By Clémentine
Tholas-Disset
On
December 14th, 2011, I received my schedule for spring semester. As
my colleague Mrs. Henderson-Peal would be on sabbatical semester, I was to be
in charge of two groups of master’s degree students majoring in humanitarian
aid; I started panicking as I thought “What the hell am I going to do with
these revolutionary hippies?” As a Doctor in American studies with a minor in
communication and media, I was scared we would really have nothing to share… I
spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to please them and to make them
discover things I mastered and liked.
I
have been a teacher for six years now and the first thing I have learned is
never to judge a book by its cover. First, when I met them, these students were
no hippies or revolutionaries, so I realized I totally made up the wrong cover.
Moreover, after a few hours with them, the content of the book seemed both
entertaining and thrilling. Actually, I discovered a group of strong-willed and
open-minded young people with very pleasant personalities.
Teaching
this course is actually quite a challenge for me because I need to reinvent and
adapt my professional habits. After four years in the AEI department, making
freshmen and sophomore students work, I now have to collaborate with graduate
students who have high academic standards. I have the feeling I traded my role
of “youth tamer” for a new part as a “partner in learning”. My main goal has
always been to bring satisfaction to my students no matter their age or skills
in English and I’m learning to do so with a new type of student population,
older, more mature (maybe not every day), more active and definitely not
impressed by my teacher position. As a result, I think I have to make sure I’m
offering creative and unusual courses or activities to keep them interested and
I’m in tune with their expectations.
After
being so afraid and worried, I must admit I am fulfilled because the moments I
spend with the humanitarian aid students are synonymous of exchange. They may
not have turned me into a relief work aficionada, willing to spend all her
spare time volunteering all over the world, but I feel more concerned than
before. I also became aware of some connections between professorship and aid
work: you do both because you care about people, and, in both cases, it’s some kind of calling.
My
conclusion will be simple: I don’t know if the humanitarian aid students are
having a good time with me, but I am! So I guess it may be reciprocal…and if
not they are very good at pretending!
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