One of the things I've learned this quarter has to do with the personality of classes. Let me set this up a bit: last quarter, I taught four sections of Comp 1, and each section had a distinct and fun personality, which was good for me as teaching four sections of the same class during the week could get pretty boring. But I came to know what would work and what wouldn't work in each class because I knew who they were as a group. I knew what they responded to. One class responded to a fast-pace, pack as much in as possible approach whereas another one really responded well to group activities. The one thing all four sections had in common was that the students in each section just gelled together and worked well. Even though I had to change my methods depending on the group's dynamics, it wasn't difficult to teach them because they were a cohesive unit, working together each class.
This quarter, I'm teaching two sections of Comp 2, and about 80% of my students are ones I had last quarter in Comp 1 sections. It's basically as if four sections of Comp 1 were combined into two sections of Comp 2, and it's honestly been one of the biggest challenges to teach. The well-formed, easy functioning classes of last quarter have gone. For some reason, four sections that separately were so gelled together have not mixed well at all, and knowing how to teach them and what they'll respond to has been almost impossible.
Here's the thing: I've always known that as a teacher I'm very sensitive to the feel of a class. If the students are rockin', so am I. If they are really getting the material and having a good time with it, teaching becomes unconscious for me, and I simply join the party. What I didn't realize until this quarter was just how meaningful and powerful the personality of a class can be and just how much I do respond to it. I also never dreamed that combining four really fun sections into two could take away the magic and adversly affect them that much.
