They're not called stereotypes for nothing - Under the Radar Kid

I don't want my blog to become this place where I share horror stories about my students or where all I do is complain about my students or lament how difficult teaching is because of my students. Instead, I would like to (try very hard) to use my experiences in the classroom as learning experiences for me - because let's face it, that's what they are. I can't tell you how many times this semester I've had this reaction in my head immediately after I've dealt with some situation - "oh, ugh, you shouldn't have said/done/agreed to that - live and learn but never do that again."

Anyone who has been through a class - whether as a teacher or as a student - is well aware that students fill niches - or stereotypes. I've know this for a long time - I began to recognize the stereotypes when I sat through 40 classes in college. The difference is, back then I was one of the stereotypes. I didn't have to deal with the other attitudes in the class - for me, it was just me and the professor. Now, I'm not one of the student stereotypes and I have to stand up in front of 17 students twice a week and deal with all of their learning styles, personalities and stereotypes all at once. Yikes. Of course this is my first semester and while each semester will present its own new challenges, the stereotypes will still be there and the more familiar I become with them now, the better it will be down the road.

In order to tell you a bit about my semester up until this point, I thought I would approach it in this way - I'll write a series of blogs in which I tell you "The story of the _________" (fill in the blank with the personality du jour).

Because I've already written half a blog here, I'll keep the first story pretty simple and talk about the "Under the Radar Kid." You know who I mean. The under the radar kid is a good student who always shows up to every class and when he does miss one makes you wonder if he's dead on the side of the road because he's so consistently there. He does 99.9% of his homework and does it well. He gets at least a 90 on every quiz and does great on the exams too. He's the kid you don't have to think about at all......and sometimes you realize that you don't think about this kid at all.

It's not that I don't realize he's there it's just that he causes absolutely no waves in class at all. He's there on time at the beginning of class and is back early from the break - if he leaves at all. But I can count on one hand the number of times he's spoken to me (I think it's twice). He's a great student - he doesn't really need to talk to me. But the reverse is not true - I do need to talk to him. I need to make sure he doesn't feel like I have absolutely no idea he's there just because I don't worry about his grade. It's difficult. I don't know the under the radar kid nearly as well as I know the more verbal students or as well as the students who are really struggling. I can give you the excuse that it's because those two groups I just mentioned take up just about all of my time and my energy - but it would be just that, an excuse.

Ironically, under the radar kid is a difficult situation for me - I'm pretty shy and just randomly saying "Hey, how's it going today." is bizarrely hard for me. And so he provides me with experience in dealing with ALL of my students - even the really good ones that I could go an entire semester without speaking personally to.

Update

Bad blogger - that's me. Because of that I plan on having 2 posts today. First, I want to give you the "career update."

I'm very near the halfway point in my first semester of teaching - and I'm surviving, although it's taking up a lot of my time, despite the fact that I've only got one class. In my last post I hinted at how my approach to lecturing at the beginning of the semester wasn't working. Since then, I've taken a lot more time with each chapter - reading it, figuring out exactly the best order in which to present the material (I don't always agree with the book's order) and finding extra figures and information to present the material in a variety of ways. Very time consuming, but I think it's paying off.

Even though there's half a semester left it's time to think about courses for next semester. Registration for some of the students has begun already. I had kind of assumed that as a part-time I instructor that each semester would go kind of like it did back in August when I was hired - the associate dean (AD) looked at courses being taught and just kind of asked us if we could teach this or that and the holes got filled.

No. Not so much - of course nothing is that simple. Turns out that there's a process......the part time instructors got a sheet of paper last week with a list of the evening courses being offered next semester. We were to rank the courses we were interested in teaching. Happily, there was also an option to try and teach a day course as well if they were available. I really like the time of day that I teach (3-5:30) and very much would prefer a day course. On the other hand, I would rather teach a class than no class at all even if that means an evening course. As coherently as possible I filled out my form with a note on the bottom to that effect. Currently the AD is working with the full-time faculty and letting them take the courses that they want. He won't start dealing with scheduling the part-time faculty until a week or two from now, so I've got a bit of a wait before I know what and when I'll be teaching.

In the meantime I've been looking at the job postings again. It's definitely that time of year in which the faculty jobs start getting posted. I'm going to be applying for another adjunct position at a college more like what I want to end up at. It's to teach a 400 level cell and molecular biology course which is exactly what I got my Ph.D. in, so it's a good fit. I'll be sending my stuff along by early next week. I think it would be a good progression from one course to two, but still remaining part time for a bit as I continue to adjust to life as a teacher. We'll see what comes of it.

So there's the update about the job and career. I'll be back soon with a post about my current class.