A Whole New World

I am extremely excited to be returning to the classroom this fall. I'll teach sociology and core studies courses at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. But I haven't done this full time since the spring of 1993. That's eighteen years. As it happens, that's the age of many entering freshmen. Yes, that means that the last time I taught full time, THESE STUDENTS HADN'T BEEN BORN!

Even as I'll teach some juniors and seniors, I still will have the same challenge. The world they are in is a very different one than when I last taught (don't get me started on the world when I was a freshman!). Consider that in the early 90s, I had not used the world wide web, didn't have a cell phone, and thought my Sony Walkman was pretty cool. I taught in the way I had been taught. You stand in front of the room and share your lecture notes, hoping that somebody takes something of value with them at the end of the course.

During my years in administration, I learned a great deal about how we should assess students' learning and what careful curriculum design looks like. I gave many speeches motivating others to pay attention. Along the way, I began to shift my thinking about the educational process. The book mentioned at the top of this page was revolutionary for me (along with most of Palmer's work). Palmer argues that it is the professor's job to find the ways to allow the subject matter to come alive for the students.

So my new position at Spring Arbor gives me a remarkable opportunity for a fresh start (one of the great blessings of teaching, by the way). How can I approach my love of sociology in a way that's meaningful to today's students? How can I design experiences that move the conversation from "do we need to know this" to "that's interesting -- let's talk more".

In preparing myself for this transition, I've been reading books in higher education. I recently finished Academically Adrift, written by sociologists at New York University and the University of Virginia. This is one of the first comprehensive studies of the impact of general education on the critical thinking skills of students. They examined how much gain students made between the beginning of their freshman year and the end of their sophomore year. The answer -- not so much. While they spend much of the book analyzing various background factors, the key finding is that we aren't asking enough of our students. They don't spend enough time studying out of class and professors' expectations aren't high enough. One  of their criteria is whether a class requires 20 or more pages of writing over the course of a semester and/or 40 pages a week in reading material. I don't know how one meets that requirement if you're teaching physics, but it's worth considering. I've been using that those benchmarks as I think about upcoming classes.

I do think that the authors are onto something. Now I'm not sure that things were more rigorous when I was in college. I don't think I wrote 20+ pages in some graduate classes. But if we see their point as being founded on what promotes student learning and not simply what gets the teacher through the material, then what they've found is worth attending to. I've long argued that if sociology students are only to learn what I know about sociology, we've wasted a lot of time -- I knew it already and they're going to forget it. But enhanced critical thinking would benefit us all (for evidence, see my blog about Civil Discourse at http://theninthcommandment.blogspot.com/).

I'm currently reading three books interchangeably. I do one chapter and then move to the next book and read one chapter and so on. It's really wonderful. Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do reports on a study of about three dozen excellent teachers.  Amazon recommended an accompanying book, Teaching With Your Mouth Shut by Donald Finkel, an Evergreen State University professor who died in 1999. Finally, I've got a recent book by Parker Palmer himself, A Hidden Wholeness. All three books are helping me in rethinking the role of the professor, introducing new priorities in student learning, and investigating alternative classroom strategies.

Pastor Rick Warren opened his famous Purpose Driven Life with the phrase "It's not all about you". That's some of what I'm taking from this reading and hoping to incorporate. Both Palmer and Finkel are talking about taming the ego and being attuned to what's going on around you. It's hard, because I like to talk and will fill silences with my words even if they aren't having much impact!

The two best takeaway ideas from Bain's folks in the first two chapters -- that good students have become "strategic learners" and that all students face the temptation to be "bulemic learners". The former are planning tasks to be accomplished that serve as markers toward specified goals, even if it detracts from true learning. The latter do exactly what it sounds like: binging and purging. The put all that stuff into their heads prior to an exam or assignment, cross it off their to-do list, and then vacate their craniums to make room for the next exam or assignment. It's just as unhealthy as the eating disorder it's named for. The response these excellent teachers make is not to gripe about "the state of students today". The challenge is to begin where they are, confront the students with what real learning could look like, and make commitments to change behaviors. It's not their fault that they've had 12 years of being socialized into this game-playing, passive, minimalist style of learning.

Breaking that paradigm will require work from professor and student alike. And it's likely to be riskier, harder, and way more uncertain that what I did pretty well all those years ago. I can't wait till Fall!