1. Be yourself- The summer before teaching my first class, I went shopping for "professional-looking" clothes. I even went as far as cutting my hair and dying it (RIP long hair that's still growing out from that mistake). Finally, I asked that my students call me Ms. Brooks instead of calling me Alexia because I wanted to appear as an authority figure.
Then on my first day of teaching after reading through the syllabus, I had a student raise his hand and say "can you tell us a bit about yourself? How long have you been teaching?" Oh shit, he's found me out. He knows that I've been a teacher for five minutes. Get out of here, I thought to myself.
Instead of telling this student that I had just graduated, I told him I'd been teaching for "a while." It wasn't entirely made up, I mean, I had taught a 3-week summer course prior to this course, but that 3 weeks certainly didn't equate to "a while." Truthfully, I didn't feel confident about myself as an instructor. I was 26 at the time but looked like I could have been one of their classmates (hashtag blessed), and I felt that the new clothes, new name, and new hairstyle would erase all of that. Well, it didn't.
What I realized about halfway through my first semester is that I was an authority on the subject being discussed, regardless of what my students called me or what I was wearing. So I ditched the dressy pants for jeans, stopped worrying about how young my hairstyle made me look, and started letting my students call me Alexia. It feels great not having to hide who I am anymore.
2. Know that you will make mistakes- This goes hand-in-hand with lesson #1. For the first two years, I wanted to teach content that I knew was going to work 100%. I asked my colleagues for advice and help with assignments often, and it was motivated by the belief that I couldn't make a mistake.
I realized this summer that this is a completely unrealistic way to thrive in the workplace, and life in general. Making mistakes leads us to learning what we want and don't want for ourselves. Plus, these last two years of teaching other people's content has made my class, at times, feel like it wasn't my own. I couldn't justify why I was making students do certain assignments because they weren't my assignments. For the first time this semester, I'm teaching two courses that I created alone. I know I'll make mistakes, but I am excited to learn something from it.
3. Set boundaries-During my first semester, I heard that if you aren't working hard, then you don't care about your job. I internalized this to mean that I had to work 50-60 hours a week even though I only had two classes and wasn't even classified as a full-time lecturer. I remember assigning an essay to my two classes with only a 48 hour window for me to return the drafts to them. That's 50 essays in 48 hours. I sat in my house wanting to cry because I didn't think I could get them done. In the end, I did, but I feel like that, coupled with the fact that I was responding to emails whenever I got them (even if it was at 2am when I had gotten out of bed to use the restroom or have a glass of water) told my students that I was available to them 24/7. And I don't want to be.
It took me a full year to realize that I was more than my job. I write, I run, I have a boyfriend, and I'm a pretty serious Netflix watcher.
I walked into my second year of teaching with a new attitude: my students would get my full attention, but it would only be within a certain time frame. Now, going into my third year of teaching, I've revised that policy even more. I tell my students in the syllabus that I am available by email M-F before 6pm and that if they email me on weekends or after 6pm on weekdays, there's a very good chance I won't respond. I feel pretty good about this policy. I think setting boundaries can teach students to set their own.
Cheers to everyone starting back tomorrow, and thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what lessons you've picked up along the way in the comments section below.
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