Thank You

Dear Professor Anderson-Lain, Amber, Angelica, Cheri, Ciel, Felicity, Gabby, Jen, Madie, Payton, and the second year TAs who won’t see this, 

            I was going to write a letter to all of the scholars that we read throughout the course of the semester, thanking them for all they taught me, but in all honesty I didn’t really want to. Yes they all taught me a lot of things but I think about my experiences in the classroom that I have had all semester and I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have been able to do it without all of you. Even all of the things that we learned in our readings this semester wouldn’t have been able to make any sort of sense had I not broken it down with all of you during class and in the space. Thank you all for teaching me so much and making this a semester a time that I won’t ever forget.

            I’ve spent some time looking at all my other blog posts trying to figure out how I could best wrap it all up. This has been the semester of self-reflection, a time where I have realized that in order to be the best that I can be I have to constantly be reflective over the choices I make in the position I possess. For that, I do have to give a big shout out to Frierre, hooks, and Fasstt & Warren, for helping to really clarify the importance of self-reflection. But with every act of self-reflection that I did engage in, I almost always had questions. Things that I wasn’t sure about, things I thought I may have done wrong, and concerns if I was even thinking about the right things. I think it was Palmer who talked about how vulnerable of a job being a teacher is and boy is he right, it is scary as shit being up there. I had all of these fears and all of these questions, and I couldn’t ask any of these scholars what they thought, but I could always turn to all of you. No matter what concern I had, no matter what stupid question I could think of, you were all always there for me. I learned so much from all of you individually and I’ll never be able to express how grateful I am for that. 

            I guess I’ll also take a minute to say thank you to all my students, because I have to give them credit as well. In my journey to learn what the hell teaching is, how to create a positive classroom environment, and to navigate the world of communication pedagogy they were right there with me. I hope I was able to teach them even a fraction of what they taught me. I think the drive to make them co-teachers in the classroom truly worked, as I never stopped learning from them, and I hope for as long as I teach that I will always learn as much from my students as I did in this one semester. I would also like to give the biggest stand alone thank you to Professor Anderson-Lain, for being an amazing teacher and role model. There was never a moment where I felt like I couldn’t come to you or that you didn’t have my back. I don’t think there's anyone in the department that feels like they can’t come to you, and that’s quite wonderful. Thank you for guiding us this semester and for making us feel like we are exactly where we are supposed to be. 

            So this may not be the correct way to write this blog post and I don’t apologize for that. Using this post to thank you all for everything that you have done for me only seems fitting. I feel like I have gained a family through this semester of teaching and it’s a family that I’ll never forget. I am so proud of us for getting through this but there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that we wouldn’t. I know that I learned so much from all the readings that we did this semester but I will always know that I learned the most from all of you. I look forward to what the next three semesters have to bring, and to all the new things that we will teach each other along the way. So here’s to us, the teachers that Professor always knew we were. Thank you all, and HAPPY TEACHING.

Lots of Love,

Jonathon Tolj

The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday

In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer talks about how when teaching, sometimes things are “going so well that you knew you were born to teach” and then also during teaching, things go “so poorly that you wished you had never been born” (p.69). Like what the hells all that about??? That’s so accurate! I swear I can go from having the most amazing, rewarding experience in the classroom to then having the complete opposite end of the spectrum. How am I supposed to prepare for each day of class? I have learned very quickly that there is never a predictable day of teaching, and that the only way to survive as a teacher is to be prepared for anything, at all times. 

So one of the things that I learned during our crash course week of orientation was that the only thing you can really do to prepare for the next day of class is to do the lesson plans. You can figure out what you are wanting to do during the course of the class time and how you want to structure the lesson that day. You can decide between doing a lecture, class discussion, or planning some activities for the class to participate in. But the thing with that is, it’s only a plan! You don’t know how your students are going to react to any of things you actually have planned for them. You might get into class and start lecturing and realize that two slides in not a single soul is paying attention to you, or even if they are you can tell that they have no idea what you’re saying. Or the activity that you had worked so hard on getting together is a complete dud, and no one is remotely interested in it (I have to say that shit is soul crushing). The amount of times that I thought I had class handled, knew how to get their attention, how to keep them engaged and entertained, was almost always proven wrong the next day I had that class. This got really interesting when I started thinking about my back to back 1010 classes.

So for those who haven’t heard me rant about it in the space, I teach two 1010 classes on Monday and Wednesday, one at 9:00 and another at 11:00. I thought this would be sweet, knock out two classes back to back and get on to my own studies. I quickly was proven wrong. I would wake up and get to my 9:00 and have a great class. They found the lecture interesting, they liked the activity, the class engagement was genuine. I would leave siked, go find a quiet spot in WOOTEN and think about how excited I was to take this fun planned day of class to my next 1010 group. My excitement was then immediately taken away when the next class did not at all like what I had planned for that day. They would drift off during the lecture, they couldn’t give a shit about the activity, and keeping them engaged was like pulling teeth. 

