I have taught my last college course. I am happy. I admit that during this last semester I suffered from a bad case of "senioritis." There were days I was just phoning it in. Still, it was a great semester, filled with some happy memories.
In my population issues class I have a unit on fertility. I always start the fertility section with a little "where do babies come from" lecture, before moving on to discussions of patterns and determinants of fertility, methods of contraception, abortion, and other demographic topics. My friends laugh when I tell them about the introductory lecture. These are college students after all. But, I assume nothing and want us all to be on the same page.
My final exam is an "answer 3 of these 5 questions" type of take home essay test. One of the 5 questions is always "Tell me about two important things you learned from this class. Give enough detail to convince me that you will remember these for longer than it takes you to write this answer." This year I got the following answer:
To start off, the reason I chose contraceptives over everything else we learned in class was because much of it were things I didn’t know. I have grown up as a Muslim in a traditional Islamic household. While my religion teaches us to be modest yet curious, often, culture plays a role and families, like mine, avoid talking about women’s health, especially when it’s related to intercourse and romantic relationships. While I know and understand the very general vague idea of how things work, I’ve never had a one-to-one talk or research session about any of it. So, being able to learn about it in class, even briefly felt like a big benefit and relief I didn’t know I needed.
That is what I will miss most about teaching.
