Top Ten Graduate Teacher Mistakes: Number 8

This is a continuation of the top ten list I started a while ago. I'll get to number eight below, but first a quick review:

Top Ten Review So Far...

Number Nine was asking too many questions. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, sometimes asking too many questions (of your peers, of the course supervisor) hampers you when teaching. Of course, you need to ask questions. I get that. But, asking too many can give you too many options, which organizational theorist Karl Weick argues may hamper your decision-making and inhibit your ability to adapt on the fly.

Number Ten, seemingly contrary to number nine, was not having a lesson plan--thinking that you're going to go in there and wing it is a recipe for disaster. The obvious reason is things might not go well. You won't know what to say, and you won't have plan for what to do. Having a script of some kind, even if you deviate from it, is ideal.

But let's say things go great, better than you expected. You leave class on a high, get back to your office, and sit down. Then you wonder, what did I just do? Unless you write notes of the class interaction, how are you going to repeat what you did for your next class or next semester (not that you can necessarily replicate results, but that's a mistake in thinking I'll tackle later)? So, you write down the class interaction. Okay, never mind that you're retroactively writing a lesson plan, which you may have been trying to avoid in the first place; what did you intend to accomplish in class? The only reason this question is important is, how do you know you accomplished what you intended?

This leads us to number eight.

Number Eight: No Assessment

I know I've said it here before, but you need to be able to assess whether or not you accomplished your objectives for a particular class. When many people hear the word "assessment," they think about statistical measurement. That's not necessarily what I mean. Sure, you can use tests. But you can also use qualitative measures like classroom discussion and written responses.

With assessment, you can better tell whether you accomplished what you wanted to in class that day. This, of course, assumes you also have learning objectives or goals (see my previous posts for more on that).

With assessment, you can tell what you need to tweak for next time. You shouldn't chuck your entire lesson plan because your assessment tells you you didn't meet your learning objectives for that day. Give it a few times. Then re-assess.

Teaching is nothing if not self-reflexive. Assessments help us as teacher be reflexive about what we accomplish in class.

Grading Philosophy

Grading is probably one of the most difficult things for new teachers to grasp. It was for me, though I had some speech and debate judging under my belt by the time I started, so it was a little smother adjustment for me than for some. Over the years, I've whittled my philosophy down to a single phrase: students may be disappointed in their grade, but they should never be surprised by their grade. To enact this grading philosophy, we have a few tasks, which I’ve elaborated on below. I call them the “four E’s” of grading.

Below is another excerpt from my handbook for our graduate student teachers.

Expectations

We should already have assignment descriptions and rubrics for every single assignment, so this task is already accomplished to a large degree. Will students read this rubric before beginning work on their speeches? You’d think so, but surprisingly the answer is often “no.” This is where you come in; part of your job in making these expectations clear is draw their attention to, explain, and answer questions about the assignment. You will also do activities in class to help students explore and hone one or more skills required by the assignments.

Explanations

As I noted above, you should be explaining assignments to students. And part of your teaching philosophy should include clarity. But when it comes to a grading philosophy, an additional way to think about explanations is the feedback you provide students along with a letter grade. This feedback will serve several purposes.

First, this feedback will save you a lot of headaches. When students question you about their grade, complain about their grade, and attempt to persuade you to change their grade (and some will), you can rely on your detailed feedback as justification for why they received the grade they did. Obviously, this feedback should be related to the course objectives, assignment objectives, and/or the skills we want students to acquire. This feedback will also help me when these students come to see me to complain about said grade (which some do). This may seem like a cynical way to approach grading, but it’s just one of the practical uses of clear, detailed, explanatory feedback. In short, it can save us time and effort. And doing so save us from repeating ourselves.

