Almost time to start school. There's much to do these days: finish the webpages, write lesson plans for a few weeks to come, check how many students are in my new sections and what their names look like, create survival materials for the first few weeks... I keep looking at the names of the students who are already registered in my sections and try to guess where they are from, what they will do, what they are like... I am very excited to teach international students again. It was a great experience teaching Americans, but they had this homogeneity that bothered me, they lacked the amazing asset that international students do bring with them: variety! I did learn much from Americans though, especially about what freshman life is, and what it is to be a young person in today's world. This experience also showed me that I am no longer of the same generation as my students, and that is a bit scary. Fortunately (or not) the students themselves are not aware of this!
So now, back to international students for a year. Some people say that they are much more demanding than Americans, and that they often complain about their nonnative English-speaking TAs, but I won't let that bother me, because I know what I know and what I can teach them. I am not sure yet about the level of complexity I will require in their writing since about half of the students are freshmen, but the other half has been here for a while already, and they would know more and require more too. I guess I will have to adjust and adapt my teaching according to how the first week goes. But still, I will always set high standards for all of them and will not accept any excuse for bad work.
It will be harder this year not to have a mentor like I did last year. Chris helped us keep track of the important assignments and events, she gave us so many ideas, helped us when we were lost or discouraged, and was always one step ahead of us. Now, it's basically me, and my experiences. Tony and our 106i group will work together, yes, but I guess it is time for me to go back to the independant state I was when I was teaching at the ELC: no one to tell me what to teach, where, when, how, and why. I have done it before, I hope I can do it again, and well.
