Just Show Up And Start Professing

I knew the school year started August 25th only because I had Googled it. I began coming into work full-time a week beforehand. That's when I learned that I was supposed to have already hired my course assistants for the term.

The CS department at CMU pays undergraduates to work as course assistants (CAs) for the intro CS classes. And like everything else here, it's entirely up to the professor to decide what to do with them. You can hire any number of them. The only rules are that they shalt not introduce new material and collectively they shalt not work more than 60 hours per week (since I'm teaching 3 sections). And where does one get CAs from? Some sort of CA tree? Nope. From the students you taught last term. Which is when you were supposed to have asked them to CA for you. Thankfully, after a desperate email to the group of strangers I'd be working with, one future colleague saved me by sending a couple of CAs my way, and others referred a couple of students looking for last minute positions to me, and I had hired my first four employees. So far they don't look very happy to be working for the new and confused guy. I don't think they know what do make of me. Am I young and inexperienced, or just the classic absent-minded professor?

Since it's my first semester here, I was encouraged to work with one of the three other instructors teaching CS2 this term. The one I chose to work with has proven to be a great pick. He's made a lot of time to show me the ropes and share his materials with me. I'm determined to make my sections match his for as far into the term as I can. This is the first time I'm teaching with someone else's materials, and it's very much against my nature. But I have no sense for CMU culture and expectations about workload and grades and what exactly CAs do, etc. I didn't want to do things my way until I understood the CMU way. Plus, the four of us teaching CS2 have to give a common final, and the contents of that final are very poorly documented. I was afraid that if I charted my own course, I might lead my students astray in their preparation for the final.

So, I'm not preparing my own materials, and I'm lecturing just 7.5 hours a week. What AM I doing? I'm making arrangements with my CAs and managing my rosters.

The roster thing is inane. Lots of CMU students each term don't get into the courses they register for. Each section has a wait list, and each student can be on only one wait list. So the students have to pick which of the 11 CS2 wait lists to sign up for. Then it's up to the instructor to notice when a space opens up in a section, and to move a student in from the wait list. And the instructor can choose any student he likes from the wait list, and can even take a student who isn't on any list. Part of the problem is that every now and then a student who successfully gets into one section will need to switch into another because of some unforeseen scheduling conflict. But you can't be on a wait list for CS2 if you're already enrolled in another section. Even worse, if the section is limited to 25 students, the instructor is still allowed to take on additional students and let them sit on the floor. And the students know this, so they come in and beg with their puppy-dog eyes, making the prof out to be the bad guy if he tries to stick to the 25-student limit. And then there's the game you can play where you take on more than 25 students, betting that one or two will drop by the time you need to administer an exam on the 25 computers in the classroom. The instructor has to deal with all this roster stuff, and to make matters worse, the roster also changes on its own as other CMU employees add/remove students from sections. All of this makes a lot of work for the professor that could have been handled better in software.

Feeling overwhelmed by all this and very alone at CMU, it was a really nice treat when a few of my former high school students began appearing on campus and dropping by my office.

And so I began teaching. One of the hardest things to get used to has been not having my own classroom. Before every class I have to pack a backpack of all the materials I think I might need: the roster, handouts, various kinds of paper and markers, my laptop with appropriate cables, etc. I teach in 4 identical classrooms, separated from each other by movable partitions. These do little to block the sound of the lecturer projecting his voice on the other side of the partition, literally just two feet away from me. When I arrive at the room, I wait outside with my students until the previous class ends. There are no bells, so the timing of this changing-of-the-prof is a bit unpredictable. When I enter the room, I often have to close the giant partition. And of course I have to plug in my laptop and battle with the projector, toggling its input setting and my laptop display settings, disconnecting and reconnecting the cable, and sometimes rebooting, before my desktop appears on the big screen. Then it's time to figure out which students showed up. Because if someone on the roster isn't showing up, that might mean an opening for one of those students begging to get in. And I have to know which students showed up who aren't on the roster, so I know who to let in if an opening does arise. At the end of lecture I'll need to pack all my stuff up again and talk with lingering students as I scramble to make room for the next class.

Well, I'm a week in now, and I can't say I'm having much fun yet. Part of that comes from being at a new place and learning the ropes. And I think part of that comes from using someone else's stuff, instead of teaching my own way. The way the course is structured so far really doesn't feel like me, and I'm finding that some of the ways I used to interact with the students at the beginning of the school year don't seem to work in this format. I'm really looking forward to starting over my way next semester. I'm supposed to find out what I'll be teaching some time in the next few weeks. But being the new guy, I've got last choice, and I'm sure my teaching assignments will keep getting shuffled around for a while.

One thing I was looking forward to about teaching college is the informality of it. But as much as I've insisted on being called "Dave," my students are still throwing a lot of icky titles at me, like "Professor" and "Sir."

One of the toughest things about teaching here is the freedom to not teach. In high school, you have to see the students an enormous number of hours each week, grade their work, etc. But here, I can choose to lump all my students together in one room, conduct two 80-minute lectures each week, have my course assistants hold office hours and do all the grading, and ultimately not really be teaching at all. And it's going to be really hard to resist those sort of temptations. But at the other extreme, if I run all my own recitations then I won't be giving my course assistants opportunities to teach, and if I try to be available to help them in the lab evenings and weekends, then I won't get to enjoy spending time with Virg. Lots to figure out for next term...