Nope, definitely not using a quote from Dead Poet's Society for this blog

I've always felt like I've been good at teaching.

I noticed in high school that I was really good at making and doing presentations. A humble brag here, but it just came naturally. I didn't work at it and I didn't think about it, it just sort of happened as soon as I got up to talk. This has been a skill that I've relied on heavily for my entire life.

When I had my first job, a swim instructor for the City of Toronto, I noticed that the kids I taught really took to me, because I'm a good teacher I guess? But when I really noticed that teaching was something I excelled at was when I started volunteering and work at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. The kids went crazy for me the entire time I worked there.

I started TAing at the University of Guelph last year as part of my master's degree. I worried that the skills I developed while teaching 10-14 year-olds rudimentary art techniques wouldn't translate to smarter and sharper university, but that was all for naught, as I transitioned well and the kids really took me. I got to talk about things I loved and got to design my own class once a week and it was the best.

When you get really good at teaching you develop an interesting relationship with the students. As much as teaching them and giving them the tools to learn matters them, you start to develop an addiction to seeing them develop as students. The feeling of breaking through and helping a student work their way through something that they assumingly wouldn't have on their own gives you a tremendous amount of satisfaction because it lets you know that you are doing your job and doing it well.

I was really excited to teach tutorials for an art history survey class this year, but it turned out to be a little more difficult than I thought it would. Whereas in my last class the obstacle was teaching a group of people with no idea about contemporary art contemporary art.

You know how hard it is to teach people like that about Chris Burden? It's a little tough.

This time around, it was just the opposite. Instead of a room full of students who had no idea about contemporary art, I was teaching people that were totally tuned into it, but was stuck extolling the virtues of Renaissance painting to them. WOE IS ME, RIGHT?

Eventually, I think I started to get through to them, though it could be tough to see it in the class room sometimes.

I had my last tutorials of the year and for the foreseeable future yesterday and was completely taken aback by the reception I got from the kids in the last class. I don't want to post the quotes verbatim, because that would make this blog seem more masturbatory than it already is, but the stuff they said to me once the class ended really hit me right in the chest.

Experiences like this are why I know that I want to be a professor and nothing else. This is what I was meant to do.

To quote what I said to my classes yesterday, ":')". Good job this year guys.