Second, doing so contextualizes a letter grade into concrete suggestions for improvement. Although students may seem only concerned with a letter grade on an assignment, we must be sure to giving them concrete suggestions for improvements. Ideally, students will read these suggestions and use them to improvement their performance on future speeches. I’ve sat with many students in my office looking over a GTA’s completed rubric trying to explain to the students where the GTA was coming from, why the student got the grade he or she did, and what the student can do better in the future (Remember that time and effort we wanted to save?). By providing detailed feedback, we not only justify the grade given, hopefully circumventing any complaints, but we offer students something to think about for future speeches and assignments.

Encouragement

The third of our “three E’s” of grading also has to do with feedback. The feedback you provide will hopefully be encouraging. We need to tell the students what they’re doing well as well as what they can improve upon. Like suggestions for improvements, these encouraging remarks should be concrete as well. And like suggestions for improvements these encouraging remarks should be related to particular learning outcomes and skills.

Equilibrium

An often-used synonym for balance, our fourth “E” of grading refers to finding a balance between critique and encouragement, rigor and reasonableness, and fairness and compassion. As I explained above, your grading approach should include constructive criticism and encouragement. What I’m going to focus on in this section is reasonable rigor. To grade with rigor means you are demanding and fair, and reasonable in what you expect from your students.

Talking to many first-year students about grades, you might get the impression that they received all A’s in high school. This may be the case, but more often than not it usually not the case. Students may be trying to manipulate you, but what’s most likely is that they simply have to adjust to the rigorous standards we employ in our class and in university-level classes. When weighing how tough we’re being in our grading, there are a few tricks we can employ. I will detail these below.

What Should the Average GPA of My Class Be?

As long as you’re being clear, rigorous, and reflexive about your grading, you’re doing great. But as a way of entering the conversation, let’s consider what the average GPA of first-year students are. You can find the most recent information on SDSU student GPA by class level here. For years 2007-2011, the average GPA for male and female first-year students was 2.77[1]. When considering the own cumulative GPA of your own sections, whether on a particular assignment or at the end of semester, it’s sometimes useful to ask yourself, “What is the likelihood that my class will be much higher or lower than this?” The answer is, “Probably not very likely.”

For example, in a class of 24 students, if the average GPA is 3.2, you’re essentially communicating to me that I could walk into your class, pick a student at random to speak, and I’d see an above-average speaker. While that may be the case—some of us just get lucky and have a class of awesome speakers—my 20 years of teaching experience tells me that is not usually going to happen. As such, you can probably conclude that you’re not being rigorous enough in your grading.

Does this mean that you change students’ grades? Not at all. It just means that you should be reflexive about your grading process, continually asking yourself if you’re being too lenient, too hard and unreasonable, and how you might evolve in the future. But, keep in mind this rule of thumb: it’s better for classroom management, morale, and rapport with students to get easier with your grading as the semester goes on rather than harder.

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[1] http://university-stats.sdsu.edu/app/reports/GPA/all_gpa_.pdf

Teaching Philosophy: Why Do We Need One?

As another semester is over, and my thoughts turn toward the summer and beyond, the coming Fall semester. I have begun to work full force on our graduate teacher handbook. One of the sections is about teaching philosophies. This is an overlooked yet invaluable stage in the process of begun a teacher; it emphasizes rigorous self-reflection and an engagement with one's audience (in this case, the students).

Below is an excerpt from that particular section:

Teaching Philosophy: Why Do You Need One?

Every teacher should have a teaching philosophy. Think of the teaching philosophy as your mission statement. Sure, everyone wants to be a good teacher, but “good” can mean different things to different people (as can “teacher”). For example, to think that you’re going to come into one of the first classes you’ve ever taught and become a best friend, mentor, guru, and life coach to all of your students is a bit unrealistic. That’s not what you should be striving for, and I’m not sure if any teacher should be attempting to be all of those things. Student attitudes like those are likely a by-product of what the teacher actually accomplishes, like encouraging students to make connections between the material and their own lives, fostering critical thinking, and creating a welcoming classroom environment. So, put out of your mind for the time being visions of students chanting “O Captain! My Captain! (a la the film Dead Poets Society), and let’s discuss some concrete things you should be instituting in your classroom communication.

