My Plan Was to Make a Soccer Pun, I Achieved My "Goal"

It’s only Week 4 and while I keep telling myself, “It’s fine, everything's fine”...it is so not fine. I feel as though I am playing catch-up everyday with my coursework and my students are driving me absolutely bonkers. While I keep getting getting back up, life just keeps knocking me down.

↑ Welcome to Grad School, right?

While trying to spark some ideas of what I wanted to share in my first blog post, I decided to skim through Eight Essential Questions Teachers Ask by Deanna P. Dannels in which I found a statement that profoundly struck me. “If the material is not your first choice and you really are disengaged, focus on the students: See what you can learn about them by how they engage the material. You have a room of people to get to know, so focus on getting to know them and see the content as a vehicle.”

Wow.

It all made sense to me! The reason why I am constantly feeling excessively stressed out and disengaged is because I am forgot the reason why I wanted to come to graduate school… to grow as a person using communication. If you’re still confused, let me break it down issue-by-issue:

1. “I feel as though I am playing catch-up everyday with my coursework”. We’ve all been there: You have a million things that you don’t care about due, yet you spend your entire Sunday sitting there thinking about how much you have to do instead of actually doing it. Then, for the next 11 weeks you’re playing a sick game of catch-up with your courses. #Relatable But, at some point in our lives we’re going to have to do something we wouldn’t choose to do. On the other hand, how we choose it is completely up to us. I told my students on the first day of class that I am aware that while communication studies may not be their thaaaaang (yet), there are many ways in which you can connect your interests and/or major to this class. Therefore, even if the material is not our first choice, focus on the students (in this case, that’s us!). Adhere to your own interests and try to incorporate them into everything you do. Your thoughts matter!
2. “My students are driving me bonkers”. Just the phrase itself speaks volumes about how I viewed teaching. It was teacher vs. students, and I couldn’t win. As a young woman attempting to teach an intro course, I constantly have the men in the classroom challenging my authority and the women in my classroom throwing sassy remarks in my face. These behaviors turn me off and up until now, I didn’t notice that my reactions were the reason they were still treating me this way. If a student is constantly a problem, I have less of a desire to get to know them. In other words, I am disengaging from them. I was displaying favoritism of my students in the most subtle way. For example, one of my female students constantly rolls her eyes at me during lecture and talks to her friend. Last week, however, I had her present her Identity Collage in front of the classroom. During her presentation, I asked her questions about different pictures and showed an interest in her life. The following class periods, the same female student has lost her eye rolls and has become completely engaged in everything I have to say during lectures and activities.

Being a college instructor is very similar to being an athletic coach: You are guiding a group of people to achieve a common goal. This can be done through assignments/practices, tests/games, and adequate resources. While these are all valuable to achieving this common goal, it's not everything. If you show each student/player that their part matters and that they are contributing to something larger than themselves. Now, that’s the ultimate goal.

#Pedagoalie