Yesterday was the first day of the semester. A new class and a new group of students awaiting me. I was five minutes late because I had it in my head that the class started at 1:15. I'm not sure why; I knew the class was actually from 1-2:15. I looked at my watch and thought "hmmm...it's almost five after I guess I'll go over early and meet some of them as they come in." Then the realization that I was in fact late struck me. Thankfully I was close by.
I introduced myself, had everyone introduce themselves, and went over the syllabus. I sort of wish I'd thought of something clever, some amusing activity or something, to start the class with to really hook em. Make them think this guy is different, maybe I'll like this class. One of my grad school profs, Brian Mahan used to do a free association word game thing. He could pull it off, but if it failed it would really fail miserably I think. I generally try to avoid anything too cutesy in teaching. As we were going over the syllabus one of the students asked if we would be watching any films or going on any field trips. I responded with a small diatribe about being against using films in a class, that it was lazy pedagogy and nobody really benefitted because watching movies is such a passive activity. I went on to stress my emphasis, I may have called it old school (oy vey), on reading and discussion.
I also harped at great length on the need to read carefully and actively and how the effort that they put into the reading would dictate their success in this course and the success of the course itself. I repeated the theme often enough that they must all have gotten the message. Whether that will translate into their working to develop good reading habits remains to be seen. I did promise them that if they worked hard to develop the habits I was going to spend the semester trying to inculcate, that they would not only benefit from the class, but would be better students in all their other classes. I guess I'll find out what kind of a salesman I am.
I also...God help me...made some remark about how most teachers run their classes. I think I said something to the effect of "I will actually read, correct and extensively comment on your papers unlike those teachers you've had who probably never read your papers, never returned them and assigned you a grade based on how much they liked you." Why did I say that? I'm certain that it's true far more often than anyone would care to admit but nevertheless saying so seems rather gauche. I guess I should just accept that I may be gauche. Who knows maybe it even works in my favor with some of them. I also told them that I believed the teacher and the class should be as transparent as possible. Not sure how the whole thing went over; I imagine I could seem either inexperienced (guilty as charged though not as inexperienced as most graduate students), or like I was affecting some sort of radical posture (not sure how I plead on that one).
The students in this class seem as though they might be a livelier bunch than the group I had last semester. Too early to tell but they did at least ask some questions. One of them is an egyptian-american who apparently speaks numerous languages and has lots of ideas. Which could be good, though some of his questions hint at the possibility that he could be one of those students who always wants to know why we are doing A rather than B or C. Which is ok, and fits in nicely with my stated desire to be transparent. But I do want those kind of questions to be informed and to the point. In this case, he stayed after class to express his disappointment that the class was not going to be a history of Islam class, asking if we would spend any time looking at the crusades or Andalusia amongst other topics. I told him I would love to teach a standard "history of Islam" kind of class, but this was specifically an Islam in America class and there was just no way to cover that sort of material in this class. I thought to ask him if he had bothered to look at the title of the course before he registered for it, but I was quite polite. We'll see how things progress on that front.
I'll be very curious to see how many drop the class. I lost a few in the first week or so last semester and I would expect that would be the case this time around too. Especially with my emphasis on the quantity and quality of reading they were going to have to do. I ended the class with a quick demo of the sort of outlining of texts they were going to have to do. I will repeat this again tomorrow in the hopes that they will begin to see the logic of it quickly. I am trying to do things a little differently this time around in light of the lessons learned last semester. Mostly I think I need to keep a careful check on my mouth until I get to know them a bit.
Oh...and try to cut down on the number of times I say uh and ummm. Drives me crazy. Is there such a thing as the art of public speaking anymore?
