Tales from Real Life: Searching for Answers
Then, with the admonition, “This first year I want you to be the best teacher you can be,” he dismissed me, and, like the Deists’ god, he was never again visible to guide me through the semester.
On the plus side, I had a passion for the profession and an excellent knowledge of the content of the courses (some admittedly obtained seconds before entering class); but, predictably, I was a terrible teacher.
That sophomore text—I assigned all of its over-2000 pages and was clueless as to why students looked at me through weary and crossed eyes.
So how did I teach those undergraduates? Simple. I replicated my best graduate seminars and copied my favorite teachers.
But, without even the map of a G.A.’s department-required syllabus, I meandered from topic to topic like a blind person trying to cross the Gobi desert.
Thirty-five years later, though, I would win the Acorn Award as Kentucky’s best college professor of 2005. How did I get there? I discovered a compass called a working pedagogy.
—Charlie Sweet
Eastern Kentucky University
December, 2008
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