I don't much care for the beginning of the school year (or semester). And it's not just the anticipatory dread that comes before Day One. I just don't feel like I have any emotional investment in these very nice, literate, non-felons who comprise my roster. I know their faces and can usually link them to names, but that's about it.
But around the two week point (i.e. now) the students become better distinguished from one another. I have a better sense of their personalities, hobbies, interests. This morning I had a fifteen-minute discussion after class with one of my students about his decision to embrace a vegan diet and the challenges of negotiating an alternative diet. Afterward, I worked one-on-one with a Journalism student who was having difficulty with the grammatical concepts we've covered so far. This afternoon I spoke with a Taiwanese student about American dialects and different forms of English; he expressed the challenges of learning a language with so many colloquialisms (his word).
As I left work today, I couldn't help but love my job and each of the students in my classes. They've suddenly become human.
No comments:
Post a Comment