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Category Archives: school

I Quit My Job: 10 Reasons I’m Going to Miss It

22 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by alishacostanzo in school

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aha moments, baking treats, building community, conversation, growth, I Quit My Job, non-traditional professor, revisiting material, showing off skills, Stopped teaching

I had this idea for a video as soon as the semester started, and I wasn’t standing in front of four new classes of students.

Instead of being depressed, I thought I’d reflect on what I loved about my job and what I’m going to miss about it.

Want to watch me be a weirdo and tell way too many stories about being in the classroom, check out my video about these ten reasons I will miss my job teaching English at UCO.

The Reasons

One—My Students

I loved connecting with my students, sharing stories, jokes, exchanging movies and books and game recommendations, having them learn how to trust me not to judge them or be a stuffy, uppity college professor.

I loved learning from them, about jet mechanics in the air force, about Korean drama and K-pop, about what it’s like to be an underage single mother, about drought and cloud seeding in Oklahoma, about what it’s like to be the eldest of twelve, about what it’s like to come out as gay to unsupportive parents…you name it, a student has told me about it. Written about it.

I’m going to miss teaching them that having their own perspectives is okay, and how to strengthen their own opinions.

Two—Those Aha Moments

When I’m building trust in the classroom, I like to show off. I like to blindside my students with facts or ideas that they’ve not thought of before. Then, I show them the connections and blow their minds. I love their wide-eyed wows and gasps and holy shits. When they tell me, I’ve never thought of that before.

Well, of course not. You’re not taught to look at things the way that I do. That’s why I’m here, to show you how. To jumpstart their critical thinking. To show them that something as stupid as Family Guy can be broken down to reveal the creators’ perspective and support it with connections and evidence.

It’s funny because most people complain about a lack of common sense or common knowledge. Welp, you know what? There is no such thing. Every one learns differently, has different pasts and perspectives, and it’s ridiculous to think that someone else has the same knowledge as you or your family and friends or community.

That’s where I come in. Let me show you what you haven’t thought about seeing yet. And you can show me. And we can expand each other’s minds.

Three—Revisiting the Material

I’ve taught a lot of the same lessons throughout my eight years as an English Professor. That means seeing the material over and over again. Each time I interact with a story or tv episode or article or topic, I find something new to say about it. I love that process. I love how it changes with each set of students, too, because of what they contribute to a class discussion.

Four—Being the Non-Traditional Professor

Y’all. If you don’t know already, I’m this weirdo hippie who likes vampires and violence as much as she likes to spoil people with baked goods. I walk around my classroom barefoot, swear, and show cartoons in class. We talk about so many things that we really shouldn’t. But my students are adults, so I treat them as such, and that allows us to have a good time. An informal time mostly, except when I hand out grades.

Since we have a bit of one-on-one time together, I also stop being that scary professor real fast. I’m there to help them. To REALLY help them, not just get a paycheck. So by the time we’re done with their first draft of their first paper, they’ve learned to ask me questions and laugh at my silliness, and forgive my terrible handwriting.

I’m no gatekeeper. I’m a mentor. So, let’s talk about that elephant in the room and paint him pink.

Five—Showing Off My Skills

When I’m building trust in my students, it’s a bit counterproductive to have the weirdo silly me up there, saying trust me, laugh with me, learn with me, if I don’t show them that I know what I’m doing.

Sometimes, this is simply my reading an assignment that I’ve asked them to do. Sometimes, it’s asking the right questions or having the right response to one of theirs. Sometimes, it’s commenting on something they said that other professors might avoid.

My favorite is when I ask them to write paragraphs about their hometowns, and I use my magic trick to tell them how they feel about home based on what they say about it. Nine out of ten times, I’m right.

I’m not perfect after all.

Six—Growth

Thiers and mine. 

I love watching my students improve. And most of them do. The ones who do even the barest minimum of work will get better.

And every semester, I have one student who doesn’t think they can do it, but I keep after them, and they keep trying, and they pay attention, and by the end of the semester, I get to tell them how proud I am of them for sticking it out. For improving.

They’re a lot smarter than they give themselves credit for sometimes. Yes, English is scary. Writing is hard. The only way to get better is to keep doing it.

That’s it. No magic advice. Just keep writing.

Then, I also grow with them. On top of them teaching me new things, I am always seeing new ways to offer up advice, to suggest attacking a problem, to get them to understand what I’m asking of them, to make them better writers. 

I have to keep practicing, too, to improve.

Seven—Community

My classroom, typically about four-to-six weeks in, starts getting loud. If I didn’t have a class full of talkers, by this time, students are starting to get to know each other and me better. By the end of the semester, we have a small roar to contain before class starts with people sharing breakfast, nursing hangovers, and catching up on assignments.

Many of my students make friends in my classes because I make them interact with each other. Group work without the pressure of getting a serious grade on it can help a whole lot. It also means that we get to have more focused lessons and those who may not speak out in front of everybody will talk in a smaller setting.

Even if they don’t make friends in class, they get to build some type of rapport with me.

I also get to keep tabs on some of them after they’ve left my tutelage. The internet and social media help greatly with this. I love seeing them grow up, graduate, get married, have kids, begin careers, and become smart adults. It’s nice to know I had a hand in that, even if only for sixteen weeks.

