Teaching Arcs and Tempo, Part One(?)

Preliminary: I started writing this post immediately after day five of one of my Fall 2023 classes, where I felt, whether it was real or not, that my class fell a little flat for my students after four great sessions. I was motivated to write this to help reflect on what happened, and perhaps gain some insights. But with so many long-delayed writing attempts, I quickly felt the need to go further and further back. This doesn’t make for good writing. But I’ve been writing relatively little for so long, and writing is a skill that must be practiced. So I need to start somewhere, even if that somewhere is bad.

Here I am, teaching philosophy at a community college in downtown Chicago, in the fall of 2023. I have been teaching here since 2007, since I was 28 years old, when I was “just a baby” one of my elder colleagues jokingly reminisced yesterday. I am firmly, hopefully, mid-career, with at least as many years ahead of me in these halls as I have behind me before I retire.

My teaching career has evolved in different arcs, often overlapping, related to my approach to teaching, my non-teaching service duties, my relationship to my colleagues, my beliefs, my personal life, my studies, my writing habits, my sense of well being. These all affect how I am teaching, and my teaching affects most or all of these.

Every year of teaching has had great affirming days, and frustrating, career-doubting days. I’ve finally learned how to roll with those moments and not let them define me one way or another. That took me awhile.

But some years have been better than others. Years four through seven, I’m guessing, were perhaps a golden arc for me. I’d been teaching long enough that I felt confident and capable with what I’d been doing, but still excited, stimulated, and challenged by the work. But then I entered some worse years, as things going on outside of the classroom took more of my attention. I spent less and less time thinking about teaching and philosophy, and more and more time thinking about other professional and personal challenges. Professionally and personally, I experienced my worst years from 2017 to 2018. And while I met my wife and improved my personal life magnificently in that latter half of 2018, a string of professional challenges kept my attention and passion away from the classroom and philosophy. A sabbatical was supposed to be a break, and it was, but I came back to immediately fill the position of department chair. This too was a very challenging three year period through 2022, steering the department through the pandemic, and institutional strife from other causes both within and external to the department. That period was punctuated last summer with my wedding, which, while delightful and wonderful, also did not provide much opportunity for rest and academic preparation. The last academic school year of 2022-23 was not one where I could come back with my full attention, I learned, but was more like an extended exhale.

So while I was becoming a happier and more full person between 2018 and the present, I also knew that I wasn’t doing everything I could to be the kind of teacher and philosopher I want and need to be in order to feel like a complete version of myself.

But I’ve been “recovering” from the worst times long enough. This year feels new and ripe, with an opportunity to throw my energy back into my career and my students’ experience. I’ve spent what feels like productive time reflecting on my teaching, adjusting my methods, throwing out or reshaping some teaching innovations (or fads?), extracting what lessons I could and moving on.

Rounding out week two, I have been very satisfied with my classes. Students seem excited too. I’ve received some delightful e-mails already, had a couple great interactions with students outside of class, and was even gifted a dozen freshly-laid duck eggs.

Class discussions have seen wide participation. Students have been excited, creative, authentic, and productive in their comments. If the atmosphere remains like this the majority of the semester, it will be a great semester.

But today, I missteped a few times. I did not say anything inaccurate or offensive, to my knowledge, but rather the tempo was off. My attempt was to drive the discussion directly into the text. But I spent too much time in both classes setting up the intro, and not enough time getting to the meat. Maybe I did not know how. Maybe I was so fascinated by the beginning of the text that I simply invested too much time, saving too little room for the end and main thesis. This is a habit I’ve had in the past. What does this do for the student’s experience? Do my more advanced students get bored and frustrated? Do my less advanced students take the wrong message? If we don’t get to the main argument, does it erode the intellectual atmosphere of the class?

These are my questions. And although I’ve run out of time today to write and process this, I do not want to abandon this habitual problem with my teaching. In fact, I might consider improving this habit to be my main goal of the semester.

Now, if I can exhibit any level of writing discipline, I will return to this topic for Part II within a week.