Today I missed being a teacher. I think I am missing my students because a couple of them e-mailed me to tell me that they are having a winning season in soccer (which I used to coach). This is a good sign, because sometimes I get so bogged down with work and trying to make the grades in grad school that I forget the end product. I am going to be a teacher again someday (hopefully soon). While I do not know what age group I will be teaching in the future (although I do know that it will be somewhere from 7th grade up through college age), I just cannot wait to have a classroom again. I love getting students excited about the topic of the day and I enjoy talking about writing, research, and reading.
You may be wondering, "Why are you spewing all of this excitement into your metajournal?" Well, I think this could be a good post to look back on when I get frustrated--to remind me of why I am working to pay for classes, writing so many papers, and staying up late revising my work. Also, when I go back to teaching, it can be easy to get caught up in "What assessment works best?" and "What type of rubric should I use?" but I have learned from my Issues in Education Research that staying informed on such topics is important, but no one will never agree on one answer. I trust that through experience, I will find what teaching and assessment styles work for me.
Something that I have been also thinking a lot about this week is how I want to teach Hemingway to my future students. I never appreciated his work before (and perhaps that is because I had never read any of his short stories), but after reading his short stories and seeing how they fit together, I would have the students read "Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber" and discuss perspective and power struggles. I would possibly also assign Baym's "Actually I Felt Sorry for the Lion" as it highlights Hemingway's unique manner of dealing with perspective in a meaningful way.
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