Now we’re learning: My first year of teaching

Post date: Dec 24, 2016 3:42:46 AM

My journey to becoming a college Professor took a few detours along the way: first, I dropped out of Bible College after two years to marry a young minister and move halfway across the country to Newport, Rhode Island. After a decade in the ministry, and becoming a licensed minister myself, we moved back to Iowa with our two young children to be near family. Several years later, my minister husband left the ministry and then us: I was already a junior at Buena Vista College by then and training to be a teacher. I graduated and went to Iowa State for an MA in Composition and Rhetoric.

I had 19 boys in my first section of Composition: they looked like clones in their jeans, t-shirts and ball caps on that first day. One of the young men in the back row said, “Miss Post? We don’t have many women. Can we go get some more?” I knew this class would keep me on my toes, and decided to use excerpts from William Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe to teach them about the use of dialogue and description. Since the book was about baseball and took place on a farm in Iowa, I thought it was an appropriate book. As it turned out, the handful of girls we had were anything but typical: one had worked in her family’s funeral home, doing hair and makeup, while another girl was a tom girl and athlete.

I discovered that I was dealing with a lot of anxious students: some were nervous about writing essays for my class, while others were homesick, worried about finances or feeling overwhelmed at a large university. A student told me, “I think you are the only one of my teachers who knows my name,” and that was possible because I had just 25 students per class, while some introductory courses had several hundred. Another student confided, “There are more people in my science class than we had in my whole high school.” So I focused on creating a community of writers talking about real world problems and keeping it practical.

I encountered students who needed help generating and organizing ideas and developing their voice; it was wonderful to see them sort out their thoughts and emotions on topics even as they struggled with their early drafts. Many shared deeply personal and painful experiences: eating disorders, date rapes, fatal car accidents, depression, being deployed to Iraq, the suicide of a friend, or the loss of a parent. My background in ministry and psychology degree proved helpful. Most writing teachers do a lot of one-on-one conferences with their students, and this quickly became one of the aspects that I most enjoyed, as we sat down and looked at their essays and discussed how they could improve them in their revision.

A despondent young man jumped from a window on the top floor of the dorms. When I walked into class the following morning, trying to come up with words to comfort my students, I realized that they were doing calculations to determine the velocity of the falling body and how many seconds it took for him to hit the ground. I realized then that my Engineering students had a different mindset than I had anticipated: this was how they coped, turning it into a math problem.

I used Language, Gender, and Communication Styles as my theme for class the second year. We talked about the different ways men and women communicate, and I developed a fun activity using the singles ads from the tabloids found at truck stops. In small groups, they developed profiles for half a dozen young men and women, and then each student picked a character and responded to actual Singles ads as they imagined their character would. I remember reading one ad out loud: the man described how he loved walking on the beach, watching romantic movies, and holding hands. Then the last line was jarring. He wrote, “No druggies or fatties should apply!” All of us laughed, but it was a great reminder about making good word choices and creating a consistent tone.

I took several classes for my Community College certification, including an evening course about the history of the Community College. On the first night, a number of my classmates, many of them PhD bound, referred to Community College students using many negative stereotypes. I was teaching a class at Marshalltown Community College at the time, and asked my Professor, Dr. Larry Ebbers, if I could bring a group of my Community College students to class. He agreed, I got four students to drive over, and we had a lively discussion with my graduate class. On the drive home, one of my non-traditional students turned to me and said thoughtfully: “they aren’t any smarter than we are—they’ve just been in college longer!” Later, several of my ISU classmates apologized for their negative comments and thanked me for bringing my students.

After graduating from ISU, I did a lot of subbing in several area school districts and taught as an adjunct at several Community Colleges while I searched for a full-time job. I recall an evening class where students were struggling with their next assignment until I asked them to brainstorm about their least favorite household chore. We began to fill up the chalkboard with ideas and then there was a lull. So, I confessed that I hated to iron and had my own special trick: I threw wrinkled clothes back into the dryer with a dryer sheet and a wet washcloth. Suddenly, a whole row of young men came alive: they wanted to discuss this amazing idea. Some of them were also opening their notebooks and searching for a writing utensil. Now we were learning! “What if you don’t have a fabric sheet? Can you just pour fabric softener on clothes?” The young women in the classroom were horrified and started to explain why that wouldn’t work. The ice was broken; we got along just fine for the rest of the semester. However, I learned that the way to get students involved was to figure out what they needed to learn.

When I decided to become an English teacher, it was partly because I needed to change careers and support my young children. I loved to write and teach, and my mother thought it would be a good fit; however, I realized that God was not done with me, as many of my students needed help and encouragement. In addition, I wanted to make a difference: to help students find their voices, become more proficient writers, and gain the communication skills to be successful. In the process, I saw students gain confidence, clarity, and connect with each other as they learned to shape an argument and support it. I could not have imagined my journey from that young minister’s wife to a retired college professor today; however, looking back, I recognize that I learned as much as my students did!

Last Updated December 23, 2016