My struggle with teaching

The first time I taught was actually quite fun. It was an intensive summer class on cognitive psychology. There were only nine students, and they were interested in the class. I only gave essay tests and life was good. I had no idea how to teach, so I just outlined the material from the book, put it on an overhead slide, and read off what was on the overhead slide in class. It was very rudimentary, but seemed to work for that bunch of students. My course critiques were fine.

Then that fall I taught intro to psychology for two classes of 80 students. I shifted to multiple-choice tests. Tests were the only form of assessment I gave. I didn't know what constituted a good multiple-choice test. My students all bombed the test and the course went downhill from there. Dealing with irate students during class was not fun.

After deciding that the graduate program I was in was not right for me, I started a different grad school. I was given a teaching post just a few days before class started. I was to teach social psychology to 60 students. Once again, I was a novice teacher. The only thing I attempted to do was come up with different examples than were in the book, lecturing the whole time. Once again, the students bombed the first assessment and were irate during class. I started to notice a pattern that students would stop coming to class after the first assessment.

I decided I seriously did not want to teach ever again. But, two years later, I ended up teaching again; this time I taught child and adolescent psychology. The experience was even worse than the first few times I taught. Students were malicious, testing was horrendous, and I had to take an incomplete in one of my classes because I was so overwhelmed. I spiraled into depression, withdrew from my colleagues, and seriously contemplated dropping out of my program.

Against all desires, I stayed and taught child and adolescent psychology again the following semester. I finally made some changes to my teaching. I put more thought into the exam questions, wrote detailed study guides, and gave two writing assignments so students could bring up their grades if they bombed the tests. The class was made up of students who were vocal and appeared to enjoy the material. About half-way through the semester, I stopped vomiting right before teaching.

Then I taught child and adolescent psychology again to a group of 20 students during a three hour block of time. I tried coming up with activities for students to do to take up time. I connected really well with one student and okay with the rest. There were no major hiccups and the class went okay overall. But, I didn't particularly enjoy teaching.

After I graduated, I taught four classes of general psychology to 80 students total. I only connected with one of the four classes and felt overwhelmed the whole time. Students critiqued me lower than the other instructors teaching the same class. I was relieved when the semester was over.

Now this semester, I'm teaching the same class again to 80 students, and I had finally started to get comfortable with it until three weeks ago when I read the mid-semester feedback. Students thought I was boring, unorganized, and horrible at expressing the material. I get that students were reacting to the changes that were made since last semester. The department head got a directive from the dean to make our class harder because we were contributing to grade inflation. Now I think it is too hard, and once again students are revolting and I think some are taking it out on me. And once again, I feel too depressed to go to work and teach.

I actually said to my fiance that I would rather be sick and stay home than teach. So this week I got sick and ended up staying home. I was so happy and so relieved. But, even though I'm home again today, I'm feeling depressed because I know I have to get ready to teach again on Monday.

I'm going to finish out my contract to teach for the next two years, but I'm seriously thinking about getting pregnant just so I don't have to renew my contract and I can take a break from teaching. If I go back to teaching at all, I want to try online teaching so I don't have to stand up in front of a bunch of students.

All of this has been really tough on me because I feel like I wasted 7 years of my life pursuing some dream that I no longer want. I've even lost interest in doing research. I haven't done a research project since I left grad school last December, and I'm just not interested in writing up the projects I've already done. I feel like I'm in a really bad place professionally, and I don't know what to do to change it.

Advising is fun and house-hunting is not

I met with my first advisee today to go over his four-year plan of classes. He had well-defined interests, so it was easy. But, then I tried to set up his schedule in the system, and had to juggle classes around until I could get it all figured out. Initially, it was stressful, but then it felt like a puzzle. After I got his whole 4-year schedule set in the system, I had such a huge feeling of satisfaction. It was actually very fun.

In other news, house-hunting has become very frustrating. We have been searching for three months now and we have not found the perfect house. I thought one of the houses we saw last weekend was satisfactory; it fulfilled all our needs. But, for some reason, my fiance is not sold on the house. I think it's because the basement isn't finished and thus, no man room. Also, it's close to a highway. There is a huge field to dampen the sound, but he seems concerned about his allergies, mice, and snakes. I'm beginning to think that it is not actually possible to find a house that we both like in our price range. I've decided to give up on the house-hunting thing for awhile. I'm thinking now that maybe we should just rent.

Teaching...it's so much better this semester

Now that I'm over the hump of teaching the supplemental material, I've settled into teaching the Myers text. I have never appreciated Myers more. I just have to say the supplemental text was horrendous. The students didn't understand it and neither did I. But, I've taught two lessons since the supplemental text, and I've actually enjoyed it. Of course, I love the neurosciences, and it's such a relief to teach it. I'm hoping this enjoyment will last into some of the other topic areas that I know less about. I'm definitely feeling more comfortable teaching in front of the students. Bit by bit, I've moved away from the traditional lecture mode, and it has made a world of difference. There's also a world of difference between teaching in front of the students as a lowly graduate student and teaching as an assistant professor with a Ph.D. My confidence level has enjoyed leaps and bounds since I got that title, and it's associated pay. But, I largely credit some of the changes to the extensive faculty development I received during new faculty orientation last summer. The learner centered approach they taught us makes more sense to me now. The engagement with the students is much higher, and I think students are learning more with this approach. I've also been learning about the students and their lives. They told me about their "hall brawls" and techno raves today before class. I had to laugh. It's good to hear that they still have a little fun.

