I love teaching. I love working with students with an aptitude for economics and watching them soak up what I have to teach and take it in new directions, making connections in their minds visible in their faces and their pens scribbling in their notes. I love working with students who struggle with economics, generally because of a lack of previous exposure to mathematics, and watching them work through the struggle, learning the material and also learning how to learn material that is difficult for them. I feel so privileged when students take risks with me, making mistakes and learning from them in my presence, allowing me to see them learn.
My mother came to one of my classes today, seeing me teach for the first time. My students made me look so good. I did not stand in front of the room speaking at them for an hour and a half. Instead, they confidently and articulately synthesized ideas we have been discussing all semester, connecting books we have read to the material we’re studying right now, and engaging in conversation both with me and with each other. And, they were comfortable speaking – this is a comment my mother made to me. No one prefaced their remarks in such a way that it seemed they were uncomfortable or worried about being attacked, etc.
I am still new to teaching - I think, with teaching, five years of experience makes you still new to teaching – and I know that I make mistakes and don’t have everything perfect, and sometimes I have bad days where it just doesn’t seem to work too well. But, I also think my teaching has improved each semester, mostly because I’ve been able to get valuable feedback from students – I wouldn’t know what I was doing wrong otherwise. I feel really blessed that I am privileged to teach intelligent, hard-working, critical students in a small-group environment. Liberal arts colleges are one of the best products of American society, I think – not to say that there are no problems, especially the high price tag and non-merit factors that determine who gets the privilege of attending such a school and who does not. Of all the privileges that should be extended to everyone, small colleges are one of the most important, I think.