While everyone’s teaching philosophy will read differently (you can read mine[1] and get the basics of a Teaching Philosophy at http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/philosophy.html), there are some basic things you should keep in mind for your classroom communication with students. Each of these is explained below.

Frame Class Discussions and Activities

First, you can ask them to read the syllabus and assignment descriptions, but don’t assume they will. So, plan on providing summaries or overviews of the course policies and assignments. The same holds true for the textbook; we may assign them readings, but don’t assume they’ve read it. Any discussions you have on the textbook chapters should be preceded by a brief summary of the chapter. Don’t worry, you’re not doing their work for them because good discussion questions should prompt them to address things in much more detail than your summary (1-2 minutes) will provide.

Lesson Plans, Goals, and Assessments

Second, you should have a lesson plan for every class meeting. Experienced teachers may tell you they don’t need them, but they have likely internalized the important parts of the lesson plan and are incorporating them into their classroom communication. We’ll go over writing lesson plans in more detail later in the handbook. But for now, you should keep the following things in mind for each class meeting: what you want to accomplish, how you’re going to accomplish it, and—perhaps most importantly—how you will know you accomplished what you want.

This last part is one many teachers overlook. It requires some kind of assessment on your part. When most teachers hear the word “assessment,” they likely think of statistical measurements. What I mean is that you need some way to assess your students so that you know you’ve accomplished what you intended. If not, you can tweak the lesson plan for next time. This assessment could come in the form of a group discussion with carefully written questions that pertain to your objectives, a speech or some other classroom activity, or a written component (maybe some combination of these). Remember that we have assessments at the course level as well: graded speeches, exams, and quizzes in particular. But you need to approach your classes with assessment in mind, too.

Strive for Clarity and Transparency

Third, you should strive for clarity and transparency. We present the students with detailed rubrics for each speech assignment at the beginning of the semester. We also provide them with study guides for each chapter and sample exam questions. We have course policies regarding classroom conduct, treatment of classmates, absences, and so on. So, you already have a structure of clarity and transparency within which to work. The one thing we can’t provide the students with beforehand is grades, obviously. And this is where you should strive for clarity and transparency. This means provided substantial comments on grading rubrics that allow students to understand why they received the grade they did; they may not agree with you, but they should understand. It also means grading and posting grades, activity points, etc. in a timely fashion on their BlackBoard.

Create a Welcoming Environment

Finally, consider the ways in which you might create a safe and welcoming environment. Learning student names by the second week, altering seating arrangements when possible (for example, in a circle rather than rows), and being encouraging in your written and oral feedback to the students are ways you can create a welcoming environment. We’ll address more of these issues in the classroom management chapter and in our weekly orientations.

To Lead or To Manage?

In time, you’ll develop your own teaching philosophy. But here are some important questions to ask yourself: What does it mean to manage a class? What does it mean to lead a class? Are there different communication behaviors you must do for each? On what occasions might it be necessary to manage your class? When should you lead your class? These are all questions you will answer in your own way, in time.

Ultimately, two approaches have helped me in my teaching. The first is a quotation from John Cotton Dana, an influential librarian from the late 18^th and early 19^th century: “He [or she] who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” I like this, because I like to think of learning and teaching as inextricably intertwined. The second approach is taken from yoga, which I practice regularly. In short, if you think you’ve mastered yoga, you’re not really doing yoga. I think of teaching in the same way; if, at some point, you think you’ve mastered teaching, you’re not really teaching. Because teaching is about learning. We can readily accept that without teaching, there would be no learning. Of course, we need teachers to teach students. But I also believe that without learning, there would be no teaching. This not only means that we need students to teach. It also means that teachers need to continue learning.

