ePortfolio Follow Up

So, yesterday I posed about my creation of an online teaching portfolio.  However, I figured it deserved a little more reflection that just plopping it on the blog and calling it good.  (Oh, BTW, I hate self reflection more than almost anything on this earth--even mayonnaise--so this is a big step.)  So, what did I learn from this process?

I've grown as a teacher over the last six years.  Of course, it would be really really sad if I hadn't.  I recognize this growth in how I put together my lessons and the newfound knowledge of where my skills lie.  When I initially started teaching lit classes I smashed together a bunch of texts that I liked with a loose chronological framework.  There was very little thought put in to curricular goals or learning outcomes.  Do they train us on that?  Did I miss that day?  Or did I only learn comp. learning outcomes and therefore never consider others?  I'm not sure of the answer to that. 

Not having curricular goals, however, made it difficult to frame the course.  Besides a simple survey of some of my favorite books (or important books) of the 20th century what was I trying to get across?  I don't think I had a satisfactory answer to that question.  The classes were largely well-received and I felt happy with my student interaction at the time.  Still, I knew that I could be doing more.  (This is an ongoing theme.  Where have I failed?  What don't they understand and how can I clarify?  Etc, etc.)

So, jump forward four more years and I've taught many more classes.  Some of my favorite classes, in fact.  Teaching Women's Studies has been amazing and I've been so excited with the freedom that it offers.  I've also taught two more literature courses.  What I've learned about myself in the interim: I like a theoretical framework to structure my class.  When I was taking lit classes as an undergrad that's what we would do--read lit.  Or I would take a theory class and we would read theory.  But when I tried to create a class where what we did was "read lit" I felt adrift.  When there are so many possible ways to discuss a book, how can you keep from jumping around?  How can you avoid confusing or frustrating the students?  What sort of structure gives them the tools they need to work with texts? 

Answer: theory!  It's not accidental that I ended up in a cultural studies program as opposed to a literature program.  The syllabus that I'm teaching now is the one that I'm the happiest with.  A fitting ending to a graduate career, I suppose.  I've structured the course (Diversity and Difference in Girls' Studies) around one text, Elline Lipkin's Girls' Studies, which has units on becoming a girl, body image and sexuality, mean girls, and media influences.  This offers the perfect framework to then situate the novels/memoirs/films.  Within each unit we also read a subset of articles on "difference" and the ways it is constructed and discussed in contemporary culture.  We've read pieces on fatness, disability, the Holocaust, and intersectionality.  I like this way of creating a course that seems manageable to me. This is my skill set, and I'm going to take advantage of it.

So, now that I'm looking at a new job (if I'm very very lucky) and it will more than likely involve doing some of what I've done before and losing some of what I have been doing.  I may not teach Women's Studies again for a while.  A long while, potentially.  I'll move back to teaching composition and sophomore lit classes.  This is fine, I like students and I like freshmen/sophomores.  No issues there.  I just need to make sure I can translate my skills back to the comp classroom, mainly.  How do I add the teaching of writing skills in addition to the discussions I've become used to in my WS/Lit classes over the last four years?  New challenges, new skills to uncover.  And a LOT of lesson plans to revise :)

ePortfolio

So I just spent my entire day making an online teaching portfolio.  It was a day of mostly irritating busywork, although it was nice to see how my teaching skills have progressed over the last six years.  Anyway, here's a link to the completed document: ePortfolio!

Not to imply it wasn't worthwhile when I say irritating busywork.  Totally glad I did it (you should too!) but it was like an Easter egg hunt except all I found were syllabi & materials and no chocolate.