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Showing posts from February, 2011

Thoughts on teaching

I'm a third of the way through the semester, and teaching is starting to feel a little less like being on heroin. Seriously...I think about it ALL the time,and there is NOTHING like the high when things go well in that classroom. Or the crash when they don't. We're settling...we've made it through the first exam. They laugh when I say nerdy things in class. I've learned many of their names, and some of their personalities. And this group of 38 young women and men...they light up the room, with their passions, their insecurities, their trust, vulnerability, laughter. Today we talked about HIV/AIDS. I was tired, they were tired, but we thought and learned together...and talked about female condoms and dental dams, and some of them got a little squeamish. I can't even start to explain how much I've learned about myself, and how I feel about undergraduate education. Lately I've been appalled remembering literature from small liberal arts colleges "