This Is Not News

With a little distance between the school year and me, I’m trying to reflect on what went well and what still needs work. This was an important year for me; as I think I’ve mentioned, the contrasts between what I was learning and advocating in my education-related coursework and what I was doing in the classroom became very vivid. As a result, I had something of a crisis of confidence, but I think that when I fought through that I gained some resolve and some inspiration to do things better.

Going back over the year in review, here are some of the things I’m thinking about and where I want to go in the future:

Classroom Layout: I’ve always taken the path of least resistance here and stuck with the traditional rows. This spring I gave students the choice and except for a few weeks in one section, everyone also wanted to just stick with the way the desks were laid out when we walked in. But those couple of weeks have me convinced that next year I should dictate that we rearrange the desks into a circle. It does raise some potential issues with seeing the board, but it does so much to encourage students to engage each other and not just me. And I think it’s a psychological reinforcement of the idea that participation is valued.

Participation Grading: This was a major shift. I’ve always encouraged my students to ask questions and participate, but I don’t think I was structuring enough opportunities for them to do so into the course. So I added a specific participation credit to the course, and allowed students to earn credit for participation in three different ways. They could speak up in class, to ask or answer questions. They could post responses to the discussion questions I provided for each reading in course’s online discussion forum. Or they could complete journal entries in class, where I would ask them to take ten to fifteen minutes to reflect on a question or problem related to whatever we were studying. This adds a layer of record-keeping and commenting that I don’t think I was completely ready for, but it’s definitely worth it. What I need to do, though, is make the journals and online postings a two-way process, and ask the kind of follow-ups that I would ask as part of a class discussion. Again, that’s a lot of work, but I need to build it into my schedule that this is what I’m going to do. Different paths to participation can help students who might not feel comfortable in verbal discussion, but it’s on me to make sure those different paths are all robust.

Reading Guides and Discussion Questions: I used to provide review sheets near the midterm and final to help students with their studying. This year, I decided to switch things around and provide the review sheets from the get-go. One of my initial reservations about doing so is that some students might just look at the review sheets and not bother reading the text. But if I’m honest with myself, I know that many of those students won’t read the text anyway. And that’s not to say that they’re lazy or unmotivated. Reading philosophical texts, many of which are translated and use centuries-old grammar and style, can be a tough slog, and some students are going to decide that the effort/reward ratio is higher if they just come to the class and ask questions there. But if I give students the review guides, along with a list of key questions to tell them what they should be looking for in the text, the slog might seem more manageable.

Along with the these three elements, I’m continuing to work on my own organizational skills. I have a hunch that my “2040 in Review� post to the HoloWeb will conclude with a similar statement.

I was about to title this “Is this mic on” post “Shaking the Cobwebs Off,” but my browser autofill informed me that I had already used “Shaking the Rust Off” as a post title. Hooboy. Gonna try to do better. For warmups, here are some random thoughts.

One thing that I hope will happen over the course of the next year is that I’ll have more motivation to read and think about public policy because I’ll have some reason to believe that we as a country – and the leaders we select to act as our representatives – will be in a better position to enact sensible policies.

In order to make that hope a little more realistic, Pattie and I spent some time volunteering with the Barack Obama campaign during the Pennsylvania primary. It was an interesting experience, and kind of weird – for all the intensity that people worked with for weeks on end, the final result seemed to be pretty much what everyone expected. Then again, I suppose those expectations were set with the belief that people would be working as hard as they did. But it’s the weird paradox of being involved with a larger effort – the more you work to be a a part of it, the more you feel like you’re a drop of water in the ocean.

Still really happy with the REM album and still looking forward to the tour.

Overall it was a good semester of teaching, I think. I explored some new ways of encouraging participation. I think I need to keep doing more of that, but I also need to figure out how to do it in an organized way that doesn’t become all-consuming timewise.

Outside of sporting events, I’ve almost stopped watching TV. Stuff is mounting on the DVR, and I just don’t have the energy to watch it. Or maybe it’s patience and focus I’m missing. Man, if I’m not focused enough to watch TV, something’s gone crazy.

Well, something else.

So I’m on my way to class today to give an exam, and I’m reviewing in my head the instructions I have to give about people putting away their iPods and turning off their cell phones. And I think to myself, “I certainly don’t have to tell them to turn off their pagers. Wow, technology sure has changed since I graduated from college a decade ago.”

So, of course, I go to say “Turn off your cell phones” and out comes “turn off your pagers,” and everyone gets to laugh at the out-of-touch guy. Sheesh.

Just goes to show you how funny the human brain is. In a space of ten minutes the same mind that said there was no need to say something, said that exact thing. Sometimes I think my neurons need to do a better job of talking to one another.