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.