Fresh Perspectives:

Teaching at Five Years: Reflections on the Milestone

By Patrick Allen

Patrick Allen is a doctoral student in American literature. His areas of research concern intersections of race, medicine, and human rights. Allen teaches first-year composition including courses with focuses on education and bioethics. He is serving as a Program in Writing and Rhetoric Assistant for the 2015-2016 academic year.

As of last month, I’ve been teaching for five years. I’ve loved the job, and I’ve hated it. I’ve been convinced that this is my calling, and I’ve considered quitting (and actually did once, in a way). To be utterly cliché, I have a love-hate relationship with the profession. And, as I always remember from my early days of education training, I’m not alone.

I can’t now find the article I was shown when I started my courses toward my master’s in education, but it was something like an article from The Atlantic, titled “Why Do Teachers Quit?: And Why Do They Stay?” I think about the title’s questions all the time, so I thought I might use this opportunity to share some considerations.

Why I Did “Quit”

As I said, I did sort of quit teaching once. That is, two years into my career as a high school Spanish and English teacher, I decided secondary education was not for me. And I made that decision for a lot of the same reasons cited in articles like the one from The Atlantic: low pay, high stress, lots of frustration, and the like. One year I had five preps for six classes, and I just couldn’t manage that workload, especially not on top of my graduate work. At 24, I was already feeling burnt out. For someone with a family (i.e., most of my colleagues), I imagine the burden of the job was even weightier.

But, a lot of what frustrated me about teaching at the high school level had nothing to do with the actual “teaching” of the two subjects I love. I learned daily from my students, I delighted in teaching them the difference between el pretérito y el imperfecto, and I loved learning about their values as they crafted their own versions of Achilles’ shield. With some more freedom and opportunity to explore my own interests in the classroom and in my spare time (at that point nonexistent), I knew I could love teaching.

Teaching Now

So, I applied to the graduate program at Penn State, relishing the prospect of teaching at the college level. My teaching experiences here have been varied thus far, and they’ve already given me huge opportunities for growth as an educator. Besides teaching in the classroom, I’ve also “taught” English 005, I’ve subbed for some colleagues, and this year I’m serving as a PWR assistant. Each position has helped me learn more about the work of the professional educator.

As an English 005 tutor, I’ve discovered the immense richness of our program’s lecturer faculty and graduate student instructors. I can’t tell you how many compliments I’ve heard (directly or in overhearing other sessions) about our department’s teachers. Our students recognize our work and our passion for the material—often citing unique activities and great conversations—whether they ever make that clear to us directly or not. These sessions also show me just how creative my colleagues are. Students are creating blogs, writing about current events, and preparing for their careers (with their English instructors’ encouragement) even in the “gen ed” classroom. If strong written communication skills mark the difference between landing a job and getting promoted at that job, what I’ve learned as a tutor is that our students are in good hands.

As a PWR assistant, I’ve finally gotten to do something I’ve been missing for a couple years—meet the other cohort of instructors who take on the job of teaching all of PSU’s undergrads: our lecturer faculty. While our program takes some measures to provide mentorship for instructors new to PSU, (The Atlantic article notes that teachers who stay often cite good mentors as the reason), I still rarely see our teachers breaking the grad student/lecturer divide. This is nowhere more apparent than in 602. With my eyes closed, I can point out where the BAMAs will be seated, where the lecturers have found their space, and where the grad students have marked out their own. While I sometimes stand at the head of the “class” for 602, I’m not unaware of the great wealth of knowledge and experience—in many cases much, much more than my own—in the group.

Some of our instructors have created curricula for whole departments and for whole school districts. Others have taught the equivalent of English 015 at other universities. Some even took English 015 and other PWR courses at Penn State. Still others have non-academic professional experience that certainly informs their own teaching, and that, likely, ought to inform ours—newbies and pros alike. In the coming weeks, I hope our experienced instructors in 602 will share their experiences and ideas about lesson, unit, and syllabus planning. I hope our new grad students will find in our lecturers the great resources I’m seeing from my end. I hope informal mentorships will begin (both in the 602 for the new grad students and between advanced graduate students and our experienced lecturers). I hope (hopefully not naively) that our return to Burrowes might make these relationships possible. If I miss anything about the institutional structure of the high school, it’s the ease with which the teachers collaborated, shared their ideas, and formed informal mentoring relationships. I wonder if there are ways we might try that here.

Why (Today) I’m Staying

It’s hard to say why those who stay in education do so, though I imagine lots of their reasons are the same. The Atlantic found that instructors credit strong mentorship with their ability to adapt to the demands of teaching. I think that could be a start, especially for those like me who, even after the five-year mark, wonder if this is the lifestyle for them.

For me, these are a few elements of the job that so far keep me teaching:

• Students sometimes light up.
• They sometimes have breakthroughs that solidify their beliefs or that prompt them to probe their as-yet unquestioned opinions.
• They sometimes grow as writers and thinkers in unexpected ways.
• Colleagues sometimes surprise you with kindness.
• They sometimes blow you away with their innovation.
• They sometimes remind you why you went into teaching in the first place—invariably something about helping students develop holistically.
• Sometimes, when grading, or when leading class discussion, you think, “Hot damn, I’ve done it!” (Sometimes, you just think, “Damn.” But, then you revise the plan for the next time—or you steal something better from a kind colleague who’s already learned how to do it right.)
• Sometimes you learn even more than your students, and your love of knowledge is rekindled.

And, while all of that happens sometimes, there are still other (rarer) times when a former student lets you know you were an inspiration, and you realize that there’s always that—the chance to be there for a student and to motivate her or his success.

My time in this department thus far has shown me our instructors are exactly that: dedicated educators with a desire to teach our students much more than writing. Cheers to that!

Patrick Allen is a doctoral student in American literature. His areas of research concern intersections of race, medicine, and human rights. Allen teaches first-year composition including courses with focuses on education and bioethics. He is serving as a Program in Writing and Rhetoric Assistant for the 2015-2016 academic year.  See Patrick’s English Department Profile.