My First Year of Teaching

A new Ph.D. adjusts to a faculty job and to a foreign classroom 

By Rachel Herrmann

The Chronicle of Higher Education - April 14, 2014

I didn’t know what to expect of my first year in the classroom. And as an American teaching U.S. history in England, I didn’t know what to expect of British students. Last fall I walked into a room ready to talk about 19-century diet reform by citing Sylvester Graham’s invention of the graham cracker only to learn that most of the students had never eaten one. Even with many such small differences, I think that my initial year as a faculty member would have surprised me no matter the location.
At the same time, my first few months on the job have sometimes provided a lesson in rediscovering what I already knew. For example, I’ve had to remind myself that although the substance of a lesson plan may look the same from course to course, each class unfolds differently depending on the composition of students present. Last semester my "Revolutionary America" course had two seminar groups, one in the late afternoon, and another with fewer students at 9 a.m. on a Friday. Some weeks the afternoon group was better, and some weeks, the Friday group was more engaged. Techniques that worked for one group didn’t always work for the other, and I had to always be on my toes in the event that discussion fell flat.

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