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Campus Recycling

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By James M. Lang

A couple of weeks ago, I set aside two of my three office hours to prepare the lesson plan for a 75-minute class I had to teach the next day, an intermediate-level writing course called "Argument and Persuasion."

I was teaching this class for the fourth time; I have taught at least one section of it, and sometimes two, in each of my four years on the tenure track. I save all of my lesson plans in dated files on my computer, so I usually begin planning for repeat courses like this one by seeing what I did on the corresponding date the year before.

When I arrived in my office that Monday at 11:00 a.m., I opened up the file for last year's class and looked at what I had done. "Geez," I thought, "that was a great lesson plan. How did I ever come up with that?"

I changed the date on the top of the lesson, saved it into the new folder for this year's classes, printed a copy of it, and was finished preparing for tomorrow's class.

It was 11:05 a.m.

Of course I should have used the next hour productively, writing something, reading something for the task-force meeting I had later in the week, or dreaming up new initiatives for the department or our majors. Instead, I wandered over to the office of a friend in the department, and spent a half-hour distracting her from finishing her lesson plans while we debated whether I should switch from decaffeinated to regular tea in the mornings.

In my fourth year of teaching this course, and in my third year of teaching my other course this semester -- an upper-level seminar in contemporary British fiction -- I am finding it the case more often than not that I can recycle all or parts of the lessons I had prepared for previous years.

And I am finding, as a result of this efficient recycling, that my life is much more pleasant and relaxed these days than it was in my first year or two on the tenure track, and that I have much more time to write -- and spend time with my children, and play the piano, and watch the occasional baseball game -- than I have ever had before.

Of course I like this.

While many of my colleagues see grading papers as their primary work burden, class preparation has always been much more of a chore for me. I teach primarily by discussion, and a lesson plan that includes or features discussion can always fail in a particularly miserable and terrifying way: It's 9:30 a.m. on a Monday, you've said everything you have to say about the book, nobody wants to participate in the discussion or activity you've designed, and you have 40 minutes left until you can dismiss them five minutes early.

With that scenario always playing around the corners of my mind, I tend to overprepare. Just in case one activity doesn't work, I make sure I have two potential backup plans. This has helped, but planning for classes this way sucks away at my time and drains off a lot of intellectual and emotional energy.

In my fourth year now, though, I have tried just about any teaching activity I can think of at least once, and I have a much better awareness than before of what works and doesn't work for the students at my institution. That increased awareness decreases anxiety, and saves me time.

I also feel much more comfortable in the classroom these days than I ever have before, because I have a pretty good idea about the range of responses and contributions I might get in a given discussion.

The downside to all of this, though, is that at times I am starting to feel burned out.

When I sat down to reread Lord of the Flies for my contemporary British fiction class, I figured out that it was somewhere around my 10th reading of the novel. This time I was cheering for a plane to drop a bomb on the desert island where the story is set, and just put all of us -- me, my students, the characters in the novel -- out of our misery.

Next semester I'll be teaching two sections of "Introduction to Literature," a course I have taught six times already in my three years on the tenure track. Maybe Robert Frost will be like me this time around and take the other road -- the one that's already been taken ... and taken ... and taken. ...

I've tried to reach a compromise between burnout and comfort by changing at least one or two readings in these repeat courses each time I teach them. So in the British fiction class, in which we read seven or eight novels, I will make one or two substitutions each time, and add or delete critical material from the students' reading packet.

That helps, but sometimes I wonder whether it's enough.

I can think of one legitimate reason for me to make the occasional overhaul to my courses: the obligation I have to my students to make sure I am offering the best possible course to them. If I am bored with a course, maybe I will convey that boredom to my students. If I'm sick of the novels I am reading, perhaps I won't be able to convey to them the excitement and enthusiasm for the course material that I think the best teachers always display in the classroom.

So lately I have been wondering whether I am being selfish and doing a disservice to my students by merely tinkering with my syllabuses each year, rather than overhauling them completely.

But two things happened to me last week that helped me look at the dilemma differently.

I was reading through the papers my students had written about Lord of the Flies, and reading the same old arguments I have been reading for the past three years about the symbolism of the conch shell, and the face paint, and the death of Simon.

And then, like a flower bud breaching the cover of a late spring snow, an elegant and insightful paper emerged from the stack, one that made an argument I had never seen before, either in the published criticism of the novel or in a student paper. I was so astonished, I began my written comment to the student with "Wow!"

The next day, in class, as I was wrapping up discussion and preparing to offer what I thought was my final and brilliant insight into Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, a student raised her hand and offered that same brilliant insight in her own words.

"That's exactly what I was just about to say," I said, sort of dumbstruck. "So you get the final word today. See you on Thursday." As this student packed up her things, I couldn't help but notice the small smile of satisfaction and happiness on her face.

These two incidents reminded me that, even if I were to teach the exact same course every year, one thing always changes completely: the students.

What should matter more than my attitude towards the text is my attitude towards the students. I have to remember that they are seeing this same old course material with fresh eyes, and that they have new insights to bring -- even if they are insights I may have heard a time or two before. If I can remain open to the newness of their experience of the course, it may help regenerate my enthusiasm for it.

So for the time being, I think I can continue to fulfill the obligation I feel toward my students without reinventing all of these courses whose familiarity to me has improved the quality of my life.

I'll still tinker, though. I'm laying Lord of the Flies to rest this December. And Robert Frost won't have me for his walking companion next semester.

I'm heading back down the road I've -- mostly -- taken before.