Saturday, September 20, 2008
Back in the Saddle Again
I returned home yesterday afternoon after a commute nearly twice as long as normal, thanks to a wonderful combination of two-lane suburban roads, an uncleared accident, and a seemingly unending stream of rubberneckers. By the time I finally got back to the Invisible Suburb, I was exhausted. And honestly, given my schedule, I think I was justified in going to bed early and sleeping almost twelve hours. After all, beyond commuting, I participated in a two hour long discussion of colonialism and citizenship in French West Africa, a formal lunch held at the faculty dining hall, and...oh yes, my return to the classroom.
Yes, for the first time since Underwood, I passed out student information sheets and prepared to deliver a lesson. But unlike Underwood, where students were late, noisy, and disrespectful, my students were all prompt (a few arrived a full ten minutes early), quiet, and attentive as I introduced myself and laid out the expectations for the course. I'm a preceptor, which is basically Old Ivy's ultra-pretentious term for "teaching assistant", but I wanted to let them know that I have a solid grounding in the history of modern science as well as previous teaching experience. It's hard to tell at this point how well I accomplished these objectives, but the follow up discussion on the contrasting theological and natural philosophic views of Leibniz and Newton suggests that the students at least tried to do the reading and were not opposed to the idea of class participation. Certainly a positive shift from my previous job.
Part of this may simply be a matter of class size. Unlike Underwood, where I was lucky to have a room with enough desks for my thirty or more students, my two precepts have only three and nine students respectively. That's right...thanks to my decision to teach on Fridays, my classes have less than a tenth as many students as I did as a high school teacher. Also, classroom management seems unlikely to be an issue, at least not in the way it used to be. Instead of students cussing me out, sleeping, throwing things, or stabbing each other with pencils, it looks like my biggest challenge will be making sure that my enthusiastic students don't go too far off topic in their attempts while demonstrating how smart they are (or think they are). For those keeping track, my second biggest challenge will be lesson planning a free-flowing discussion as compared to more structured lectures and worksheets...in other words, learning to let go somewhat and trust that my class doesn't need quite as much hand holding. Challenge #3 will be making sure that these students, almost all of whom are science majors taking this to fulfill their course distribution requirements, recognize that the study of the natural world does not possess a fixed and unchanging set of norms and practices and that approaches to the subject a century ago may seem strange, unfamiliar, and at times downright illogical to someone with contemporary training.
And then there's the more mundane issue of maintaining energy and enthusiasm for the subject on a Friday.
But all in all, it was a positive, albeit exhausting experience. The lesson went well enough, though I'll likely reassert the central point about the interplay of theology and natural philosophy at the start of next week's class...just to be sure we're all on the same page.
I returned home yesterday afternoon after a commute nearly twice as long as normal, thanks to a wonderful combination of two-lane suburban roads, an uncleared accident, and a seemingly unending stream of rubberneckers. By the time I finally got back to the Invisible Suburb, I was exhausted. And honestly, given my schedule, I think I was justified in going to bed early and sleeping almost twelve hours. After all, beyond commuting, I participated in a two hour long discussion of colonialism and citizenship in French West Africa, a formal lunch held at the faculty dining hall, and...oh yes, my return to the classroom.
Yes, for the first time since Underwood, I passed out student information sheets and prepared to deliver a lesson. But unlike Underwood, where students were late, noisy, and disrespectful, my students were all prompt (a few arrived a full ten minutes early), quiet, and attentive as I introduced myself and laid out the expectations for the course. I'm a preceptor, which is basically Old Ivy's ultra-pretentious term for "teaching assistant", but I wanted to let them know that I have a solid grounding in the history of modern science as well as previous teaching experience. It's hard to tell at this point how well I accomplished these objectives, but the follow up discussion on the contrasting theological and natural philosophic views of Leibniz and Newton suggests that the students at least tried to do the reading and were not opposed to the idea of class participation. Certainly a positive shift from my previous job.
Part of this may simply be a matter of class size. Unlike Underwood, where I was lucky to have a room with enough desks for my thirty or more students, my two precepts have only three and nine students respectively. That's right...thanks to my decision to teach on Fridays, my classes have less than a tenth as many students as I did as a high school teacher. Also, classroom management seems unlikely to be an issue, at least not in the way it used to be. Instead of students cussing me out, sleeping, throwing things, or stabbing each other with pencils, it looks like my biggest challenge will be making sure that my enthusiastic students don't go too far off topic in their attempts while demonstrating how smart they are (or think they are). For those keeping track, my second biggest challenge will be lesson planning a free-flowing discussion as compared to more structured lectures and worksheets...in other words, learning to let go somewhat and trust that my class doesn't need quite as much hand holding. Challenge #3 will be making sure that these students, almost all of whom are science majors taking this to fulfill their course distribution requirements, recognize that the study of the natural world does not possess a fixed and unchanging set of norms and practices and that approaches to the subject a century ago may seem strange, unfamiliar, and at times downright illogical to someone with contemporary training.
And then there's the more mundane issue of maintaining energy and enthusiasm for the subject on a Friday.
But all in all, it was a positive, albeit exhausting experience. The lesson went well enough, though I'll likely reassert the central point about the interplay of theology and natural philosophy at the start of next week's class...just to be sure we're all on the same page.
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