PalCinema, Television, & Music: Reflections on Teaching

Reflections on a Teaching Career #10

Dan Pal — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 12:00:50 GMT

There was an initial energy to going back to the classroom after the COVID-19 pandemic. Generally, most students seemed glad to be there as did many faculty members. Of course, everyone had to wear masks for that returning term at DePaul but we weathered through it. While I wasn’t thrilled about the long commute into the city, since I was only teaching …

Reflections on a Teaching Career #9

Dan Pal — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 14:02:17 GMT

By January of 2020 Frank and I had gotten used to spending my brief two-week winter break in Palm Springs, California.

It became distressing when we’d leave the sunny and warm southwest in very early January only to arrive back to sub-zero temperatures and even colder wind chills in Chicago. I wanted to spend more time there. I had already spoken to my a…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #8

Dan Pal — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:00:08 GMT

As my years of teaching went on, one of the great pleasures, and challenges, was teaching new courses. I always loved the idea of putting together a new curriculum, especially when I had total freedom to cover what I wanted which was almost always the case. I had developed a History of Film course at Moraine which I really enjoyed since I had studied so…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #7

Dan Pal — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 15:02:38 GMT

After the success of my short film Scotty Works OUT, I knew I wanted to work with the two lead actors, Shaun and Chris, again. I wrote another script that became a sequel called Scotty and Josh Get Enlightened, about the two characters discovering they were on opposite ends of the devout Christian to Atheism spectrum. I felt really good about the script…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #6

Dan Pal — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 15:01:05 GMT

Reflections on a Teaching Career #6

Making Films with Students, Part 1

As I mentioned previously, my reason for studying film in the first place was not to make films but to teach and write about my favorite subject. This, of course, was not the hoped for career trajectory for most of my film students, especially at DePaul. Their goal was to make films in…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #5

Dan Pal — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 15:02:56 GMT

In the Fall of 2007, I was given three courses to teach at DePaul – all were Introduction to Screenwriting. No problem. Syd Field’s classic book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting was all I needed to build up the class. The one thing I didn’t plan for was the length of assignments. I had a couple of students in class that were entering the gra…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #4

Dan Pal — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 15:02:08 GMT

By the mid-2000s I was teaching an average of seven courses per term between College of Du Page (COD) and Moraine Valley Community College. While I loved the courses I had created at COD on Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen and other directors because they were special topic courses they took some work to fill after their initial offerings. By the fall of 2…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #3

Dan Pal — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 15:02:24 GMT

Reflections on a Teaching Career #3

It was August 1997. I had just successfully completed teaching my first Hitchcock course at the College of Du Page (COD.) While I had another scheduled for the Fall and was advising students part-time, I still needed to beef up my income and teaching load. In those days one could find teaching gigs through the Sunday j…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #2

Dan Pal — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 15:03:03 GMT

Reflections on a Teaching Career #2

My First Courses

While I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago I was commuting in from the suburbs for classes and then heading back out to the burbs to work part-time as an Academic Adviser at the College of Du Page. Frank was teaching Speech there full-time and had a hugely successful career as a forensi…

Reflections on a Teaching Career #1

Dan Pal — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 20:26:12 GMT

Introduction:

In March of this year, I plan to retire from teaching after 28 years. Everyone has been asking me what it feels like and if I will miss it. The short answer to the latter is no. I’ve had a great run but since the COVID-19 pandemic I’ve been slowly pulling away from a career I believed was my destiny once I finally got it going. It truly has…