that is the problem?" |
| 18. |
Redefining Success, Kathleen Toomey Jabs
"I was intrigued by Jason’s defiance, his insistence that he ’sucked’ at writing, when, at least in my opinion, he did not. I decided he would be my success story. I would change his view of writing." |
| 19. |
Girl Trouble, Amanda Glenn
"In the weeks before I undertook teaching English 401, I’d been warned about problem students: boys. Big tall half–men who would physically intimidate me and sneer at my assignments. No one mentioned problem girls." |
| References |
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Anne Bramblett
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Alison Knoblauch
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Copyright© 1999-2004 Boynton/Cook Publishers, a member of the Reed Elsevier plc
group. All rights reserved.
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