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[1] http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~klindema/Lindemann%20Statement%20of%20Teaching%20Philosophy.pdf

Reflections on Conference Going Part Two: Embodying the Conference Experience in the Classroom

Just got back from giving a couple talks and a performance about an ongoing research and writing project, having just gotten back from another conference and getting ready to head out again, barely having taken the time to reflect on yet another one down, lessons learned, work done, connections made, etc.

I enjoy going to conferences for a number of reasons: seeing old friends, being in a new city, catching up with past students. But this most recent spate conference-going had a few sharp moments of insight that made it additionally worthwhile for me. These moments had to do with the teacher-graduate student relationship.

Too often I've tried to keep the worlds separate, as if my personal life were entwined with my work life in strands that are frayed and apart from my teaching life. Obviously, I know teaching is my work, a large part of it, but I've often thought my conference-going experiences had little to say about teaching or mentoring unless they were the subject of a paper or panel. Maybe I've kept them separate in an attempt to keep things "professional": not getting too chummy with students, graduate or undergraduate. In short, I've never really considered the way I embody conference going how I might bring that embodiment into classroom interactions.

Queering the Student-Teacher Relationship
But to talk about queering the teacher-student relationship (which is what came up in one particular panel and subsequent conversation), something I haven't as readily embraced as the process of "queering" in research, has taken on new meanings. Setting aside for a moment the political and academic use of the "queering" (I've had discussions, for example, as to whether heterosexual male scholars can do queer theory), I've realized the queering of such relationships, and the power disruptions and even inversions that go along with this approach, can be a valuable mentoring tool. I'm not just talking about, for example, using informal forms of address or even disclosing more of one's personal life to students. I'm talking about showing vulnerabilities in terms of confusion about one's research and teaching, not pretending to have all the answers and not pretending that I know I don't have all the answers (or that I avoid double negatives in a sentence).

Embodying Vulnerabilities in the Classroom

Given my desire for tight control and professionalism in my teaching, supervision, mentoring, etc. this is something I'm still thinking about in terms of how to integrate it into my everyday practice--my classroom embodiment. I tell our graduate student teacher that it's okay to admit to students you don't have all the answers. But I've always envisioned this interaction still cloaked in an air of control, a strategic vulnerability of sorts that not only makes the teacher seem human but also discursively acknowledges the teachable moments that are part and parcel of classroom interaction. There's been some great stuff written on this already, and I'm thinking in particular about Trethewey's "Sexuality, eros, and pedagogy: Desiring laughter in the classroom" in Women and Language. I've tried to do this in a recent piece of my own.

Embodying the Mentoring Relationship
But for some reason my most recent conference experience enabled me to consider this notion of embodiment in a way I hadn't before. Conferences allow for a sort of informal interaction in which one can let the facade down. It certainly can become an extension of the classroom. But in a broader way, it's also a way of embodying the mentoring relationship. And students are interested in what happens there, as the number of inquiries I got upon my return indicated: What happened? What was like? In general, what goes on at these places and what does it mean for us in the classroom? I don't know. Yet. And that's okay.

Social Media as Embodiment
I do, however, think social media--blogs, twitter, etc.--might play a role in that. At least, that's what I'm beginning to find. I have another conference coming up, so we'll see. Maybe students will read about it here. Or in a tweet.

All Work and All Play: Reflections on Conference Going Part One

Every time I bring class work to a conference I find myself working on class work and research simultaneously, which leads to a strange, almost surreal swirl of worlds. Obviously, my research and teaching are connected, but they seem more separate to me the rest of the year. I teach, I go back to my office and, if I'm lucky or disciplined enough to make to the time, I write or research or both.

Then I go to class. Then I grade, write rubrics, assignment sheets, study guides, etc. Sounds glamorous, I know. But my compartmentalizing fails me when sitting in a hotel room, lounge, or bar, trying to do both. I've divided my scholarly world here and my classroom world so distinctly and, I think, erroneously and unnecessarily that the mix of the two never fails to jar me a little.

