Most semesters
I can motivate myself to engage and immerse myself in the teaching. I genuinely
like teaching. I enjoy it when students understand concepts and begin to look
at their world with a more critical viewpoint. I love seeing their eyes open
when they truly understand. So it’s generally easy to start out motivated. What
happens later is not the subject of this post.
However,
this semester has been tougher. I can’t quite do it. I feel like I’m going
through the motions more. I’m at a distance, and part of me really likes the
idea of being at that distance. I’m quickly able to rationalize it as necessary
because I want to keep writing, but it’s also disturbing.
I don’t
want to turn into one of those apathetic professors I had in school. We all
know the kind. They read out of the textbook or simply lectured the entire time
without making eye contact with a single student. The ones where questions
were, if not forbidden, strictly taboo as they broke the professor's pace.
I’m not
there yet. I know that, but how many slippery slopes until I am?