One of my favourite aspects of my job is that I teach mostly to non-historians. The International Foundation Program is aimed at international students who performed just below the minimum IELTS/TOEFL score required for direct admission into U of T. Instead of being denied admission, these students get a chance to take a transitional year in which they improve their language skills by taking an academic course and extra classes in academic skills, writing, and speaking. I teach the academic course – a first year world history course that I run pretty much as I would if I were teaching it in the history department. The main difference is that my students did not choose to take my course. Many of them are going into the sciences or commerce and are not particularly fond of history. They confess to me that they actually hate history.

Instead of seeing that as a hurdle, I see it as an opportunity. I can relate to how they feel. I too came from an educational system in which history was boring, based on rote-learning, had absolutely no meaning. A system in which you were discouraged from asking questions because that would be the same as telling your professor that he did not explain the lesson well. You needed to show respect and the way you did it was repeating his or hers exact words in the exam. Although I loved reading historical novels, I found academic history very painful. That was until I came to Canada and took history at university and realized that it didn’t have to be that way. It changed my life. If I can share some of that feeling with my students, I would consider my job done.

My students are the elites in their countries. They come to Toronto to become doctors, scientists, businessmen and women. I don’t want them to become historians instead. There are enough historians in the world. But perhaps they can become doctors, lawyers, businesswomen who think more critically, question more, consider the historical implications of what happens around them.

In the last day of class this term, I asked my students to write in a small card what was the main thing they learned this year or what they enjoyed most. Many commented that the course changed their views of what history is and that it is much more interesting than they believed. It also changed the way they think in general. Last night a group of students organized a party for me and their academic skills and writing instructors and each student present (about 15-20 students) spoke for a couple minutes about how much they appreciated the year. I’ll miss this bunch. I love my job.

I wish I could say I did it on purpose, but I can’t get over how fitting it is that yesterday, March 7th, was the first of two lectures in my world history course on the protests in Iran after the announcement that all women had to wear the hijab (March 8, 1979). In tutorial today we’ll be discussing Jane I. Smith, “Women in Islam: Equity, Equality and the Search for the Natural Order.” I was very taken when a Kazak, a Turkish, and a student from Azerbaijan came to talk to me after class to talk about how these debates have been discussed in their country. My Chinese students seemed puzzled and some came to talk to me after.

A good way to celebrate International Women’s Day.

I wish we could also discuss this:

Between designing a new site for the Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World, managing the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies website, designing two new courses for this fall, and putting the final touches on my dissertation, I seem to have lost the creative energy to write on my own site. And there’s SO much going on in terms of teaching, research, future and ongoing projects, ideas, new finds and connections… Two pressing deadlines loom closer: one is for my thesis, which I hope to hand in within the next ten days (gulp). The other is for the Roots and Routes Summer Institute here at U of T. This will be the first of three annual, week-long summer institutes at the University of Toronto on the topic of Scholarly Networks and Knowledge Production in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean and in the Digital Age. It will be held more or less like the THATCamp unconference where instead of formal papers, we present ideas and collaborate on solutions. It should be very exciting. I have been asked to elaborate on my proposed project for the institute, which I will do on a separate post here. Oh, and I got a job here at U of T. But more on that later. I just wanted to say it is good to find a minute amidst revisions to write here again.

Last Wednesday was the final lecture for IFP100Y, the world history class I teach at a program for first year international students at U of T. It happens every year. Over the 24 weeks of the year-long course I get to know many of the students, I see them every week, and then the day comes when I won’t see them any more. It’s always a bit bittersweet. The joys of teaching.

**PS: this blog is not abandoned. I should get the thesis out of the way within the next month and will be back here. There are many exciting opportunities lining up that I want to think aloud about here.

Tomorrow I’ll lead my first set of tutorials. In history, a tutorial (aka a conference session at Concordia) is dedicated mostly to discussing primary sources and teaching students how to read critically and how to get their points across. If done properly, I see it as also a venue where the students will learn most of the skills we expect of history students – the ability to write a variety of assignments based on secondary or primary sources and to question those sources with good analytical skills.

Teaching was precisely what first attracted me into a degree in history. Ironically, however, my career so far has been heavily focused on research and I have had no opportunity to teach so far. It’s only now, in my fifth year, that I’m finally getting to do what I came here to do: to teach university students. Although I haven’t taught, I’ve certainly never stopped thinking and preparing myself. I have taken a number of teaching workshops, I have had endless discussions with colleagues and professors about their teaching experiences, I have even helped organize a series of teaching history workshops in my department. But now the time of truth approaches: tomorrow at 9AM I’ll hold my first tutorial. I hope it goes well… I’ll come back and tell you about it…

Update…

Well, it’s done. I had two tutorials this morning, one from 9-10 and another from 10-11.  Both of them were great! From the 19 students that showed up today, only one hadn’t done the readings . I guess things will change once the semester gets busier and they start having midterms in other classes. It was a very good introduction to teaching since both groups were made mostly of good, eager students. I still need to work on my general pacing – parts of the first tutorial went a little faster than I anticipated – but I can say that I got every single student to participate today. So I think I fulfilled my duty I’m curious to see what the groups I’ll have on thursday are like…