On Teaching

So August 1st happened which means that I must now get up before noon, dress like a person with a real job and start preparing for the coming semester.

Teaching is probably the most rewarding and most infuriating thing I've ever done. The cliches turn out to basically be true, at least for a while. If I'm counting correctly this will be my 6th year teaching full-time and my 8th year teaching college students in some capacity. By now, I should have some clear idea about what I'm doing and how to do it.

Except, I don't. Not exactly. What's so surprising and frustrating is there is no process that will always produce good results. Teaching is closer to jazz than it is to science. There is a theme, a center to a class, but in order to negotiate that space one has to be open, flexible, evolving.

So what can be taught? This is where my field gets complicated. In order to write one has to think and vice versa. It would be quite presumptuous and down-right shitty to assume that I can teach people how to think. I can show them ways people have thought. I can show them how to challenge some of their own thoughts. But I don't teach them how to think. They are already thinking creatures. Though, to be honest, with varying degrees of success.

Teaching, when it's working, is about disorienting and reorienting. I want to confuse students with a way of looking at the world that will seem strange and off-putting. By the end of the semester, I hope that they start to realize that the world really is a weird and most fucked-up place. One simple example I always use is that while driving down the main road in my town there must be at least 20 businesses who are attempting to sell me a cheeseburger. It feels like cheeseburger has become some kind of currency. Most of the time nobody thinks about this geographical feature, but once pointed out, there is no denying it. And it is unquestionably weird and a sign of quite a few things - the problems of capitalism, the health issues our culture has, how fast we are all forced to move and the deliciousness of processed cheese - just to name a few.

More to come.