I love teaching and I've been amazingly fortunate to get the opportunities that I have. I'm teaching at a university and a nationally-recognized art gallery. My students, for the most part, are engaged and enthusiastic about learning. The people I work with are supportive and have just as much love for the subject as I do. They're friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. Generally, my job is awesome. I would never willingly give it up.
Today, though, was not awesome. It was terrible. I felt entirely unprofessional in front of my class. I felt like an abject, utter failure. One of my students walked out of class and I almost don't blame her. I do blame her, though, because even if the teacher is having a bad day, you just suck it up and stay put. The class is a three hour block and after an hour, I wanted to just send the students home so I could regroup. I probably should have, but I dragged on and tried to make things work. I don't know if they did, even at the end of the class.
The root of the problem is that up until this point, I've largely been an outsider in the program where I work. I don't know what the other professors cover in their classes, because I teach a different group of students. They cover the Fine Art majors, I get everyone else. Since my classes are entirely separate from theirs, I don't have a strong understanding of what a student learns in each of their classes. This semester, though, one of the other professors is on sabbatical and I'm covering a class for him. I asked as many questions as I could think of, but it appears I didn't ask the right questions.
My students came into class without knowing, for example, anything about a light meter other than to take a picture when it registers at the center. They'd never seen an equivalent exposure chart. They didn't know how to define a "stop" of exposure, or the progressions of f-stops and shutter speeds. I was assuming, that seeing as those were the very first thing covered in photo classes for me, they would know those things. As a result, my attempt to start off the day with an 'easy' assignment to photograph their own Zone System grey scale was a miserable failure. They had no idea what I meant when I said they needed to level out their light meters, then calculate five stops less light. They didn't know how to calculate a stop difference. As a result, I only confused them. I only confused myself because I didn't know how they could be misunderstanding me. They weren't misunderstanding me; I was practically speaking a foreign language to them.
So after a very stressful hour of trying to sort out their (wildly different) types of cameras, light meters and lenses while still thinking they knew what I was talking about, I finally got frustrated and drew out an equivalent exposure chart. They were blown away. It was entirely new to them. At that point, I knew my lesson was out the door. I had to teach them about exposure. I had not planned for that. I had nothing prepared. I had no notes, no lecture, no examples. I looked like an idiot as I tried to pull together a way to explain a very complex subject off the top of my head without just reading out of a textbook. I felt humiliated and inadequate.
It sucked. I think by the end of the class, the four students that didn't just leave had grasped the very basics. They were able to at least explain stops and progression to me, and hopefully follow step-by-step directions I gave them in order to make their exposures. I had to modify things a bit, but I think their film came out alright. Turned out we didn't have any fixer remover (the box was empty), and there wasn't really time left to develop film. That's next week. We'll see what they got and see how much they actually know about developing film and printing in a darkroom.
Today was my worst experience yet as a teacher. I still want to teach. I learned a lot from the mistakes I made, and I will do better next time. As bad as today was, I know that next class will be better. What did I really lose today? I lost one class worth of time, and maybe not all of that if the exposures from the end of class come out. I lost some dignity, standing up there looking like an idiot. But, I gained experience and I can fix my mistakes. When I go back, I can be prepared.
So, it might have sucked, but it's not the end of the world.
Hey, I even got my weekly blog up before 10 PM! That's probably a record.
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