For most of us our first experience in teaching has been or will be teaching writing. Then as PhD. Students we move on to literature based courses. This arrangement (at least for me) seems to suggest that teaching freshman composition is easier than teaching sophomore level literature courses. I have personally never taught either course and therefore have no actual experience to draw upon. However, I was extremely surprised to hear from experienced writing teachers that they found teaching a writing class to be very challenging compared to other courses. I find it extremely interesting that we start graduate students off by teaching writing courses. Is this wise?
Nancy Sommers said the most inspirational thing I have ever heard in regards to teaching. She said: “I need to create the fiction for that one hour that this is not a required course. this is a course they wanted to take more than any other course they could take that semester”. I can’t imagine how drastically this would change the environment of the classroom if we all took this approach towards teaching.
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The same sequence is true with technical communication courses, Andrea. You first teach composition and then can move on to teach technical writing. But in that case, both composition and technical writing are service courses to the university, so they have few students who are there by choice. I am sure it is easier to teach classes that students choose, although even with those you will still get your share of students who will "choose" the class because it fits their schedules rather than because they really want it.
I agree that Nancy Sommers advice from the video is valuable. As we know, attitude goes along way in teaching.
Insightful Andrea. You bring up very good points here. I think one of the reasons we start grads off with this class is, across the board, we simply don't value it? Here lies that fiction we need to find.
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