“At a certain point, one loses the ability to distinguish between teaching and research; the dualism is a false one. Teaching at its best is a constant process of researching materials and ideas. Shared research is teaching.” ––Gregory Semenza, Graduate Study for the 21st Century

    Although I am all for destroying false dualisms, it seems to me that the distinction between research and teaching is quite vivid in early teaching experiences, namely graduate school. Interestingly, a professor recently advised me to never put my teaching ahead of my research, saying (quite rightly) that the profession simply does not value one’s teaching nearly as much as the writing. At its best, the desire to be a good teacher is (in the professor’s words) a “good person’s problem,” because it is fueled by the desire to educate, share and make a difference in people’s lives. At worst, teaching becomes another excuse to avoid the exhausting work of research and writing. My motivation wavers between these two extremes and is always in conflict with an insecurity driven overachiever mentality, which does not allow for anything less than excellence in all endeavors/ projects. However, I have definitely begun to incorporate my own interests and areas of research into my classroom; unfortunately, that practice has left my class lacking direction. This monologue is an attempt to catalogue my own pedagogical practice, flush out the too unconscious frame and its attendant gaps.
    I can broadly categorize my scholarly interests as Globalization studies grounded in issues of alterity. The impact of this broad focus (if it can be called a focus) in my classroom is simultaneously destabilizing and invigorating. Given a broad range of interests and concerns, there is too much material to taken in, make sense of, or even cover; this, in turn, can quickly deteriorate into a lack of orientation, of specific goals, and/or a general sense of disorganization. Conversely, laying out a field of sources, issues, and concepts can also be a wonderful way to garner student investment simply because they are forced to choose and make sense of the material according to their own predilections. I would like to believe that students enjoy the freedom and want to take charge of their own education; however, I also realize that Intro Comp is not an elective and is seen, at the outset, as a hoop to jump through. The logic of this pedagogical practice is grounded in my own (ongoing) experiences as a student/scholar; I teach how I learn.
    The drive toward destroying the false dualism between teaching and research is complicated by differences in the level of commitment and ability between teachers and students. This is not an effort to create a crude hierarchy that places instructors as the talented and invested few who must somehow break through apathetic students. Rather, it is an attempt to think through the instructor/ student dynamic given certain conditions, at least as I have experienced them. Since I have already mentioned something of the tension in my class content, let me say something about specificities of the form and their connection to a difference in ability. Training in various fields has augmented a natural propensity to shift from the abstract to the specific and back again. Throughout my day, I constantly examine various situations or experiences as symptoms or effects of larger abstracted phenomena, while also observing the subtle contours and shifts that particular experience has on those same abstractions. I often do the same in my classroom. That is, I spend a great deal of class time laying out various abstract concepts or connections often leaving my students in the difficult position of seeing/ making the connection with their own lived experience.

Excuse me; my research is on the other line.