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.