Eight—Baking Them Treats!

I like to bake, especially when I’m stressed. I also like to experiment. The only way for me not to gain a hundred pounds in this process is to be sure these treats get eaten by someone else.

Give me half a room of football players, and I have no trouble leaving school with an empty baking tray.

Plus, I love to feed the people I care about. And I certainly care about my students. It’s an easy way to show affection.

Nine—Finals

When I collect finals, we have no test. I simply sit in my office with my husband for four hours and have them drop off their portfolios. Usually with a new batch of treats, too.

This means students will come and linger, talk to us for a couple minutes or a couple hours. Get hugs. Thank me for being cool. Tell me about the other things they’ve started to notice thanks to my class. Offer me a treat in return. (I got some fabulous pumpkin cookies one year, with the recipe!) 

They also get to chat with my husband, whom I tell stories about the entire semester because he’s lived a crazy ass life. And he’s more science brained, so those who don’t get to talk to me about that get to talk to him about that.

It’s usually a good time.

Ten—Colleagues

I worked with some amazing people. Other teachers who would share war stories and tell me about lessons they were testing and offering opinions amongst each other.

I love to learn, so I love with my colleagues teach me something valuable for life or the classroom.

We also simply have some awesome and ridiculous conversations. I’ve learned about their health, about their degree programs, about their families, about their creative projects, about their favorite books and movies, and so much more. 

They’re wonderful people.

My bosses were also pretty darn great people, too. Mentors.

I could ask any of them for advice, and they’d help.

Plus, they let me teach how I wanted to teach.

Well, guys, this was a job I didn’t want to leave. One I resisted leaving for far too long.

I hope that I can find a new job that allows me to be the weirdo that I am.

Let me know in the comments, what your favorite educational experience is: a favorite teacher, lesson, class, student, experience. Anything.

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My Summer Wrap Up & Memory Keeping

26 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by alishacostanzo in school, Uncategorized

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Camp Nanowrimo, college professor, family time, making new goals, meeting goals, memory keeping, preparing for fall semester, summer wrap up, writing habit, yearly word count tracking

Want to watch me prep for my Fall Semester and check out my new classroom? Check out my new Day in the Life vlog.

 

Y’all, I have never had a summer fly by as fast as this one did. Man!

The good news is, I got to spend a lot of quality time with my family back in New York, I published a novella, finished the first draft of a novel—completing Camp NaNoWriMo, started vlogging about writing and editing on YouTube, finished my first round of edits on an old novel, and put together a cookbook for a client. Wow, when I put it all down on paper, that sounds like way too much. Still, it was a lot of fun!

I’ve got plenty of new goals for the rest of the year, but I surpassed a major milestone in these last few months and that’s my word count goal for the year. FOR THE YEAR. By August. Um…what?

My original goal was 106,000 words, I’m just shy of 116,000 words.

I didn’t think I’d get past 100,000 since I’d been struggling these last few years to get words to paper. I will admit that since the start of August, my word count has dropped significantly, but I’m trying to not completely lose the habit amongst the chaos of the Fall Semester, teaching four classes, editing an anthology and two books, and publishing another.

I wonder, however, if my yearly habit should be front heavy. Writing packed into the slow times of the year, and focusing on editing and marketing for the last quarter. Ooo, y’all, I have so many new ideas to get ahead.

Honestly, I’ve been leaning more and more that way the last couple of years, but I feel like my yearly planning system is about to change. Here’s hoping I can keep more realistic goals, so that I can keep meeting them.

Okay, sorry for that tangent, but when ideas strike, sometimes, you just have to go for the ride.

To end, I want to highlight some of my favorite memories from the summer:

~My plane landing early and ruining the surprise my mom planned with the kids holding signs with my name on it. They were still really cute, and I loved it.

~Strawberry picking with the family.

~Having a no-looking drawing contest with my niece in the back seat of my mom’s car.

~Chatting with my brother about Arizona

~Watching Bosch, Absentia, and Timeless with my dad; A Discovery of Witches with my mom; Letterkenny with my friend/sister, Donna; Entourage with my Uncle John.

~Going to the craft show with my mom and forgetting to pay the library ladies for the coffee and donuts before remembering and literally running back to pay them.

~The cookout with my Aunt Mikki and cousins Joel and Cameron, and making that’s-what-she-said jokes to him and his girlfriend much to their shock.

~Visiting my grandma in the hospital and having her mistake me for one of the nurses, but the moment she knew I was there, she boasted about me to the actual nurses.

~Having dinner and drinks and talk around the bonfire with my Aunt Karin and cousins Rachel and Naomi. We toasted each other all night.

~Going to the gym with my step-dad, Dan, and teasing my mom whenever we went somewhere together by singing, “waiting on the woman,” to her as we waited for her to pull the car out of the garage.

~Going to Strong with my mom and step-dad, and the nurse asking him to flip over his hand, so he gives her his other one, and all of us giggling together.

~So many trips to the ice cream stand and lots and lots of food!

It was a good time, y’all.

How did your summer go? Tell me in the comments below!

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