Abstract
I have mixed emotions as I sit down to write this comment. It is not quite the end of March, and yet the temperature hit 80 degrees today. What a glorious day. And yet I am also sad. I am curled up in a comfortable leather chair in my favorite coffee shop, which is going to close in a few weeks. Its owners are facing two common social problems: a weak economy and needing to take care of two parents with Alzheimer’s disease. Fewer customers meant a declining profit margin at the same time that the costs, emotional and financial, of caregiving increased.
I feel the same kind of mixed emotions about this semester. We are past the halfway point of the semester, which is both good and bad news. My first-year students are beginning to come to terms with their likely final grades, but they also recognize that there is time to change these outcomes. Sometimes “coming to terms,” however, means becoming angry at us, their professors. We are easy to blame as they process their frustrations with themselves, with how they are transitioning from high school to college, with how they see the paths that they—or frequently others—planned change before their eyes.
How can we help them process these feelings of anger, frustration, guilt, and maybe even relief, all the while still teaching them our course content? How can we encourage realistic hope and bolster their confidence in their ability to learn without building false hope? These questions are not easy to answer for any of us who teach, for we are human too. And how can we not let their stinging words wound us too deeply, so that we pull back from good pedagogical choices and instead go with easier ones, ones that might earn higher scores on the student opinion of instruction but come at a price of student learning?
I hope that you, the journal’s readers, will find useful insights in the pages of this issue, for those days when teaching feels more like a burden. In the 25 years I have been teaching, I know that I have had those low moments and have always found a nugget, be it a teaching technique, a new way of thinking about teaching a concept or theory, or a review of a book I probably never would have discovered on my own. Those nuggets sustained me and gave me a different perspective on teaching.
As I read the manuscripts that are submitted, I do my best to keep you, the journal’s readers, in mind. What topics might interest you? Which article might provide that moment of hope, of clarity, for you on a bad day? My goal is to work with authors to help them to tell their stories in ways that engage, focus, and capture your interest.
We have some things in the works I hope will entice and intrigue you. We are in the midst of reviewing manuscripts for a special issue on writing in sociology, with Suzanne Hudd as guest editor. Another special issue is beginning soon, which will focus on graduate student teaching (see the call for papers in this issue). Look for more about this session in the call for papers on p. 299 and on the Teaching Sociology Google listserv.