Beth Jörgensen, professor of Spanish, is among one of the 2016 recipients of the Goergen Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
When I started first grade, I didn’t know how to read, but many of my classmates did. I believed reading was a gift that you either have or don’t have, and I didn’t have that gift. Needless to say, first grade was very scary for a few weeks, but I learned to read thanks to a patient teacher.
My school used the “Dick and Jane” basal readers. All of the characters and their suburban lives looked very familiar to me and I easily identified with little blond Jane. Reading became more exciting and enriching when I could choose books at the library that told stories about characters, historical times, and experiences that were different from my own. Reading became a way to enter imaginatively into other worlds and identities, which expanded my understanding of others and my sense of who I am and who I might become.
My parents and my three older brothers all had taken French, but I decided to take Spanish in seventh grade.
We lived in Englewood, New Jersey, at the time, right across the George Washington Bridge from New York City, and I thought that someday I’d like to be a teacher in New York public schools. Knowing that the Puerto Rican population is so strong there, Spanish seemed like a logical choice to reach my future students. People tried to talk me out of it, saying “Your brothers can help you with your French homework.” But I stuck with Spanish, and I was lucky to have good teachers throughout middle and high school.
It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I thought about teaching at the college level.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison had a language requirement and 36 sections of beginning Spanish to staff. Master’s students taught their own language course starting in their first semester of the program after a week of teaching boot camp. From the first day of teaching Spanish 101, I loved it, and it was fun for me, even though I was nervous. That day pretty much decided my career goal.
I try to be a good advisor and mentor. It comes from my college experience and an amazing professor and mentor, Harriet Stevens Turner. I learned a lot from her, and our friendship remains to this day.
The energy I feel comes from my interaction with students. It doesn’t sap my energy to have my door open and meet with students who stop by; on the contrary it builds my energy.
I’ve been on the College Board of Academic Honesty since 2007 and have served as the chair since 2011. Honesty is an essential value for me in my professional and my personal life. I think it stems in part from something that happened with our family when I was 12.
I was in the car with my parents and three older brothers. We had enjoyed dinner and ice cream sundaes at Friendly’s Restaurant and had picked up a half-gallon of ice cream on the way out. Halfway home my father realized that we hadn’t paid for the ice cream, and he just turned right around. The fact that he easily could have gotten away with that but went back to pay made quite an impression on me–the idea of doing the right thing when no one is looking.
I try to make classes engaging, and part of that is keeping my lectures to a minimum.
In class we discuss students’ questions, and answers to questions I pose. I incorporate time for small group work, which the students enjoy, and the class just buzzes. When we come back together, we share and develop the different ideas that come from the small groups. This gives everyone more time to speak in class, and I find that the students who are shy about speaking, especially in a second language, contribute more readily because they have already articulated their thoughts to one or two peers.
I’ve been at this a long time, and I still love doing it. I’m still enthusiastic and never bored in the classroom.
We have a core course called Advanced Spanish Composition. I’ve taught this course at least 40 times, and there’s only one literary anthology that works for our program. This means that I’ve taught some of the same poems and short stories 40 times, which might sound deadly. But I honestly don’t have any trouble being enthusiastic about re-reading and teaching them, in part because I know it’s the first time for my students and they will bring a fresh perspective to the material. I always learn something new from their interpretations and questions.
As a middle school student, I saw quite clearly both the upside and the downside of teaching.
I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to be a successful teacher who had that great rapport with students and made a class come alive. And, equally, how dreadful it would be to be the unsuccessful teacher and have to stand in front of a classroom every day when it wasn’t going well. I thought that if you couldn’t teach with energy and enthusiasm and engage your students, it would just be hell. I’ve been very lucky over these many years to teach wonderful students, who feed my enthusiasm and teach me in the always collaborative process of learning.
