Two readings triggered my thinking about contrasting images for education. In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind tells us that education is stuffing facts into the minds of students. The more, the better. The quicker, the better. In current terms he favors “information bombardment.”
I used to fret quite a lot over my grade distribution. If I gave too many As, did that mean my courses lacked rigor? If too many students failed, was I a bad teacher? My thinking has shifted to a greater concern over student learning
Every day of the past year or so seems to echo the refrain of “unprecedented.”
It’s been a time both slow and fast, boring and frantic. I also used the time to reflect on my work as an academic and who I want to be
A question has been floating around in my head since I started teaching college students: are we supposed to act like swimming instructors or Olympic coaches? The analogy is not as odd as it might seem at first. Don’t we talk about whether students “sink
Critical to an instructor’s ability to confidently, clearly, and effectively communicate with students is an understanding of the truism that communication begins with the self (Watzlawick et al., 1967). To engage in productive interactions that result in student learning, we must be broadly but simultaneously
In more than a decade of teaching Romeo and Juliet at my small liberal arts college, I’d never had a student walk through class wearing only a towel. Then again, I’d never taught Shakespeare during a pandemic before.
I remember my first year as a tenure-track professor as a nightmare. For reasons I won’t belabor, my teaching stunk. During class, my face was red and hot with humiliation as I fumbled through the content. During lectures, I prayed that no one would ask
As fall 2020 draws to a close, the reactions to remote learning are reverberating loudly. They include not only outrage and despondency but also gratefulness and appreciation. Student surveys taking the pulse of learning experiences look very much like the evaluations of teaching we in
“Learning Outcomes for Instructors, Not Just Students.” That was the title—and message—of an earlier article I wrote for The Teaching Professor. Writing it set me on an important path (or perhaps reminded me of the path I was already on): I am a learner alongside
On a rainy April afternoon, students in the back row of my class whispered to each other as I, increasingly irritated with their disengagement, stood at the chalkboard lecturing on Death of a Salesman. I am usually one to let such distractions go, but I
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