Back in the (Teaching) Saddle Again, Race Fans

By Bill Henk – Talk is cheap.  It’s time to act.  Enough of me preaching about teaching and learning in our Marquette Educator blog.  I must stand and deliver.

Yessir, after a long hiatus from the college classroom, I’ll finally be teaching again –exactly one week from today.  It will be the first course I’ve taught since becoming a dean — content area reading.

So you know, I’ve really missed teaching.  So you know, I’m very excited.

So you know, I’ve been downright terrified.

It’s more than a little ironic that I’m fearful about getting back in the teaching saddle.  After all, I aspired to be a college professor for one reason only — to teach.  Little did I know that I’d also come to love research and providing service to schools, the community, and professional organizations.  For me, becoming a college professor amounted to accidentally hitting a trifecta.

So how did I get to the point where something I supposedly excelled at and definitely loved has now become a fear factor?  One word:

Administration

Trust me, I never ever ever wanted to be an administrator.  I would have been perfectly content staying a professor until my institution put me out to pasture like an old race horse.  But I literally got thrust into a formal leadership role nearly 20 years ago, and somehow I’ve never managed to extricate myself.

Oh sure, I taught a course here and there, published scholarly papers now and then, and performed plenty of external service as a chair, school director, and dean.  But my professional life has never been the same since administration consumed it.

So, it’s not a matter of my newfound fear of teaching somehow stemming from being thrown off the horse; I just dismounted and never quite got back on.

The Love of Teaching

Unlike administration, I’ve more or less loved teaching since  I first started doing it in Little League.  Back then I shared everything I knew about baseball with any of my teammates who would listen simply because I wanted to win.  And I did the same as a basketball player, again when my help was welcome.

But it  wasn’t until working in classrooms as a pre-service teacher (who frankly just wanted to be a coach) that the gratification of seeing students learn became an overwhelming inspiration for me.  From that point onward, I came to love teaching for such a wealth of reasons that I’ll need to save them for another post.

In any case, I gave my best when I worked in a high school, then in a middle school, and finally an elementary school.  I took enormous pride in being a good educator.  It thrilled me when my supervisors told me I had all the makings of a natural-born teacher.  For me, the work rose from the level of a job to a profession to what seemed like a calling.  I came to believe that I had a gift for the art, skill, and science of teaching, and was meant to do it my entire career.

At some point, though, I got tapped to do teacher in-services and received encouragement from various sources to help train future teachers.  Thinking that maybe I did have something worthwhile to offer and that I could actually impact more school children in the long run, I packed up my bags and headed off to pursue a doctorate, become a full-fledged teacher educator, and do my pedagogy in a college or university setting.

I cherished my doctoral studies, and approached the entire experience as a way to make myself an accomplished instructor.  Because my graduate assistantship involved teaching courses off-campus, I fortunately got to practice the very craft I dearly wanted to do once I crossed the dissertation finish line.  The effort and seasoning apparently paid off, because teaching accolades and awards came my way everywhere I taught afterward.

Fear of Failure

And yet recently I found myself almost freaking out at the prospect of teaching — despite having taught a wide range of courses successfully over a long period of time.  How did I plummet to such a low-level of self-confidence?  It certainly isn’t because I’ve gotten more humble!

The reality comes down to a series of important questions I’ve had to ask myself:

• Has the field of literacy changed so much since I last taught that my knowledge is incomplete and antiquated?
• Can I resurrect the all-around expertise of my discipline that I once had?
• Have methods of teaching, learning, and assessing changed so dramatically that my pedagogy will now seem hopelessly outdated?
• Can I still relate interpersonally to students of this generation as I once routinely did?
• Has instructional technology simply passed me by?

After all the soul-searching, all the questions collectively (and metaphorically) point to one: Am I going to be the instructional equivalent of an old nag or can I be a thoroughbred again?  

Weighing the Odds

Truth be told, I’ve had a whole summer to ponder these questions.  As I head now to the starting gate, though, they’ve become more real and unavoidable, but somehow less perplexing these last few days.  I’m nervous to be sure.  However, the deep reflection I’ve done has led me to some conclusions that I find reassuring.  Interestingly, they represent a vast departure from the manner I approached teaching in the past.

In short, here is what I have vowed to do this time around the track:

• be candid with my students about my fears and misgivings, and ask them for their understanding, patience, and help.
• work collaboratively with them to give meaning and structure to the course.
• create an authentic learning community where all of us learn from each other.
• specifically ask students to teach me what I don’t know about today’s adolescents.
• focus on their learning, not my teaching — guiding and listening, not always telling.
• trust my students to be motivated, diligent, self-directed learners.
• utilize flexible, cooperative grouping for more course activities and assignments.
• emphasize the application of course concepts in real settings.

What I’ve come to realize is that I’m not afraid to get back on the horse.  Once I return to the classroom, the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and most of all, the instincts of an instructor will come back to me like the proverbial riding of a bike.  Let’s just make it a horse.  What I dread isn’t the embarrassment of failure.  Yes, my ego would clearly be hurt by coming up short, but I’ve been steeled enough professionally to handle it.

My fear boils down to one thing –disappointing or under serving my students, because my time commitments as a dean will make preparing for the course and managing it a constant challenge.  I’m not racing other horses or even Father Time in my blue and gold colors; I’m racing time generally.

And They’re Off

Nonetheless, soon the bell will ring, and I’ll be out of the gate.  The blinders will be off.  I’ll be an apprentice jockey again.  I’ll have to execute my realistic pre-race strategy – walk for a furlong or two, gradually work myself up to a trot, then to a canter, and finally hit full stride, galloping down the homestretch with the help of my class.

Hey, I may not finish in the money, but I refuse to let the “course come up lame.”  I’m getting across that finish line with dignity one way or another.  Sure, right now I have the look of a longshot, but I might just surprise.

Oh, and there’s one more thing that qualifies as both a longshot and reassuring.  If the students don’t like the course, I’m betting that they won’t complain to the dean.

GIDDY UP.