This...reminds me of me. :-|

[aureantes]

Ever get the feeling that all your best efforts to reach and intrigue and inspire and educate are just wasted hot air?  Not that I'm (I hope) so bad as this.....


 

From The Onion:

Creative Writing Teacher Announces Plan To Sit On Edge Of Desk

August 15, 2008 | Issue 44•33

 

DAVIS, CA—Dressed in a pair of casual jeans to offset his tie, University of California-Davis creative writing professor Glenn Kohn, 30, announced plans today to begin Monday's class by sitting on the edge of his desk, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses, clapping once, and saying, "All right, young minds." The unorthodox move is slated to occur sometime after he tosses an empty Starbucks cup over his head into a nearby wastebasket, proving to students that his introductory short story workshop is unlike any class they've ever taken. "For finals week, I may consider purchasing a baseball and tossing it up and down while they read aloud," Kohn said. Students of Kohn's are expected to respond to his free-spirited, nonconformist teaching style by blowing off his weekly one-page writing exercises.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/creative_writing_teacher
 

 

See, that's the way, right there in the last sentence, that I feel I get treated when I'm trying the hardest as a teacher.  Blown off.  Ignored.  Treated just like another negligible item on the to-do list of life.  And I think the problem is, pretty clearly, that as a teacher in my own right I'm just too damn nice and easygoing, especially with young/unexperienced minds that I don't want to discourage....but how do I develop a firmer edge without driving people away, after they've gotten used to me being more creatively didactic than calibre-demanding?

It's a lot easier to go the other way, you know -- to have a reputation built up for being an irritable old hardass, and then be able to disprove it partway without losing one's street cred as having toughness and standards.  Going partway from being an oversympathetic softy? -- that reads as just turning into an asshole, at least from a student's standpoint.  And there's no responsible way of evading the issue of needed (and consistent) change through passive-aggressiveness...students will not understand this -- you cannot expect them to read you and understand this, even if they can read you well to begin with, because it confuses the issue of authority, which is something that must always remain in the teacher's hands, rather than being, as per the eternal rule-of-thumb for Librans, submitted to a committee vote.   

Stupid Libra charm and tact and niceness.  I get damn tired of being so accommodating and forgiving of circumstances, when I'd really like to be able to say, "Either listen to me and take this seriously or get the hell out of my classroom!"  But no.....I always wind up making allowances, because life's messy and unpredictable and of course people don't intend to blow off your assignments or let your words go in one ear and out the other, do they?  It's not as if they're subconsciously distracting themselves in any/every way possible from focusing on what you're trying to impart to them, right?

Note to self: stop being a comfy pillow for your students -- any of them.  Make rules and make them firmly, and make it clear that there are consequences for goofing off and trying to screw with your authority, whether in small ways or large.  Stop telling them to address you as an equal -- go on and claim the goddamn "Mr." already, even if it does seem hard to think of yourself as an adult sometimes.   Even if they argue with you -- it's your class, your rules...not theirs.  Don't let them walk all over you.  They're not the one doing the teaching -- their job is to learn


Okay....so we're trying to overcome the Libran Nice Guy-ness, the overlooked/unlistened-to middle-child syndrome, and the anxiety of the transmale trying not to offend social convention directly unless necessary.  All of which reticences have to be bludgeoned into submission finally, because it is necessary that one learn to structure and maintain one's power assertively rather than giving it away to avoid accusations of hardassness .  Sometimes it is necessary to be a hardass, in order to best serve both one's vocation and one's students.
 

Now, where are some good fictional templates for that.....?
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