Lee Patterson

8/3/15
Teaching English in College
Prof. Deborah Coxwell Teague
Internship Journal Reflection
Teaching Internship
Having taught for two and half years prior to entering bootcamp, but rarely ever
observing any of my colleagues classes, it was a great opportunity to observe Chris Michaels
over the course of four weeks. Chris has an engaging and passionate teaching style. He is
concise, responsive, and able to generate good discussion in his classes and inspire students to
become interested in the art of writing. I especially admired his ability to take writing exercises
from the Inkwell and seamlessly integrate them into his topics of discussion for the day. For
instance, on one occasion he had the students write in three different voices: themselves when
they were children, themselves in the present, and themselves in the future when they are
working the jobs they desire. I was amazed at the amount of hands that were raised when Chris
asked the students to share this difficult assignment. He creates an atmosphere where every
student feels he or she has a voice and a unique perspective that will benefit the rest of the class
to hear. Although this was an ENC 1101 class as opposed to the section of ENC 2135 I will be
teaching, I believe I greatly benefitted from observing and having post-class conversations with
Chris.
Over the course of the four weeks I spent in the class, I learned how Chris balanced each
class and created coherent topics for each discussion. On the day he introduced the satire paper,
for example, he encouraged a lengthy discussion of Jonathan Swifts A Modest Proposal.
Anytime the students were silent or hesitant to respond to this difficult text, he simply pressed on

and became even more enthusiastic, which eventually inspired them to become interested as
well. This was a definite learning experience for me, as I know that I have the tendency to
abandon, or forego from the beginning, texts that I suspect would not be immediately welcomed
by a class. The exploration of Swifts essay turned out to be a great boon for the students going
forward with their own satire essays, and I could feel the class becoming inspired. I also learned
from watching the conferences he held with students for 15 minutes each for a class period. He
never fully stated that the student had done wrong if there were problems, but managed to always
put his feedback in terms of what could be improved. He turned criticism into brainstorming. It
was a great strategy, since the essays were still in progress. I learned from how he put students at
ease by asking about more personal aspects of the writing experience: how they were handling
the prompt, what they had gone through in writing it from research to invention to personal
discovery, how they felt about the assignment and its place in the class, how they were learning
about writing in reference to previous classes and experience, and other questions.
I learned a lot from Chris overall design of the course as well. My essay assignments
while working at a community college were limited to basic narratives, comparing and
contrasting assignments, and simple research papers, but Chris assigned papers that asked
students to do much more creative work. They were to write a paper in which they considered
alternate positions to an opinion they already held, and one in which they produced a satire on a
controversial topic. This allowed Chris to teach students new forms and genres, and in doing so
to cover texts and readings that delved deep into craft. I realized that Chris and I also share
similar positions on the relevance of politics in a young persons life, and I saw more ways to use
these currents in my own teaching.