![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2013\/01\/Its_not_working_anymore2-300x225.png\")
But then, of course, the students show up and reality kicks in. Some days are truly exhilarating and the medal possibilities are still in play. Some days are a study in mediocrity. Some days feel like slogging through quicksand. And some days, no more than five minutes into a fifty or seventy-five minute class, a little voice in your head says \u201cIT ISN\u2019T WORKING.\u201d You try to ignore it, pretend you didn\u2019t hear it, but there it is again\u2013\u201cIT ISN\u2019T WORKING.\u201d The students know it; you know it\u2014now what?<\/p>\n
Every teacher occasionally (frequently) has recurring dreams of this happening or of standing in front of a class with no pants on\u2014the nightmares are equally disturbing. My own sleeplessness the night before each semester begins is at least partially because of nagging fears that this semester\u2019s first IT ISN\u2019T WORKING experience might be on the first day of class. That has not happened to me yet, but no matter how experienced the teacher is, that experience is guaranteed to happen sooner than later.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve all been there. I\u2019ve had new teachers come to me after a bad class and say, in essence, that \u201cif this is what teaching is really like, I\u2019m going to quit.\u201d Fill in the blanks from your own experience. If I had known that married life was going to be like this, I never would have gotten married. If I had known that children would be such a pain in the ass, I would have remained childless. And for me,\u00a0perhaps the biggest one\u2014if I had known that following Jesus and living the life of faith was going to be like this, I wouldn\u2019t have bothered. Saint Teresa of Avila was having one of those moments when she wrote \u201cLord, it\u2019s not surprising that you have so few friends when you treat the ones that you have so poorly.\u201d So we all know what we are tempted to say and do\u2014and often do<\/strong> say and do\u2014when it isn\u2019t working. Are there any better strategies?<\/p>\n One option is to recognize that\u00a0there is an alternative model to my \u201cme-centered\u201d framework. Maybe reality and the cosmic scheme of things are not perfectly patterned and adjusted to my preferences and what I think I need. Maybe there\u2019s more going on than I imagine. Maybe, just maybe, I\u2019m not the center of the universe and maybe, just maybe, God has not fallen off of\u00a0the divine\u00a0throne just because things aren\u2019t working out the way I want them to.<\/p>\n Fear of failure is closely joined to fear that I am not in control. Once I realized many years ago that in the classroom, just as in every other aspect of life, I am not<\/strong> in control I began to develop a few strategies to deal with IT\u2019S NOT WORKING moments. Humor helps, particularly if it is turned on myself. Honesty is useful: sharing with the class your perception that things aren\u2019t going well often inspires the students to do what they can to get things back on track. A short memory is also helpful. Simply saying to myself \u201cwell that sucked!\u2019 or \u201cthat was embarrassing!\u201d as I leave the classroom then forgetting about it is a strategy that it took me years to fine tune.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll be happy to know that my Tuesday morning lecture on Kant\u2019s \u201cWhat is Enlightenment\u201d went very well. But that won\u2019t help the next time around as I anticipate a new semester. And bottom line, that\u2019s a good thing. One of the times I woke up on Monday night I said to myself \u201cWhen the time comes that you can\u2019t give a fifty minute lecture on Kant to a bunch of sophomores without screwing it up, it will be time to retire.\u201d<\/p>\n That didn\u2019t help. Because the truth is rather that when the time comes that I\u2019m not<\/strong> on edge at the beginning of the semester, when I\u2019m convinced that I can simply mail it in without some nerves being involved, that <\/strong>will be the time for me to retire. Teaching is both a tremendous privilege and a tremendous responsibility\u2014I should<\/strong> be on edge and a bit nervous every time I have the opportunity to once again create the world anew in the classroom. It is up to me to assemble certain texts and ideas that have stimulated and changed me as a teacher and as a human being over the past many years, then to tell a \u201cshow and tell\u201d story that will, if successful, draw and entice my students into the world of collective learning where we will encounter, as Marilynne Robinson describes it, \u201cthe human mind at its mystifying work, endlessly, sometimes brilliantly, fitting myth and reason to reality, testing them against reality, just for the pleasure of it.\u201d As the saying goes, it\u2019s nice work if you can get it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last Tuesday was the first day of classes on my campus for the 2024-25 academic year. It kicked off my thirty-eighth consecutive year standing in front of the classroom\u2014thirty in my current position at Providence College, three at Christian Brothers University, and four as a graduate student teacher in my master\u2019s and doctoral programs. You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":11739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,20,696,48,57,61,73,91,94],"tags":[269,383,463],"class_list":["post-32904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-change","category-fear","category-human-nature","category-jesus","category-literature","category-philosophy","category-stories","category-teaching","tag-human-nature","tag-philosophy","tag-teaching"],"yoast_head":"\n