My Statement of Teaching Philosophy, Redux

[rynling]

Although I strongly believe in the value of education, I hate how unapologetically elitist the American university system is, and one of my goals as a professor is to resist and undermine this ideology.

This is one of the main reasons I put a lot of energy into a commitment to give every single student in every single one of my classes a grade in the "A" range. The way I see it, different students have different strengths and talents; and, as a professor, it's my job to figure out what these strengths and talents are and reward them instead of punishing people for failing to meet some sort of arbitrary, idealized standard. I want my students to feel excited about reading and thinking and learning, and I want them to get a sense of accomplishment and empowerment from my classes.

This isn't always easy, but I've gotten much better at it. I managed to pull off giving every student an "A" last semester, and I think - based on the way things are looking - I can probably pull it off this semester as well.

One of my life goals (and I understand how small and unimportant I am, so I know this is ambitious) is to make quality higher education at least a little more accessible to anyone who's interested in pursuing it at any level and for any length of time. In order to make college-level material more accessible, I think you have to account for a range of diversity in your students, their learning styles, and their goals, and you also have to respect their limited levels of time and energy.

I think it's important to make people feel heard, validated, and appreciated. And let's be real, given the state of higher education at the moment, it's also important that students feel like they're actually getting something in return for the massive amount of money they're borrowing. If I skew the university's numbers and averages by accommodating and supporting my students, so be it.

Comments

[lassarina]

....This reminds me, via "god what a good contrast bless you for existing", of a professor I had freshman year who proudly said that she nearly never gave out A's.

My university is top 20 (probably will rise to top 15 as the cheating scandal filters out into the rankings) and I just. That class was so disheartening, for a 100 class, as a tiny thing? And I happen, even, to be someone who's good at the Traditional Academic Structure; I can shit out a paper that gets A's from almost all my professors the night before with little prep or thought. (Sometimes I wonder how good I could've been if I'd tried, and want to spit acid at past-me, but also she was dealing with undiagnosed anxiety and depression and a hell of a lot of emotional shit, but still.)

Good for you for making the world a little better.

[runicmagitek]

Oh man, I remember there was a professor in the design department I never took classes from because she adhered to the "I never give out As" mentality, because "nothing is perfect and there's always room for improvement". I don't want to mess with my GPA, especially when I know I'm good at what I do, just because some pretentious idiot doesn't want to "give out As." Bleh.

[lassarina]

....oh fuck that shit. A doesn't mean perfection, it means you EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS. *screams*

[runicmagitek]

Thank you so much for being a good egg like this. I struggled so much in school (high school more so than college) due to not following a teacher's idea of how a student should operate. I struggle so much with taking notes. Not only is it a tremendous amount of energy for me to listen and process what someone is saying to me, writing down what they're saying while they're still talking makes me block out whatever they are currently saying. So I'd write down a chunk of information I deemed important, only to miss whatever the fuck they just rambled off about the last minute. I ended up not taking notes so I could listen in hopes that if I found something genuinely interesting, I would remember it. Sadly, this didn't work for classes I had zero interest in, like chemistry and algebra. And a lot of my teachers deemed me lazy or rebellious or flat out stupid because I didn't take notes like everyone else. Even when I tried explaining it, I just got written off as a flaky teenager making up stories to get out of doing work. Sigh.

At least professors let me take pictures of their whiteboards or even emailed me copies of their presentations used in class. Now with my job, I can ask people to stop talking for ten seconds so I can type out important shit so I don't forget and not get this look of how dare you not keep up with everyone else what is wrong with you.

This also reminds me of how many courses at my school were locked behind way too many prerequisites or even majors, like I couldn't take a lot of creative writing classes, because I wasn't an English major. There was literally one (1) creative writing class for non-majors at my college offered once a semester and rotated as to what it focused on: novels, poetry, or screenwriting. It filled up instantly. The only time I ever had a chance to take it was my final semester of senior year... and it was the same time my required graphic design class was. Sigh. I also wanted to take a bunch of computer-related classes, but I need to have a certain score in so many math classes to qualify or be a particular engineering major (which also requires a lot of high scores in math classes). And I never did well in math, so I figured, "Well, I guess I won't be good at that, either." Which in hindsight, is absolutely terrible.

It warms my heart to know you're paying attention to the needs of your students and knowing not everyone learns the same way. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but wow, I wish I had you as a professor when I was younger.

[lassarina]

So, fun true story: freshman year I took intro to programming. That professor nearly drove me to tears and convinced me I was too stupid to learn to program. In an intro class.

Eighteen years later, I am a self-taught developer, but it took more than ten years to even start to shrug off the "you're too stupid to learn."

(My university also had so few writing classes for non-majors and even the ones for writing majors were bad. There Is No Genre Only Literary Fiction is a concept that can die in an acid fire, thanks.)

[runicmagitek]

Oh geez, that sounds like hell D: I'm kind of going through that now with all the Excel and data analyst stuff I'm doing for my job now. I always dismissed it as something I wouldn't ever be good at, because math was involved. I still struggle with remember proper equations, but at least Excel does it for me and everything else it offers I breeze through :\ freaking professors who pull that shit, I swear.... but also go us for being badass and doing the thing we thought we were too stupid to learn *FISTBUMP*

My boyfriend was an English major and always told me I was better off not taking college-level writing classes for that exact reason. So much rage. I will help you with concocting this acid fire.

[lassarina]

FISTBUMP

I just. I get that teaching mechanics of writing can be simpler if everyone's working in the same sandbox, right, and what works in genre A will not go over well with the genre contract in genre B. These things are true. But that wasn't what they said was their reasoning; they said or implied (depending on levels of social competence) that genre fiction (by which we mean other genres, never forgetting that litfic IS ACTUALLY A FUCKING GENRE JUST LIKE THE ONES YOU DENIGRATE) was lesser.

Listen. I know a lot of people think it's really easy to write a romance novel, and I guess on some level it is--two people meet, they get pants feelings and emotions, they act on them, somebody fucks up, apologies and groveling are had and then the pants feelings ride off into the sunset. It's a pretty simple formula. But doing it well? That takes a lot of skill. Arguably it takes more skill to execute a genre well because you don't have the luxury of bucking convention for shock value or originality. But this is my soapbox and I've been screaming long enough, so I'm gonna just. You know. Not, now.

[runicmagitek]

[rynling]

litfic IS ACTUALLY A FUCKING GENRE JUST LIKE THE ONES YOU DENIGRATE

THIS IS SO TRUE. THIS IS SO TRUE AND PEOPLE SHOULD NEVER STOP SAYING IT.

[lassarina]

oh believe me this is the soapbox I never step down from, lol