Graduate Students in Spanish Need to Become Humanities Professors

Abstract

Graduate Students in Spanish Need to Become Humanities Professors Emily C. Francomano There are so many things that graduate students in Spanish need to know. Some of our graduate students will reach for—and grab onto—that shiny brass ring and become tenured professors at research institutions where they will have manageable teaching loads, pursue exciting and field-changing research, and train graduate students of their own. Some will join the faculty at small teaching institutions; others will do so at large state schools. Some will dedicate the majority of their time to teaching language courses. Others will be able to design literature and culture courses oriented toward their own research. Some will team-teach in core curriculum courses in English. Given the diversity of teaching futures awaiting doctoral students in Spanish, I ask: "What kinds of teachers do graduate students in Spanish need to become?" In my opinion, our graduate students need to be trained to be not only language instructors, but also humanities professors. By this I mean teachers of literature and culture as well as critical thinking, reading, and writing. At present, Spanish graduate programs emphasize language teaching. Most graduate curricula in Spanish include applied linguistics and teaching methodologies to train students to be proficient teachers of second language acquisition. Additionally, graduate students are given ample opportunities to become seasoned language teachers as they progress through their doctoral programs. Learning to teach the critical thinking and writing skills needed by advanced undergraduates is seldom a formal component of doctoral study in Spanish. Instead, graduate students primarily learn how to teach literary and cultural texts and theories by following examples provided by their own professors. Spanish graduate students need to be trained to teach undergraduate literature and culture courses. They need to learn to be teachers of critical-thinking skills and, crucially, to combine the goals of the humanities with second language acquisition. Graduate students in Spanish need to know not only how to correct undergraduate students' uses of the subjunctive, but also how to respond to and evaluate an essay. They must be able to teach their students to read, think, and write critically. Our graduate students need to know how to organize a sequence of grammatical concepts, vocabulary, and cultural topics for a language class. At the same time, they must learn innovative ways to design syllabi with appropriate amounts of reading, writing, and oral practice. They also need to learn to structure syllabi that will stand up to an external accreditation review. In short, graduate students should be taught what assistant professors often learn by trial and error sobre la marcha in their first years on the job. Soon after our January 2012 MLA panel, physicist and White House science policy official Carl Wieman spoke of training graduate students across the disciplines to be "doubly expert" in both content and pedagogy (qtd. in Berrett). For those graduate students whose research focuses on second language acquisition, such double expertise is built into their courses of study and training. However, graduate students in most Spanish and Modern Language programs must explicitly be trained as multiple experts. Preparing our graduate students to be humanities professors as well as language educators is important to the discipline and the individual. An emphasis on humanities teaching, where the pillars of college-level learning (critical thinking, reading, and writing) are located, enhances the role of Spanish both locally and nationally. The inclusion of formal training in humanities pedagogies in Spanish graduate programs will prepare graduate students to take their places as leaders alongside other humanities professors within their future college or university communities. [End Page xviii] As a corollary to my urging that graduate programs in Spanish should focus on educating students to be humanities professors as well as language teachers, I think it is important that we train our graduate students to be teachers who are ready to teach literary and cultural texts from diverse eras, genres, and geographical origins. Graduate students may not all read the same works or study the same critical theories, but they do need to develop a broad (though not necessarily standardized) range of knowledge in order to be effective humanities professors. Such a base will...