These past few weeks have been eye-opening and draining. I feel that one of the hardest challenges I have faced has been the time I spend prepping for my class. It is these moments that send me into a frantic spiral as I worry about whether the students will understand my directions and explanations. I worry about whether they will understand the importance of this assignment and whether or not the assignment is actually important. I worry about whether they will laugh at the jokes and sarcastic remarks I try to smuggle into the dense content and discussions. I keep hoping this feeling will go away–but we are several weeks into the semester and I still feel the late night dread and the early morning panic of lesson planning.
The classroom is a totally different story. I walk in and my worry goes away. I feel comfortable and in control when leading discussions, facilitating activities, and delivering brief lectures. It is the in-between time, this purgatory in my week between being a teacher and being a student, that gives me a conniption. My struggle is codified in my blog title.
“Stiffening and Suppression: Hairspray and the Savage” is indicative of my attempts to bring balance to my life as an educator and a student. When creating a student example paper heading, I used the website http://www.besttitlegenerator.com/ to generate a random title for my paper because I was tired of coming up with ideas and worrying about whether I would get a laugh out of my students. In the end, I had one student chuckle at what I thought was a hilarious example of a title for an academic article. I had been so excited about my carefully crafted example heading/title, but it took me all of 30 seconds to present it. It took them all of one rough draft to format it incorrectly–but that’s another rant for another day.
I’m not upset at the formatting errors, but rather at the amount of time it seems to take me to construct these educational artifacts. I want to become more competent and equipped to structure class activities and examples in a way that leans on my strengths in the classroom and makes the planning time a less stressful experience.
Nicole,
I’m sure you are great with your students… If you ever need someone to laugh at your jokes or sarcastic remarks, you know where to find me! I told my students that I wasn’t funny, but that my humor was punny and they didn’t get it… so no worries, your fellow GTAs are always here for you!