LY# 85 So Why Do You Teach Speech?

I probably should have responded with the deep thought that "We teach what we need to learn."  

The question a student asked yesterday was, "So if you're so nervous about public speaking why do you teach it?"

PhD Apparel

Instead I was honest.  I said that I'd wanted to work as a teacher rather than a researcher and if you make that choice in the field of communication, you're pretty much choosing to teach the basic courses:  public speaking,  interpersonal communication and small group.  Kinda like folks who get PhDs in literature often wind up teaching composition if they get work in a school focused on instruction. 

Public speaking was the first communication course I ever taught during my one semester of teaching at Idaho State University.  I went on to teach it as a graduate student at the University of Utah along with a few more intellectual courses.  But I never took graduate level courses in any of the three basic courses.  I had no 500 - 700 level courses in Public Speaking, Interpersonal or Small Group Communication at either ISU or the U of U.  The focus of my graduate work was on rhetorical, media, and communication theory along with American and cultural Studies. 

In the past 25 years, the number of classes I've taught at COCC in my areas of expertise can be counted on the the digits of two hands: five or six sections of Introduction to Motion Pictures, one section of Noir Film and Fiction, and my two new classes, each taught just once:  Introduction to the Rhetoric of Film and Introduction to Visual Rhetoric.  The last one I am teaching for the first and last time this quarter.  I am very excited that I'll be able to talk about semiotics again next week!

But what does this story prove?  

I might say something about the questionable link between doctorates and undergraduate teaching or that skills training doesn't require advanced learning.  Instead I'll just say that I think it proved I was diddly darn lucky to have lived this wonderful career.