teaching and learning

so i'm teaching a sort-of lit class for the first time this semester.  and it's been great so far.  i got to choose the books, and as per the class requirements, they all had to be books published recently.  so i picked a lot of books that i simultaneously thought were interesting to talk about based on their own literary merits and were interesting in a cultural context.  now not only do i have a class where we can talk about characterization, plot, setting, ethos, believability, immersion, etc., but also race/class/gender/place AND technology, apocalypse, wilderness, conservation, zombies, home, and all that jazz.  so.  it's a pretty thematically dense discussion class.  and it's so fucking fun my eyes want to pop out.  of course, they also want to pop out because it's at 9am and i have to get here three days a week before 7am to get prepped for class (they have to submit questions online every morning and i have to be able to read them all and draw up a class plan around them before class starts that day).

anyway, i'm having a lot of fun, and the students in class who enjoy talking and discussing seem to be enjoying themselves.  now that i'm over the initial shock of the joy of teaching something i'm actually directly invested in (teaching comp is fun, but it has nothing to do with what i care about directly, and requires that i have an entire "comp" section in my brain that i switch over to each monday, wednesday, and friday), i'm starting to get that nagging doubt in the back of my head that i get every time i remember that nothing in life is perfect.  maybe this is just my latent comp pedagogy reflex taking over my brain, but my fear is that i'm not actually teaching these students anything.

granted, the only real goal of this class as it was explained to me was to talk about reading and talk about how it is relevant and important in today's society (BOOOOOOOM!).  and i feel like i'm definitely doing that.  i guess i'm so used to the lecture model, the skill-teaching model of a class that i feel like a failure just going in, talking about reading, and enjoying myself.  it feels too easy.  at times, when i'm being easier on myself, i feel like maybe the learning that's taking place in a class like this is really just less tangible that it might be in a comp class (and that's less than it might be in a science class, and so on).  i mean, i'm running this class pretty similarly to some of the seminars i've taken in grad school, and i learned more from the discussions in those classes than i have at pretty much any other time in my life (at least in a school environment).

i certainly lecture from time to time briefly about certain character archetypes, or certain literary techniques, and those kinds of things.  but these students are all experienced readers.  they infer these things if you hint at them.  they don't need to learn what the hero's quest is.  they can see it, and talk about it, and understand its value and also the value in deviating if you're a writer.  i also have lots of small checks built into the class to make sure they're keeping up on the reading and paying attention in class (and two big checks in the form of a midterm and a final).  but it's just strange.  i've never taught a class like this, and it's odd to have a class that puts most of its value in discussion rather than lecture and regurgitation/revision.  it's odd to think that students will come out of this class having read 8 new books, and that's (largely) it.  when teaching comp 101 (and even 201), we sort of have this idea impressed upon us that we're the gateway to our students' ability to write at a college level, which in turn is the gateway to the rest of their entire future success.  of course, that's aggrandizing and a little ridiculous in some ways, but i guess what i'm getting at is that with the impression we're giving as budding comp teachers, it's easy to convince yourself that you're doing god's work if you have an off day.  there's not a lot of room for crisis of purpose.  that's not the case anymore.

that said, we're finishing up talking about Snow Crash tomorrow and we'll be moving on to neil gaiman's American Gods on friday.  can't wait.