So, I'm sitting here prepping for a presentation, breaking some of the rules I teach in my undergrad communication classes, reading what I've written about grieving my brother's death 10 or so years ago (see my blog Long Canyon Lost for more on this), and I come across a passage in which I describe going to an academic conference right after he died. It's like standing in front of a mirror with a mirror behind me, watching my copied image get smaller and smaller until I can't make it out. I wonder: am I teaching what I write and research, truly? If so, how? Because I can't quite make it out from here.

I guess I'll pack up and go to the presentation, deciding to keep things separate a little while longer until I can make more sense of the relationship. It's an ongoing and invigorating journey, though, so I don't expect it to conclude just yet. Maybe I should write about it, or write about writing about it. That makes sense, right?

Epilogue
Presentation went well, inspiring and educational. Back in the room, grading papers. Transition wasn't as abrupt, probably because of invigorating communication with colleagues at lunch. Amazing how the social support networks can ease the transition from one sphere to the next.

Top COMM 103 Student Tweets (So Far) of Fall 2011 (NSFW)

Ironic that although some tweets aren't safe for work, I've read them and counted them as part of my work as a university professor teaching communication and media literacy to mostly first-year students.

Using Student Tweets to Illustrate Media Literacy Concepts
I've had a debate with some teacher friends on facebook as to whether I should take students to task for their tweets. I find it useful to use some examples of questionable tweets in class as a way of teaching media literacy. It helps me illustrate: 1) there's not such thing as "privacy" or "anonymity" on the web; 2) you need to mindful of multiple audiences with social media messages; and 3) you must be mindful of possible unintended messages when using social media.

Now, I never call out specific students, and I don't intend to put them "on blast," as the students like to say (and get no shortage of laughs hearing me say it in class). I should note that I make it clear on our  BlackBoard site as well as on the syllabus that there is a class Twitter account. In most cases I use publicly accessible tweets (i.e., tweets that aren't locked and only available for followers, and tweets that can be found through a simple term search on twitter). In other cases, I use the tweets of students who chose to follow our COMM 103 class, thereby giving me access to their tweets. I use their tweets in class lectures in an attempt to teach students to be more mindful of the messages they send out into the amorphous universe of electronic media.

Why Not? Blurring Classroom Boundaries for Better or Worse
So, what's the debate? Well, some friends say that I shouldn't hold students accountable for what they say on twitter because, although I have a twitter account for class and many students choose to follow me, it's not really classroom communication. I disagree. The classroom is wherever students and teachers interact. Now, that may be an unfairly broad definition which may prompt the questions, "So, if you see a student at Target should you expect them to act like a student (e.g., respectful, polite)? And in turn, should you be expected to answer their questions about class at said Target store?"

 These are good questions. And although social media has certainly blurred the boundaries of in-class and out-of-class, is it fair for me to (re)define those boundaries in a way convenient for me? I don't have an easy answer.

So, my response to tweets isn't necessarily one of chastising but usually silence (and somehow referencing it in class) or measured responses. Below are some examples.

Example One: Why do I need this class?
I talk in class about why, although some communication concepts may seem common sense, it's important to think about these concepts to be mindful of our communication habits and in which contexts those habits might or might not be appropriate.

Somehow, though, the concept of mindfulness didn't seem to resonate with this student:

These tweets are publicly accessible and easily found with a Twitter search of "communicate"

I didn't respond to these specific tweets, though I did to another one about one of our quizzes (I again found it through a search). Although this student didn't go back and delete these posts above (some do with their more "saucy" tweets), this student did respond to me. Hopefully, the interaction generated via Twitter will lodge itself in this student's thinking about media use.

