It's almost August

I've been back for some two months. Actually, two months and a week. And I haven't been very productive. Summer projects that I planned for myself? Fell through sadly. I have only my lack of discipline to blame.

However, I expect I'll get my teaching syllabus completed on time and ready for my advisor in Ann Arbor to review. In fact, I'm hoping to send it a few days ahead of the deadline since I'm away in Hong Kong come this Thursday.

It's been harder than I expected, choosing readings and deciding when to schedule assignments. I decided to drop the number of required papers from four to three, although I am making it compulsory for my students to select one of those three papers and revise it a second time by the end of the semester. I've also decided to teach Thomas Jefferson's The Declaration of Independence in the unit for Argumentative Writing. While I'll be learning it for the sake of interest, the students will be learning how Jefferson defines independence and how he makes his claim for it.

I'm tempted to screen one of the following documentaries - Bowling For Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 or Supersize Me - just to break the monotony of readings and in-class writing exercises. We'll see how it goes.

I've been imagining how my very first class will be - I'll walk in at 10.10 on Tuesday, September 7th, give the class a once-over, maybe grin a bit, put my bags on the desk, look for some chalk or have some chalk in a tin in my bag, write the course name, section number, and my name on the board, and then turn around and face the students who'll either secretly rejoice that they have a pint-size female Asian (read: most likely easy to bully) instructor or groan inwardly because they have an inexperienced baby-faced teacher.

That's when I'll start to speak. What will I say? Haven't settled on anything yet, but I'm wondering how my accent will turn out. I've been trying my best to avoid an American drawl since last September, but being around my American peers has made it difficult. I can't help but speak in their manner. In the past, I tried to counter the accent by pronouncing my words like a British. It worked for a while, and then I decided my speech sounded too contrived (I've had English teachers and English bosses and colleagues, I'm a big fan of the Pride and Prejudice mini series - yes, the Colin Firth one - but I've never even been to the UK!). I'm pretty decent at speaking "American" like Americans, but I don't wish to sound that way - I do it too well and people mistake me for an American, which I don't want. I've tried going accent-less, just good grammatical Singaporean-speak, and maybe I should keep doing that. This guy knows what it's about.

In the end though, it doesn't matter how I sound as long as I speak well and convince my students that I know what I'm talking about. Content will matter far more than the manner of the transmitter.

So, I'm back to working on the heart of the lesson. The accent-talk was just a minor distraction; anything to take my mind of the fact that I have dozens of in-class assignments and quizzes to write!

I can't wait for December when I get to tell you readers whether I made it as an instructor or failed utterly in instructing my students in the art of college writing. More to come once school starts!

Posted by Monoceros at July 26, 2004 11:39 AM