At first, I said that I wasn’t going to teach this term.

Lately, however, I’ve been giving two four-hour classes a week.

In terms of actual paid teaching, I started when I was young. By the last term of high school, I was tutoring about two hours every day, sometimes more than one person at the same time. Weekends too.

A handful of people stuck with me after high school, but once I started undergrad, I moved on to tutoring the first and second years.

My first ‘official’ university teaching assistantship was in the fall of 2006. That term, I took on a 50-student class of Business Linear Algebra, and two 25-student classes of Liner Algebra for the Natural Sciences. I liked it, even though I was fully aware of the fact I was taking on students who usually hated maths. I hope I made their life a little easier.

The next semester, the department complained to me that I was ‘wasting my time’ with the first years. There were few people qualified to do the upper year maths (for maths students); arm twisting ensued and I later found myself picking up two third year classes: Real Analysis (yuck) and Differential Equations. The former was a pain; the latter, slightly more lively.

Teaching at Oxford is trickier.

The students are brighter, and they’re used to working hard.

Unfortunately, they’re also used to an education system that, like the British Empire, stresses antiquated values and withdrawn personalities.

The demographics are lopsided. When I taught in Canada, I taught classes filled with people of many races and ages. You don’t get that at Oxford. At the undergraduate level, 90% are white. They all have names like Richard or Emily. Once you enter into fourth year maths, the number of females takes also takes a nose dive.

People laugh when I tell them that it’s tough teaching a maths class that’s too boy oriented, but it’s true. The problem is that when you’re a girl, you tend to fall into two categories: the first type are girls that are too shy to ask questions, so they spend their time quietly taking notes; the second type are girls that are outspoken and inquisitive.

Guys also fall into those two categories too, but they can also fall into the third variety: the sort that sits at the back, doesn’t take notes, and pretends to be too cool for school.

Older men and women are also nice to teach, especially those that are coming back for a career change or for a second chance at an education. These people are more outspoken. They know how much they’re sacrificing to be in that class, and they’re planning on getting their money’s worth. Again, there’s a difference here with the sexes. Older women are more likely to ask a question. Older men are often more withdrawn and independent.

The point is, diversity is nice. It creates discussion. When one person asks a question, and the teacher plays off of it, the whole class relaxes.

All this diversity disappears at Oxford.

And for a while, it made me very, very, very sad.

My last term teaching at Oxford was demoralizing.

I was teaching a couple third year classes, and unfortunately, third year students are at a transitional phase. Before third year, students take their classes with their respective colleges. While this gives the students more ‘attention’, it also prepares them less for a more typical classroom environment.

After second year, all the students from the different colleges get together and are then taught by the department (i.e. us).

But because they were brought up only within the confines of their college, they know very few of their non-collegiate peers and as a result, they’re more solemn and guarded.

This is on top of the fact that maths students, as a rule, tend to be solemn and guarded.

You can also tell. You walk into a class, and you’ll see the three people from one college huddled together, another two from another together, and the poor chap at the back who’s the only person from St. John’s College or whatever, and so doesn’t have a buddy.

I’m someone who responds to interaction. I started off teaching one-on-one, and that’s always been my style.

One-on-one teaching is really fun. You learn little tricks, like explaining to someone how to do a problem, then immediately giving them a similar problem and getting them to copy the rhythms. They fight their way through that one, and you give them one last one to make sure they really got it. It’s very satisfying to see progress, and you learn to pick up subtle details when you’re sitting there by their side and watching them like a hawk.

Extending that to a university classroom is a lot harder.

The last term at Oxford, I felt like I was teaching a group of brick walls. There was no interaction. Absolutely none.

I still found some ways to open them up a little bit. For example, I’d ask a student to read aloud the questions (you’d be surprised how some students struggle, never having been asked to speak in a class before). Another trick I exploited was giving handouts that explicitly forced students to participate by filling in fill-in-the-blanks. I’d call people out. I’d ask simple questions like, “What does the graph look like?”, and half the class would wave their finger in the air in the motion of the graph.

Little things like that.

But still it depressed me. I didn’t feel like I was getting through.

The third (and last) term at Oxford, Trinity, is devoted to exam preparation. The students write all their exams at the end of this term, but the department gives consultation classes which are like official office hours for the previous terms classes.

After last term, I said that I wasn’t going to do any consultations.

Eventually, I was convinced myself to do a set (an hour a week for 6 weeks). I set it at 9 AM on Monday. My reasoning: Nobody would show and I’d be less grumpy.

That first class took me four hours to get through. Now, I’m apparently signed up for eight sets (8 hours a week/6 weeks). So much for that plan.

They’ve become more like workshops than office hours.

It’s been a lot of fun.

For some reason, that brick wall that existed before is no longer there.

For today’s class, I put the tables together into one big rectangular, and a few times, I had to actually tell the class to ’shut up’ and quit dicking around. People were actually talking!

Jesus — do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had to tell a class to simmer down? I miss that.

Is it the fact that they know me better, now? Is it the fact that school is not really in session? Is it a fact these review sessions tend to attract eager students? Is it the fact that the classes are four-hours-long?

I don’t know. All I know is that I missed this alive-again feeling of teaching something I’m passionate about. I missed looking down at a class and seeing people smile because they finally understood. I missed ending a class and having people leave with “Thanks Phil,” instead of just sulking out through the door.

It’s good to be back. This is why I love teaching.