School has already started

I'm already two and a half weeks into the semester when most colleges and universities aren't starting until next week or the week after. And let me tell you, this has been the most tumultuous start of the semester that I've ever experienced. We have a new course director who's in charge of almost every aspect of the class other than the actual teaching that I do inside the classroom. He had been directed by the department head to make the class more challenging, to incorporate critical thinking into the instruction, and to emphasize anthropology and sociology in addition to psychology. So other members of the department assisted in writing a whole new supplementary text to replace the first chapter and by which to conclude the course. Needless to say, I have felt very challenged to teach in areas outside my expertise. There has been so much upheaval with the class that I have been unclear on how to prepare the students for the quizzes. I suppose this confusion has been affecting other instructors as well because the overall average for the first quiz was 75% and the second quiz was 65%.

Above all this confusion and frustration on my part was that two instructors had to take emergency leave for a funeral and surgery. The rest of us were struggling to cover their classes. I was teaching every day and had caught the cold virus running rampant among the students. It was so stressful. At least I don't have to cover additional classes next week; other instructors who don't teach our course have pitched in to help. But, I was rudely woken up this morning from a terrible teaching anxiety dream. I dreamed I had come back from a conference and was unprepared to teach. The students were disrespectful and complained; the AV equipment was on the fritz, turning off and on at the drop of a hat. Ugh! I hate teaching dreams! And I needed just a couple more hours of sleep to catch up on lost sleep from last week. I was so stressed out last week that I would wake up at 2:30am, 3:30am, or 4am many nights, unable to fall back asleep before I had to get up at 5am (I teach the first class of the day, way to early for me.) I'm really hoping things will settle down soon.

New Faculty Orientation

I just finished a week of new faculty orientation. Even though I've taught here for a semester, I still had to go through new faculty orientation. I'm very glad that I did. I learned so much about the learner-centered approach to teaching. I came away with a complete teaching philosophy, which I will post soon, and a reinvigorated desire to plan better lessons. I realize now that perhaps some of my frustration last semester stemmed from a lack of ideas as to how to improve my teaching. I thought I needed more activities and engagement, but I didn't have a structure to guide my improvement. Now I know that I can begin with learning objectives, design activities to meet the learning objectives, and assess whether students have met the objectives. I feel as if I have a practical approach I can take that will help me improve. My lessons can be intentional, rather than a haphazard collection of remotely related activities to wake up the students.

Secondly, I signed up to be an first year experience instructor this semester. I've also learned that the current director of the first year experience program will be leaving the position next year, and he's encouraged me to apply for the position as soon as it opens up. I'm actually considering applying for the position, although I don't want to leave my current position as assistant professor in my department. I'm hoping it will be possible to have a dual-appointment. I think I might actually like a part-time directorship, coupled with a reduced teaching load. It could be lovely to teach only one or two classes in my department while I venture into the world of administration. Plus, it would be rewarding to know I was doing my best to help students adjust to their first semester, potentially retaining some students who might have dropped out.

Wedding Planning Confusion

So I've had the thought in the back of my head that I should be inviting my new coworkers to my wedding. But, I can't possibly afford to pay for all of them to be included in the reception. One of my new coworkers dropped by today and chatted with me about how neat it would be to invite students and faculty to attend the wedding ceremony since the ceremony will be on campus and the chapel is beautiful (hoping not to give away my location!). Other coworkers have asked me about the wedding in small talk, and they mentioned enjoying other weddings at that site. Hmm...yes, I think I'm getting the hint. I don't want to burn any bridges in my new work environment. So here's the idea...I'm going to look into using another site on campus as a reception site where appetizers will be served in standing room only with open invitation for an hour and a half after the wedding. Afterwards, only the people I had planned to invite to the reception will retire to an intimate family and friends gathering for a catered meal and dancing. Sounds like a good compromise to me. Only now, I'm thinking that if it's too expensive we might nix the reception all-together, and just go with the informal meet-and-greet over appetizers...except for the fact that I just put down a non-refundable deposit on the reception site. On the other hand, I could cancel the reception and put the deposit towards renting the lodge for guests instead. I really wish I knew what to do, but at least my fiance and I handled the confusion well instead of blowing up into a fight, which we've been doing a lot of lately. Although he wasn't so keen on inviting a bunch of people he didn't know to the wedding. Gah! I wish this was over with already! I'm actually not sure how much I will enjoy my own wedding since I don't like being in the limelight and I don't like socializing for hours on end.

I'm excited! I'm excited! I'm excited!

We have been working with a real estate agent ever since we contacted him to view the first townhouse last week. Tomorrow he is going to take us around to see a bunch of other townhouses in the area. I'm really excited to see some other townhouses after that first dingy repo we saw. I'm excited, but I'm worried that my fiance and I might not be on the same page regarding these townhouses. Now that I found out my fiance can qualify for those initial townhouses in that gated community, I hope he doesn't find a townhouse he prefers that's located further south. Our job locations are out of whack. I'm very far north of town and he is smack dab in the middle, but in a more southern area of town. Unfortunately, there are very few townhouses located in a nice central area between our jobs. It's either going to be close to my work, or a place closer to his and further from mine. The four-bedroom townhouses in a gated community is close to my work, and anything closer to his work is only 2 or 3 bedrooms and not located in a gated community. He is very resistant to the townhouses close to my work because he wants to be able to get home sooner in the evenings to spend time with me and future kids. That's very sweet of him, but still, I want a place we can grow into, that is in a safe neighborhood, and likely to retain its value or go up in value. I've already looked at the comps for the gated community, and four townhouses were sold in the last year close to the listing price. This is a very desirable area. Nevertheless, I'm still excited to see the other townhouses tomorrow, and get our feet whet on the whole house-hunting experience.