Tiny Teaching Stories: Class as People

[nancy_sommers]

Today's Tiny Teaching Story is by Xinqiang Li, a writing instructor at Michigan State University.

Class as People

It’s the students who have inspired me to bring out the best in my teaching. Their eager questions, timely submissions, and even the smiley faces at the end of their emails remove my nervousness and tiredness at the beginning of the semester.

They remind me to teach the class as people.

Gradually, I’ve learned to imagine the class as a tea house conversation. I step off the platform, walk among the students, and change the sentence “Writing is an epistemic and recursive process” into “How many drafts do you usually write?”

Then, I see eyes light up in the class.

Submit your own Tiny Teaching Story to tinyteachingstories@macmillan.com! See the Tiny Teaching Stories Launch for submission details and guidelines.

[april_lidinsky]

Inspiring! Teaching is ultimately about relationship-building. I'm going to try bringing tea house energy to my next class. Thank you.