So how do I solve this problem? How do I try to predict how class is going to go when no day of teaching is predictable. Well how about instead of trying to predict the future I work on trying to understand the past. How about I engage in the lovely concept of self-reflection emphasized by Fassett and Warren (2007), and look into myself and my teaching to understand how I can better prepare myself for the classes to come. Is it because I have more energy in my first class then I do my second class? No I always get to rest and have a coffee between classes to gain some spring in my step. It has to be my activities! But that doesn’t make sense either, if one class likes it then they should be alright activities. That’s it. It’s the classes, I’ve been looking at them all wrong. I have been looking at them as two identical 1010 classes and not as the different learning environments that they are. I think of Gorhman (1990) who talked about how in order to teach students we have to “be adaptable enough to recognize their needs and respond to their strengths” (p. 220). I have to understand that the different needs and strengths of the combination of all my students in my classes create completely different learning environments. In order to be better prepared for my two 1010 classes I have to start treating them as the different classes they are. 

It’s crazy how simple that is once you think about it. None of my students are the same, they are all different individuals, with their own unique personalities and learning styles. So if that’s the case, why the hell would my classes be the same as each other? Yea they are both intro to communication classes but that’s the only similarity between them. So in order to be better prepared for the unpredictable days of teaching I need to plan different lessons for each class, understand the environment of each and think about what will work best in either one. So I guess that’s the best i got. The trick to predicting the future in teaching is by learning to understand the past. To make sense of the experiences I have within the classroom and learning from those, giving myself the ability to get myself through all unpredictable situations, and giving my students the best learning environment that I can possibly give them.

C’s get degrees

Who am I to be grading these students papers? Who am I to be judging their work? Who I am to be determining these students success in their college career? These are just a few of the questions that I would ask myself every single time it was time for me to grade any of my students' work. Questions that I would ask my peers consisted off: When did you take off points? Do you think this work deserves a failing grade? How am I even supposed to be grading this??? I could even think about grading an OA without having a serious amount of anxiety about it. I was so confused about this. I had already gotten up in front of three separate classes, 90 kids in total and pretended to be a teacher. I was putting together lesson plans, leading class discussion, engaging in class activities, and answering questions and applying concepts for students. But no matter how well I thought I was doing as a teacher I could not bring myself to become comfortable with grading these students work. Until Freire taught me why. 

I think that my anxiety of grading comes from my time as a student, which I believe every feeling towards teaching that I have now comes from, as it is my only experience on the subject. Growing up in school all the way through my undergrad, I was never concerned with the grades I made. Of course I would always strive for an A and made sure I worked my hardest to get good grades, but at the end of the day I was always content with my mindset of if I worked hard and put forth the effort then it never mattered what kind of grade i got. The only thing that mattered to me was if I was actually learning anything. Was I getting what I wanted out of the classes I was taking. Was I giving the same respect back to my teachers and professors by learning the material, to match the effort and respect they were giving to me by trying to teach me the material. But I never liked the idea of grading, I understand how it is necessary but I think I’ve always had a frustration with it. This frustration probably comes from my frustration with the education system and how all students are expected to meet these set requirements when all students are different from one another. I also thought that grades were just a way to fuel a competitive fire in students against one another, when we should be putting our efforts to how we can work together, not do better than one another. 

But now I am here teaching within the system that I believed to be quite flawed. And I have to obey these rules that are set in place in order to give students an education. Because of this I have to grade student’s work, participate in a structure of evaluation that I can’t bring myself to agree with. WHO AM I to be grading these individuals work, to be judging them on their ideas? These students work to engage in vulnerable acts of putting their thoughts to paper and then I come along and fail them because they did it wrong? Along with this discomfort in having to cast judgement towards their ideas, I was just in their place last semester! But now I am trusted with their education, and their potential futures by giving them the grades that will help determine their success within school. The frustration I had towards my fear of grading students was really clarified when we were reading Freire, specifically when he talked about the oppressor vs. the oppressed.

Freire explains how we as teachers are actively acting as oppressors towards our students. This concept honestly terrifies me to my core. The reason I came to grad school for communication studies was because of the realities that I learned about oppression within my undergrad, and how I wanted to continue with my education in order to find out how I could work to try and deconstruct these oppressive structures that exist within society. The classroom is one of the places where I already have the opportunity to work to break down these structures. As a straight, white male I am very aware of the privilege that I possess within my positionality. Because of this I am also very aware of the responsibility that I have to work as hard as I can to make sure that I don’t engage in oppressive acts with my positionality. So understanding my place in the classroom, with my positionality, being aware of my role as a teacher reinforcing oppressive structures is quite stressful. But this awareness is incredibly important, and is something I must think about constantly, not only within the classroom, but also how I engage in everyday life as well. I have to be constantly thinking about what I might do that could potentially abuse the privilege I have, and how I can instead use my positionality to deconstruct problematic structures. 

So how does this help with my fear of grading? After engaging in self-reflection I believe that having a fear of grading is probably quite beneficial for me and my role as a teacher. I have to learn to accept the fact that grading is something that has to be done within education, and I also have to accept the fact that I was asked to be a TA because I am qualified to be here. But despite allowing myself to understand that I am “qualified” to be grading my students, grading is something that I shouldn’t ever take lightly. Grading is important, I do have an incredible amount of power by doing it, and I am actively engaging as an oppressor when doing it. These are things that I should always be thinking about when I am grading. I have been given quite a big responsibility with grading, and I have to acknowledge that responsibility and the power that comes with when grading every single one of my student’s work. I owe it to them to take it seriously, and to give them my honest feedback on their work, as not doing so will only hurt them more. I may always fear grading, and will probably never feel comfortable with doing it, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe this fear will hold me accountable to the responsibility that I have to these students.