Teaching in America: Things I discovered when I became a college professor

To the general public, professors enjoys working condition that is cozy and civilized, with a lot less stress than most jobs in America. But, as a foreigner teaching in  America, I discovered that the reality can be as romantic as a marriage of convenience: unless they have tenure or are teaching full time, America’s college professors have the job security of zero-hour contract workers, the social life of hermit,s and the job stress of brain surgeons.

It is fashionable to romanticize college professors. The U.S. media celebrate the academic  geniuses who use their ideas, research and knowledge to change the world. Politicians praise them as  knowledge creators. To the general public, professors enjoys working condition that is cozy and civilized, with a lot less stress than most jobs in America. But, as a foreigner teaching in  America, I discovered that the reality can be as romantic as a marriage of convenience: unless they have tenure or are teaching full time, America’s college professors have the job security of zero-hour contract workers, the social life of hermits and the job stress of brain surgeons. And those professors who teach only part-time at American colleges (usually called the adjunct professors) have money worries of chronic gamblers. I still remember those years when I was an adjunct professor (I was an adjunct professor for five years before I started teaching full time).  During those years, I had to teach at least 7 classes at three(sometimes, even four) different universities just to put food on my table and meet my other financial needs and obligations. My car was basically my office in those years. My typical day goes this way: I will teach Algebra in the morning on one campus and Statistics in the afternoon in another campus. Then in the evening I will drive down in a rush to the third university to teach an MBA class. By the time I get home and complete my grading  late in the night, I’m already burned out even though I had to repeat the same ritual the next day.  Those of us who are lucky enough to eventually get full time teaching appointments  are also  overworked and leisure starved but we  still love the job,  simply because we see teaching as a vocation, and we do get enormous personal fulfillment in transmitting knowledge to the next generation.

What do I exactly know about teaching in America?

When I came to America some years ago I knew that I will face challenges working as a college professor,  simply because  it is a new environment and a new culture. I did my undergraduate work at Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, in Nigeria, and my master’s  and doctorate at University of Phoenix (Arizona) and Walden University respectively, both of which are in America. It was during my graduate school days that I learned the challenges of teaching in American universities and colleges. Much of the American university system, especially in terms of expectations for both faculty and students and the basic classroom norms, are naturally unfamiliar to me at the start of my teaching career in America. This added more challenges to an already imposing task.

Start with the first semester. Generally speaking, my first semester as a university professor in America was ruthlessly demanding. I had to construct the course syllabus (by the way the course syllabus in America is more voluminous than what we have back home), read, write lecture plans and create teaching notes, deliver the lecture and do lots of grading, office hours and professional development workshops. At first, I was assigned to teach only math classes (mainly Algebra and Statistics). However, it wasn’t too long before I started teaching Macroeconomics, Finance and Introduction to Business classes as well.

One of the biggest challenges I faced came from the students themselves. Without putting it in so many words, American students were not at all like those I had encountered during my undergraduate days back home. For a start, their understanding of the relationship between the student and the professor is entirely different from what we have back home. But I am happy  to say a lot of them were delightfully polite. But since I am teaching Mathematics classes, the most hated classes in the campus, I must also confess that I have equally met lots of nasty students as well.

Americans were known to have independent personalities. But when it comes to learning mathematics, majority of their students were quite dependent learners. So I won’t say that I was too surprised that their first reaction upon encountering a math question was usually to lean on me. Sincerely speaking, I have lost count of the number of times my students contacted me, in many cases very late at night, to ask questions that I have already provided the answers very clearly in the course syllabus. One student called me at 1:33 am to ask the type of calculator and textbook needed for the class. All of these are very different from what we had during my undergraduate days in Nigeria. In those days, we literally worship our professors and we certainly avoid asking questions that would make them to conclude that we weren’t up to scratch.

My solution to all these was to try to get the students to take more ownership of their learning and invest in themselves. How did I do this? First, for any given class session, I only teach half of the time. The remaining half the students will be on their own, working on the questions I gave them from the topics we covered during the session. I even let them work together while solving those questions so they can learn from each other. When they complete the questions, I check each of the students’ work, give them the participation grade for the day and let them go, while instructing them to continue to practice at home.

Another challenge I had  with the students was my accent: many of my student often tell me that my ‘British’ accent is really hard to understand. Well, I was already thirty one years before I came to America so it is really difficult (or almost impossible) for me to change my accent. Thank God I teach mainly Mathematics and Finance which doesn’t require much grammar! In any case I soon realized that, to improve my students’ learning experiences and outcomes, I needed to connect better with them so as to make them trust their strange-talking professor (me). To that end, during the first three weeks of each semester, I usually ask my students questions about their perception of my class – things like how they feel about the class now that we have completed some weeks of the semester. My most encouraging finding was that my questions proved invaluable. The responses I got from the students were basically consistent: they want me to talk more slowly and to stop putting so much into each lecture. Well, talking more slowly I can live with. But putting less topics into each lecture I cannot do since I had to go by the syllabus provided by the university. In any case , I did made some desired adjustments to my teaching methods, which in turn earned me a bit of good will that I could trade to get the students to do the things I really cared about (like maintaining a good attendance and participating actively in the class). In addition, I encouraged them to come and see me during my office hours but unfortunately most of them do not show up.

