I’m teaching four classes (two courses–actually, in my head I count it as five classes, since one of them is a combo class, which definitely FEELS like two classes when it comes time to prep and to teach!) at the local community college this semester. I began teaching there last semester, and I love it!
At this semester’s adjunct faculty orientation, one of my colleagues (a friend whom I first knew when we were both homeschool moms) asked me what I like about teaching at the college. Part of what I told her–and have since formulated further as an answer–is:
1. I don’t have to deal with all the non-academics that go with teaching children. Even though I’ve had to ask for quiet from particular individuals a time or two, and have asked a student to unplug after he came to class with an iPod, I still haven’t had to play policeman in the halls or bathrooms, I haven’t had to clean up vomit from the floor, and I haven’t had to call anyone’s parents about their naughty behavior.
2. I am always amazed by hope. There are men and women in my classes who are, for the first time, trying to get somewhere in life–and are finding success in the journey. Some have lost jobs, but instead of sitting around collecting unemployment and feeling sorry for themselves, they are taking their unemployment period as an opportunity to imagine they might do something different–be something different–than they’ve been up till now.
3. Finally, the thing I like most, is that the more I get to know my students, the more I find them to be an endlessly fascinating group of people. There is a never-ending pageant of colorful life parading before my eyes every day. In the laughter, in the pain, in the frustrations, in the accomplishments–my place in front of the classroom is like sitting in the viewing stand, and, maybe, just maybe, I can throw in a tootle or a toot or a bang on someone’s big bass drum as their parade moves on, adding to the joyful rhythm of the march.