Summertime and the teaching is easy

"You always seem so relaxed after your evening class," my daughter said, and she has a point: I come home from that class so mellow I could ooze under the door. Why?

Last time I taught an evening class, one of my students wrote on the evaluation form that the class made him seriously consider suicide, and I could not agree with him more. I suppose my students learned a few things in that class, but I learned only that I should never teach evening classes. Of course there were a few differences: that was a three-hour class that met at the end of a day on which I started teaching at 9 a.m. and finished at 10 p.m., so by the time that class started, I was already pooped. This summer class, on the other hand, meets for two and a half hours two evenings a week on days I have spent lounging on the deck with a good book, watching birds, or fiddling around in my office. When I start the class relaxed, it's not so difficult to remain that way.

And then there's the size of the class. My previous evening class was so big it was easy for students to hide in the back, and I never managed to learn all their names. This class has nine students enrolled but three of them rarely show up, so the rest of us sit around a table in a dim, cavelike seminar room and talk about great literature. What's not to love?

The subject matter makes a big difference too. My previous evening class focused on film, which is not my primary area of specialization.Film is fun, but when I teach literature, I draw from a much deeper well of knowledge and insight. Besides, I taught the film class in a room equipped with a high-tech projection system designed by someone with Play-Doh for brains: in order to show a video (this is true), I had to get on my hands and knees and crawl under the desk, and once I got down there I couldn't read the labels on the little VCR buttons. Any class that regularly forces me into such an undignified position in front of my students is going to be the antithesis of relaxing.

At the end of that semester, I vowed never to teach an evening class again--and yet here I am, spending two evenings a week grappling with great literature and loving it. I think my students are enjoying it too. Are they learning anything? We'll find out next week when the first papers are due; meanwhile, I'll just relax.