Teaching, Week Eight: Interregnum

In twenty years of teaching, I am fortunate to have lost only one day to an unscheduled absence. I have grown so accustomed to relying on a schedule of lectures and topics that I cannot remember how it was that I could function when teaching at places where I could -- and regularly did -- lose classes each week to storm closings.

But it is also true that, as was the case this week, I have known in advance that I would be away from campus on other business. I booked my trip to Chicago in June, as a matter of fact, and so I could write this absence into the syllabus. What to do when you know you are going to be away? This time, as the absence fell in the middle of the semester, as the students were looking for term paper topics, a canceled class -- with the advice to hit the library -- made a lot of sense. Sometimes, an absence provides an excellent opportunity for graduate student training. Here, we use very few graduate students in the instruction of courses, but we do promise them the opportunity to get some experience in the classroom. On other occasions, a scheduled absence can be filled by a colleague who owes you a favor. I remember, during my first year in Lethbridge, filling in for a colleague whose wife was having a baby. "What a bunch of poorly behaved kids," I recall observing. It gave me a new respect for substitute teachers.

I do not advocate the reckless skipping of classes: if I do not allow my students to miss time, I cannot miss time myself. But while I make my teaching my first priority during the semester, it is unfair to think that is all I have to do. Sometimes, you have to cancel class. I hope the students enjoyed the week off.

Comments

[Rohan Maitzen]

Sometimes now I schedule a "day off" from lecturing to allow students time to (a) catch up on the reading and/or (b) meet with me in my office--after all, here's one hour of the week when I *know* they are available! (I schedule these hours for the class before a deadline, usually.) One of my hopes is that these scheduled breaks from a certain set of obligations (for all of us) will make other kinds of absences less likely, but I think it's worth it in any case just for the deep breath it allows us all to take. I wish they did all hit the library as I always recommend (one hour of solid reading will go a long way towards getting you through the assigned section of Middlemarch!).