My new topic: The Politics of Teaching

From the Perspective of a Teacher-Student

I had the hardest time this semester coming up with a relevant topic to blog about. I've done politics twice (and I feel burnt out enough to not try it a third time so soon). I've blogged about personal finance, about home improvement, even about my dissertation. I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with something that is timely, sometimes controversial, currently affects my life, and that is challenging to do. So I've come down to this topic: the politics of teaching.

This blog will cover the good and bad that comes with this career choice. I'd like to discuss topics that seem taboo in an educational environment: bad teachers, bad students, good administrators, bad rules (like NCLB), the politics of politics in education, crappy pay, unacceptable costs, lower standards, golden opportunities, amazing success stories, and dismal failures. It all happens, is happening around us as we speak. Since I'm a student too, this semester, this blog is being written by a student-teacher-student.

I never thought I'd be a teacher. I specifically switched majors in college to not teach: I initially studied cultural anthropology (it ended up as my minor, but I was only 3 hours away from double-majoring). I was that scared of teaching that I wouldn't go into the field. But then after not knowing what to do with myself after graduation, I went to graduate school for a degree in English literature to avoid life's responsibilities and to shamelessly (or shamefully, now as I see it) mooch off of my mom longer than I should have done. My mom asked me once, "Well, what will you do with an English degree?" I had no earthly idea. I wasn't the most responsible human being back in the day.

I ended up as a technical editor and managing editor of academic journals (in anthropology) for quite a few years until I wraped my head around the idea that I wanted to be in the classroom. At first, I adjuncted at three different colleges--good experience but seriously, the wages were obscene (when you count in grading, conferencing, and planning, are somewhere around $3 an hour). The first day I taught I thought I was going to pass out. They gave me that power. It was frightening to know that I had 24 students' grades in my hands. More than that: I had the opportunities to explore the power of writing with them, and the myriad arguments, epiphanies, dilemmas, and solutions this power comes with.

I tell you this introductory tale of my falling-into-teaching because I think that sometimes we need to face our fears. I don't know why I didn't want to teach back then, because upon reflection I always liked working with people and I always loved English. The first class I taught, back in 2000, was on a whim. One day, sitting in my office cubicle, staring at a wall, I thought, "Why not teach?" And it was that one whim that led me to where I am today. It's kind of frightening. What if I had thought instead, "I'm really craving a 7-Layer Burrito at Taco Bell?"