Teaching for the first time can be very intimidating but teaching a bunch of freshmen who are freshly out of bed and yawning through the greater part of the class, is perhaps infinitely worse. I am teaching at 8 and I must admit that I was very worried about holding people's attention that early in the morning.
Fortunately, my students, at least most of them, seemed wide enough awake to want to participate. There were quite a few hands shooting in the air and a lot of animated discussion during the group work. I am so glad that when we workshopped we talked about sitting in circles, because I fear that had they sat in rows, soon some of them in the back would have allowed their minds to wander. The group seems analytical about their expectations from this course and their approach to writing and I think this might make things easier for all of us. I was also happy to see that they were very aware of how they could use this to cater to the writing needs of their own majors.
I was equivocally told by nearly four-fifths of the class that they hated English! I am glad though, it makes this all the more challenging. But then again, they will not exactly be reading literature so I guess one will not really be able to address their apprehensions. As some of them said, they are willing to work on it and I am more than excited to do so with them.
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