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Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Addendum I Addendum II Addendum III Syllabus Templates Downloadable Formats |
My First Day of Teaching On the morning of my first day as a GTA, it was raining very heavily. I did not yet have my faculty-parking pass and I spent almost an hour trying to find parking in the student-designated lots. By the time I parked my car on a side street and walked in the rain to my classroom, I was drenched. I was trying my best to dry off in the bathroom when a girl walked in and (trying to make conversation) asked me if it was my first day at UTA. I responded, “Yes, actually, this is my first day as an instructor.” She was visibly surprised and said, “Really, I thought you were a student?” While I walked down the hall to my classroom, I wondered what my students would think when they saw me. Would they see a fraud pretending to be a college instructor? Would they see the fear in my eyes? Would they notice that I was new and inexperienced? I paused at the door to the classroom and walked straight to the lectern at the front of the room. I set up my notebook, attendance sheets, and pens. When I finally looked up, I saw my students looking at me. They too were dripping from the rain. They also had trouble finding parking. For most of my students that day, I was the first UTA instructor they had met. I saw the fear in their eyes. I understood how they felt. To alleviate their anxiety as well as my own, I asked them to introduce themselves. As the semester progressed, I discovered that I was not a fraud. My students had much to learn and surprisingly, I had a lot to teach. --Prisna Virasin Eat, Drink, and …Come Back I knew, starting out, that just because I am a “morning person” and love being in a classroom at 8 a.m., that not all my students would share my enthusiasm. Additionally, I learned, rather quickly, that many of my freshman students carry certain high school behaviors into their college classrooms (for many, an 8 a.m. Fall Semester Freshman English class is truly their first college experience). Such behaviors may include raising their hands to go to the bathroom, expecting to be “called on” to answer questions, and not realizing that they can bring food and/or beverages into the classroom. I realized the latter behavior a little late in the semester and so announced that it was acceptable for them to bring food/beverage of their choosing to the classroom (all in an effort to keep them awake during class time). After making the announcement, we sat down to do some group work. “Tom” asked if he could go and grab a “snack.” At the time, there were snack and coffee machines located on the first floor of Preston Hall and I told him that he could, thinking that he was going to retrieve something from these machines. I began to worry about him when fifteen minutes had passed. Twenty minutes after his departure he re-arrived in class … with a full three-course breakfast meal from the Student Center! I had to make an additional announcement about bringing “appropriate” food/beverages to class.
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Department of English, Carlisle Hall, Box 19035, Arlington, Texas 76019-0035 |
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