The Complete Guide to Becoming An English Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary

Chapter 1: What Does a English Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary Actually Do?

Let's start with the part nobody tells you when they romanticize this job: teaching English at the college level is not sitting in a leather chair in a wood-paneled office, reading novels and jotting down elegant insights. That is a tiny fraction of the job. The actual job is reading 47 essays on the same prompt about Hamlet and finding a generous way to tell the 38th student that sentence fragments are not, in fact, a conscious stylistic choice. It is standing in front of a room of 30 students at 8:00 AM who have not done the reading, and finding a way to make them care anyway. It is attending committee meetings about curriculum changes that will take effect in eighteen months. And it is sometimes — often — doing all of this while worrying whether your contract will be renewed for the next semester.

But before we get too far into the shadows, here's the shape of the career. A postsecondary English language and literature teacher is anyone who teaches English at a community college, a liberal arts college, a state university, or even a private research institution. The title changes depending on where you work and how far along you are: adjunct instructor, lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor, full professor. The type of institution determines almost everything about your daily life — how many courses you teach, how much research you're expected to produce,