Take Heart, Teachers!

Ah, school supplies!  Lunchboxes, crisper air, new knee socks. . . .  It's that time of year for fresh starts, intellectual excitement, new hope--and, if you're anything like me, the deep, reluctant panic of the born introvert.

Creative writers, who need solitude and tend to get surly when it's interrupted, may be especially prone to end-of-summer mourning.  Our luscious peace:  shattered.  It's very hard to love the 51 beaming faces who've ended your idyll. 

And then there's the self-confidence issue.  (Am I smart enough? organized enough?  They're going to revoke my doctorate and kick me to the curb!)  I've been teaching college students since 1992, and I still have those damn anxiety dreams before each new semester.  You know:  it's time for class, 30 students are waiting, and you don't have the syllabus (your notes, your clothes, teeth).

At least I'm not alone.  Award-winning professor, wonderful writer, and adored mentor and friend Gail Griffin acknowledges "the unremitting self-doubt and self-flagellation that accompany [her] as a teacher," and confides in "On Not Knowing What We're Doing:  Teaching as the Art of Faithful Failure":

I might be wrong, but what I hear around the faculty tables . . . and . . . during our pedagogy workshops is how miserably we're all doing, how incorrigible this or that class is, how impossible and hopeless is this task for which we are paid, and how little we know about it. . . .  It's unspeakably risky business. (120)

Gail's whole book is wonderfully heartening:  honest, reassuring, funny, true.

If you've chosen to teach, you already know all the good things about teaching:  the beauty, excitement, and deep service of it.  But you should know--especially if you're a grad student preparing to TA--that panic attacks and the sudden willingness to trade a limb for another month of summer do not make you weird.  They make you utterly normal.  If "[i]t's unspeakably risky business"--facilitating learning, growth, and change; challenging people whom you've just met--then being scared means you're rightly aware of that. 

But it's super-fun, too.  Or so I'm telling myself as hyperventilation sets in.

When I was in graduate school, one of my favorite professors, a Cambridge-educated powerhouse of a brainiac, intimidated the hell out of me.  She was brilliant and tough; she intimidated the hell out of everyone.  (Even the other professors tiptoed around her.) 

Later I learned that, before every conference paper she gave until she got tenure, she threw up.  From sheer nerves.  Yet in the classroom, it never showed.  I never would have guessed that anxiety darkened her door.  She was a steamroller, baby, and she rolled all over us.

Nowadays, people often thank me for my poise after I give a lecture or reading, my confidence and risk-taking.  My duende, even!  Good lord.  They have no idea of the medieval agonies that assail me, no idea of how close to failure I feel I'm skating every time. 

So just remember that no one can tell you're nervous.  (Again, I'm talking here primarily to TAs.)  If you don't say you are (and don't, please), your students will never fathom the depths of your terror. 

If your hands shake, clasp them, or grab the lectern (or the sides of your head), or sit on them.  If someone asks something you don't know, it's okay to say, "I don't know."  And you can then employ the tried-and-true line of professors everywhere:  "That's a fantastic question.  Will you look into that for us and report back to the class on Thursday?"  It's okay to not know stuff, even stuff in your field.  Our fields are huge, and you're an instructor, not an encyclopedia.  Always do your best to prepare, and then let the worry go. 

One other thing that always helps me is to think, What do they need?  What will most help them learn?  How can I connect with them?  How can I not bore them?  With a little imagination and empathy, you can put yourself in your students' shoes.  You can even gather information from them that will help you do so.  (Ah, those first-day index cards, a treasure trove of surprising information.)  And then teach from that place.  Focusing on the students takes the pressure off you to render a perfect performance.  Forget about yourself, and focus on them--what they need, want, can benefit from.  For me, it's comparable to the internal shift called for by parenting.  Instead of being you-centric, you're just them-centric.  Simple, but transformative, and it melts the anxiety away.  Try it!  And good luck!

In terms of folks who challenge people they've just met, if you want to take a moment to thank and encourage Barney Frank for calling a wingnut a wingnut and providing the whole nation with a memorable teaching moment, here's a place to do so:  http://site.pfaw.org/ThankFrank.  And in totally unrelated news, if you've written a creative nonfiction piece involving animals or about the end of life (Faye R.?), Creative Nonfiction wants to see it.