Time Travel in the Classroom: Briana O’Riordan, Freshman, Takes WRIT 101 with Dr. Briana McCoy
I wonder what it would be like to be a student in my own class. Back when I first started teaching, I imagined I knew what it was like because I was only a few years removed from my own freshman year in college. I thought I knew how students would respond to different activities or assignments because I knew what I would have thought of them when I was 18. It wasn’t long before I realized that my experience of a college class and of everything else that goes on outside of that classroom simply wasn’t the same as theirs. So much has changed in ten years; the context surrounding their writing and the ways they use writing are very different from what they were when I was 18. Am I showing my age already?!
The reality is that students don’t experience a course in the same way even if they are classmates. I’ve dreamed of being the professor whose courses everyone wants to take because they’ve heard such good things about her – because she’s challenging and will push you to learn and to do your best work, because she cares about her students and wants them to succeed. I had this idea that the professors I admired in college were universally respected and appreciated for those same qualities. And maybe some of them were. (I’m reminded of Laura Hammons’ blog post from the 2013 symposium; see the archive, “Great Teacher Dream”). I know that I’m not universally liked or admired by my students, but I can also say with confidence that I try to challenge my students, to push them to do their best work, to give them a sense that I care about them and want them to succeed. I make changes every semester – every week – every day – to try to improve the quality of writing instruction my students are getting. But still, I wonder, what would it be like to sit in my own class as a first-year writer? Being asked to work on my writing, to be engaged in my growth as a writer, to buy into this whole writing process, while my 18-year-old self thinks about what I’m learning in other classes, making new friends, scheduling study time around swim team practices, meeting new potential dates, considering rushing a sorority, adjusting to being away from my family… Would I be engaged in improving my writing? Am I now the kind of teacher I would have responded to back then?
– Dr. Briana O’Riordan McCoy, Instructor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi