Through a curious coincidence of the calendar, I was a guest teacher in two different undergraduate classes this week. My friend Teresa invited me to talk about the visual politics of the economic downturn with her American Studies students at Vanderbilt. Closer to home, my colleague Ned asked me to discuss Lincoln and photography with students in the "Lincoln's Legacy" course he's teaching in our department this semester. Both gigs were great fun. Although the courses and topics were different, the classes felt similar. Both are small and discussion-based. Students in both classes are smart and engaged and they asked great questions. And both classes are doing an innovative, collaborative semester project. My job was easy: simply show up with some stuff to look at and discuss. What could be better than that?
There's a marvelous freedom to teaching other people's students. First, and most obviously, you don't have to deal with all the annoying, daily things that can make teaching frustrating. You're also the guest star, which means they grant you a kind of expertise and authority that your regular students typically don't. (Last year one of my undergrads reported having read an essay of mine in another course and declared, "I had no idea that you did, like, scholarship and stuff"). And they are more likely to be interested, simply because you're disrupting the routine flow of class with something - and someone - new and different. After this week I'll return to my own undergrad class renewed and reinvigorated. So will my students, because they got a probably much-needed break from me when beloved TA T. substituted for me in my visual politics class. Everybody wins!
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