I gained a lot more confidence and felt more comfortable about my teaching after reading the first chapter of the book ‘First semester: graduate students.teaching writing, and the challenge of middle ground’ by Jessica Restaino. Because I used to consider myself as a failed, frustrated and depressed graduate student before. Being an international student, surviving here is not that much easier for me. It’s really hard for me to cope up with all these new challenges. And not being a student from the composition background made my journey harder and difficult. I used to consider myself the weakest student here. I always thought it’s me who is lagged behind and that’s all happening due to my failure to catch hold of this new environment. But now I can relate to my problems and difficulties. This is not me only who have those complaints, this is not me only who have to go through all these difficulties. With days passing by and especially reading these articles, I got to know I’m not the only one. Most of the grad students have to undergo the same phase to some extent when they are assigned with these composition classes, where they are responsible for their own classes, own designed syllabus, own assignments, and own materials. It’s not that much facile to teach a composition class, especially when you just can’t forget that you are here with some other objectives and that’s your own concentration for your own desired degree. Like for me, my concentration is Linguistics which has nothing to do with this composition class. So, without any doubt I admit these controversies going on for years about this writing program manual. To some point, there’s something always keep the new grad assistants in dilemma and frustration for a couple of days when they are entrusted with teaching ‘writing’ in class.
Anyway, my aim is not to discourage the grad students, possessed as writing class instructors. Now, I will show the other side of the coin which removes all the allegations and show its (Writing Program’s) beauty. First of all, I would like to mention my sense of achievement. This grad program is helping me growing up as a teacher. For me, it’s hard to teach completely a new section that I never heard of. But, I’m learning. I’m adding feathers of knowledge and experiences in my areas of expertise. This writing program helps me to know the world differently and learns new things, that probably never might have caught my eyes. I came here with a desire to walk in the area of research and establish my career in academia. This place is my first grand step in teaching. The writing program is preparing me with professional knowledge. I’m possessing as a real teacher without having any former qualifications to teach in a University. That’s amazing. My life now revolves around a completely new area of knowledge. I’m learning and I’m teaching. This is not a blessing for me only but for all the grad assistants in the Writing Program who get this opportunity to play two roles altogether and enhance their set of skills every single day. All those readings, We had in ID 601 and now are having in ENG 605 are opening the windows of knowledge. The best part for me to learn here is about the Learner-centered teaching environment. This is very new to me. As I came from a completely different background where the teacher plays the lead role and talks around 80 % of the time of the class. The writing program familiarized me with this world which I really always thought of. I learned here how to pace the class through discussion and make my students talk in class. This is a great learning for me. For the first few classes, my instinct nature of lecturing used to appear in class. Even I couldn’t stop myself in spite of being so concerned. But now I’m far away from that. I understand my students, I know how to make them comfortable in class and make them discussing in class with their peers which is really important in a writing class. Now I know teaching is not about lecturing.
With all the difficulties, I have been suffering throughout this semester, I‘m much confident now and happy about my learning.
This writing program is helping me out through giving me the opportunity to train up myself for teaching. Now I know how to create assignments, how to design syllabus, how to do unit planning and creating all other materials ensuring my students learning progress.
This writing program helps me to revise my writing skills too. I got to know about different theories, strategies, and processes regarding writing skills which helps me to cultivate my writing skills too.
To conclude, I would like to say ID 601 and Eng 605 are my roads to teaching.
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