Confessions of an Instructor: Reflections on Meaningful Teaching

What are some of the most memorable classes that you took in undergrad? Why were they memorable? What did the instructor specifically do to make learning accessible and fun?

I ask these questions in light of my own experiences as a student. When I was an undergraduate student studying English Literature, I dreaded having to attend, and even skipped, some of my Early Modern literature courses because of how they were taught. Even though I was interested in the course content, I was never really excited to attend class. I remember how the prof would stand in front of the classroom and read excerpts from an anthology. The sound of her voice was like a lullaby that put me to sleep almost instantly. I also didn’t like my translation course because all we did was translate essays from Japanese to English. The process was cumbersome and boring, and I vowed never to be a translator. For some reason, what stands out to me are the courses that I disliked as an undergrad student, but the lessons I learned in these courses as a student shaped the kind of instructor that I am today.

As an instructor, you don’t always get to teach the courses that you want or like. Sometimes we’re lucky, sometimes we’re not. So, you could imagine my initial response when I was offered to teach courses in classic (world) literature and translation. I thought to myself, GREAT! …

Perhaps, one of the best pieces of advice that I got was to make these courses my own. My colleagues encouraged me to “bust out” from the confines of traditional ways of teaching and learning, and motivated and inspired me to teach subjects that I once really disliked as a student. The worst thing that an instructor can do is to pass down their own negative experience to their students. One effective way of avoiding this is to reflect on why you didn’t like how the course was taught and to think about what you can do for your students so that they never have to experience what you did. Luckily, for my students, they will never have to hear me read page-after-page of something that was assigned for homework (that’s what Audiobooks are for) but I do encourage them to make meaningful connections between our historical past and the present by examining contemporary adaptations of literary classics that are relevant for teens and young adults in the 21st century. In my translation course, it was important to me that my students enjoyed the translation process, and I was over the moon when I received anonymous comments from students midway through the semester who said that “translating is fun!”  (cue the applause).

©きっしいのオムライス日記, 2019. Click to see Kishimoto’s blog. Photo shown here with permission from students who signed the “Informed Consent for Disclosure of Personal Information form” © 2019.

It is much harder to generate a strong desire for students to learn in a course that you personally had a bad experience with as a student, but take it as an opportunity to highlight your expertise and knowledge.

On the first day of my translation course, I asked my students what they wanted to translate and I tried to honor their requests to the best of my abilities. The first half of the semester was dedicated to teaching the grammatical, linguistic and pragmatic aspects involved in the translation process. The last few weeks of the course focused on applying these strategies to various texts, or discourse genres that students themselves wanted to practice translating. Another important thing that I wanted to do in this course was to show students the practical outcome of in-class work. So, I reached out to my friend, Yoshihiro Kishimoto, who is the author of Kissy's I love Omurice (きっしいのオムライス大好き, 2019). I asked him if it would be OK if our class produced unofficial translations of the recipes featured in his book as fun practice and as part of a unit on how to translate procedural discourse that he could later feature on his blog. He gave me a thumbs up, and you can check out the students’ on-line publication here (scroll down till you see “Great English version of omurice recipes !”). Thank you, Kishimoto-san!

In teaching courses that you once dreaded as a student, you gain new insight and learn to become a more effective instructor. At the end of the day, it’s important to design courses that are academically rigorous, but also ones that students would want to attend. The best instructors are those who never stop learning, and who consistently challenge themselves by pushing the boundaries of their own comfort zone.