My other surprises were more vexing. The students’ mathematical skills fell far short of my expectations. Many of them had  difficulty solving arithmetic problems like percentages, fractions, decimals and basic geometry, which in turn had a major impact on their ability to understand the basic concepts of Algebra and Statistics. On the basis of my tortuous grading experiences alone, I can infer that the U.S. high school system is passing the buck on the development of basic arithmetic skills to higher education. On one of the tests I graded last semester, the student did virtually nothing: he left most of the questions blank and on the last page he wrote “I have no clue Dr Ojih – I haven’t done Math for fifteen years!”

With these too “deep-seated” shortcomings on the part of the students, I knew it would be a challenge for me to make a serious dent in their learning outcomes. In any case, I tried anyhow. For instance, in my Algebra classes, I always spend the first week of the semester  teaching such topics as the “Review of Real Numbers”,   “ Variables and Expressions”, “Like and Unlike Terms,”  and so on.  In addition to the class practice questions (which I grade right there in the classroom in the presence of the students), I usually give my first tests early in the semester so I could give students extensive and timely feedback on exactly what I expect from them. The class practice questions which the students solve in the class while working together in groups had one major benefit: it reduces test anxiety and made the students feel more comfortable about what was expected of them in the final grades. This is important because American students cares about grades a lot. And I mean a lot, for real. In one particular semester (I think it was the Fall of 2012, I can’t remember anymore) I tried one strategy that I thought would help identify knowledge gaps as well as serve as a wake up call for slackers in my class: In the first four weeks of that semester, I  gave two tests on the lecture material, cumulatively worth only 10 percent. The students, most of who had an allergy to tests, found it all overwhelming. Some of them who got, say, 4 out of 10 on the test were very anxious and worried. Many of them went on and complained to the Chair of my Department that I was wearing them down with tests. One of the students, who got 3 out of 10, told me in a tearful voice (she actually implored me) that if she didn’t get an A  in this class she wouldn’t get into the Nursing program at the college. I explained to  her that these tests  carried limited weight and showed her exactly where she was falling short, so that she can prepare for subsequent tests, homework and the final exam. But alas! All my explanations made no difference to her.

The above explanations reflected a fundamental difference in our experiences of education back home. Going to a university in Nigeria (I attended Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, Nigeria) and spending what was, when compared to America, a very small  amount of money in tuition, books and boarding each year, I saw going to college as an extraordinary opportunity. I knew this student was spending well over $12,000 a year in tuition, books and other school expenses, but in her eyes the equation is quite different: to her, money buys opportunity. She felt that after committing such a huge amount in tuition and books, she had already contributed the input. So now, she expected the output. In as much as this kind of mindset is distorted to me, I do see where she was coming from. In any case, I did scrap the early tests in subsequent semesters. I now give only two tests in a semester. The rest of the course assignments include homework, class practice and final exam.

The way American students developed their world views was the final major difference from my experiences teaching in America. Growing up in Nigeria, we did not rationally believe that Nigeria was the center of the world, but rather that it is a country located inside the continent called Africa. In other words, it is composed one small, quirky part of the world. In contrast, my students in America tended to see things in a relentlessly American-centric fashion. Simply put, their knowledge of ideas, places, events and people outside the United State is surprisingly limited. Six years ago, one of my students asked me this question: “Professor, Nelson Mandela is the President of Africa, right?” As you can see, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that I naturally felt that if I don’t make my American students to confront the preconceptions about how the world worked, then who in their lives would? The good part, though, was that I found that they loved being pushed to think in entirely new ways and engage with new horizons – a good quality that made me think more about the rigidities of my own mindset, too.

Stooping to conquer

Looking back, I knew I would never have gotten through it all without help from my professional colleagues, which include other professors and faculty members. They were very unstinting in sharing syllabus and helpful tips during faculty meetings, workshops and seminars. Many of the Deans and department chairs in some campuses put up with my lateness in submitting final grades and other documents during the grading seasons. On the positive side, I made significant improvements every semester. Like edits in an essay, my revised lectures, especially in my Statistics classes, were always more concise and focused. And in my Finance classes, my updated PowerPoints were always better at showing the key calculations  instead of just telling them. In my Algebra classes, I began relying less on notes and walking around the class more.

For me, the most encouraging thing is that I love my job. The benefits of teaching for my research were unmistakable: it provided me the chance to learn and investigate issues and topics that I finds interesting. Not only that, teaching provided a never-ending flow of new ideas – a factor that pushed me to think in new direction about my dormant book project. The fact that there is relatively no structure on the topics that I can research or learn about forced me to read broadly, which in turn provided me wonderful ways to impact lives and make a difference in the world one student at a time, particularly as it relates to helping students understand difficult concepts and problems.