[My friend Nicholas Belardes encouraged me to reflect and write about my teaching experiences at UMass. My first post on this subject was inspired by the reflections of this year’s Integrative Experience students. I repost here what I wrote for the Nicholas Belardes site. As students’ understanding of themselves changes through experience, so does faculty’s; and as we ask students to reflect, so should we. Here is my own personal reflection.]

THE ASSIGNMENT WAS SIMPLE – a reflection about our seniors’ changing relationship with the Spanish major -, but it made for one of my best weeks as a teacher. Not necessarily because of my own classroom performance, but because of what the students’ writing revealed about their development. I spent a couple of days checking my computer every ten minutes, expecting to receive their texts. Continue reading →