For first year writing courses, I don’t care if my students leave with a love of English. I want my students to leave impassioned by something, impassioned by anything that they care about. The first step in enjoying reading and writing, in my opinion, is finding a topic or interest that one is invested in. […]
Teaching
Identity in the Classroom
What makes me different from all of my students is that I am older than them and from a different generation. What makes me different from some of my students is that I am a brown trans person from a working-class immigrant family. These differences are facts, not in my control. The extent to which […]
On Not Betraying Poetry
Citation Farber, Jerry. “On Not Betraying Poetry.” Pedagogy: Critical approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, vol. 15, no. 2, 2015, pp. 213-232, Web. Summary In this article, Faber addresses the decline in appreciation for poetry within the United States, explores potential reasons for the decline, and proposes some methods by which to engender […]
Changing Perspective
I’ve been day-dreaming about teaching since I finished my undergrad degree 5+ years ago. I’ve mused on class activities, invented course descriptions, and framed my personal reading in the context of how I could teach it. From book clubs to rearing job trainees, I’ve tried to develop a methodology to my own reading and responding […]
Illuminating the Path Towards An Ease with Teaching
When I told my friends that I would be teaching English 101, I alluded to it being absurd or ironic as I joked with them, “I don’t know English.” Having moved to Chandigarh, India when I was ten years old and subsequently completing 6th through 10th grade in India, I returned to the States with […]
Feeling Incompetent
When I got the news of my TAship, I immediately ran to my current and former professors for advice. Even as an undergraduate at Western, I was still terrified to teach, and voiced my concerns to current English 101 instructors. Their advice was all the same— “enjoy the summer and don’t worry about it. At […]