Example Two: I don't need this class; in fact, I hate this class
The tweets below were decidedly more vitriolic:

These are publicly accessible with a simple search of COMM103

Here's how I responded:

I'm not sure if this student still checks this Twitter account. But my response is typical of how I handle such things. I find this approach usually does work with students who might initially seem like they hate the class but are, in actually, just worried, nervous, or otherwise concerned with their class performance. Which leads me to the next example:


Example Three: I sound like I hate this class, but I'm actually just a little overwhelmed
Sometimes, I think students spew some tweets that don't actually mean what they might sound like to a teacher. Case in point, the below exchange, which began with a measured response to an "I hate this class" tweet (like my example above):

These are publicly accessible with a simple search of COMM103

Unlike the above example, though, this student responded to me. And not in the way I expected:

The bottom tweet is the first one in the series

So, I responded in kind:

And this exchange had a (sort of) happy ending. Perhaps the best a teacher could hope for in this asynchronous social media exchange.

Example Four: I actually like this class
There are many positive tweets as well. Below is one:

Obviously, the #COMM103 hashtag, which I encourage students to use, makes this publicly accessible tweet easy to find

To these I usually respond, "Glad you're enjoying it" or something like that, taking a chance that the tweet isn't ironic in its use of multiple exclamation points.

What's It All For? The Future of Social Media in My Classroom
My use of the class Twitter account is a work in progress. But I think its utility and possibly lie in more than just communicating class information to students or answering questions (out of class or, as some instructor now use it, in class with a moderated live feed). Its use, and teachers' framing of its use, is rooted in the concepts of media literacy. We must be vigilant in illustrating to students the ways intention, audience, and tone play complex roles in social media.

Update
I was recently honored for the kind of experiments I detail above. You can read more about this on the SDSU News page.

Top Ten Graduate Teacher Mistakes: Number 9

This is a continuation of the "Top Ten" list I started several months ago. I realize now it was a pretty ambitious goal for me. I should have made it a Top Five list. At any rate, as promised, here's number nine:

Number Nine: Asking Too Many Questions
Some of my graduate student teachers may be reading this thinking, "Is he talking about me?" Well, yes, but not in a bad way. I'm talking about myself as well, I suppose. As I prep for my Fall classes, I'm faced with making assignments new again. And while I can plan things out, starting with learning outcomes and following through to some kind of assessment, there's no way I can really tell if something's going to work.

The more experience a teacher has, the better she can anticipate what questions and difficulties students might have. But she can never really know how a new lesson plan will turn out. Sometimes we have great stuff we think the students will love, and they don't. Other times, we might go in and wing it only to have things go great. When this happens I sometimes walk out of class thinking, "It's too bad I won't be able to replicate that dynamic every time, because that was great."

I encourage asking questions, and believe me, some graduate student teachers take this to heart and ask all sorts of things I honestly had never thought of before. While I can answer some--or most, I hope, some questions teachers have are better left unanswered. "Will this work?" I don't know. Maybe. Consider so-and-so and give it a try. "Is this activity a good idea?" Unless you're talking explicitly about sex or admonishing students about a particular religious point of view, you're probably safe. Give it a try. And so on.

The short answer: I don't know. The longer answer involves a communication theory, as most of my longer answers do: specifically, sense-making. Karl Weick, who forwarded said theory, is famous for a saying, which I'll paraphrase here: How do I know what I want to say until I see what I said? Setting aside for a moment the ableist language in that colloquialism (it privileges speaking and hearing as the primary knowledge-gaining senses), I like it and think it applies here. I realize this doesn't really hold water if we're accountable for students' test scores and such. But even within such constraints, in fact, some say only within constraints,  creativity and problem-solving coalesce in the art that is teaching.

Five Reasons Teachers Should Use Social Media

I've been thinking about my use of social media in my classes. I've used facebook and twitter for classes for a couple of years, with mixed results Having just presented at SDSU's One Day in May series of talks and workshops about teaching and writing, I've been thinking more and more about what my use of social media has accomplished so far and what I might expect it to accomplish in the future.

The (sort of) good and (sort of) bad
I've caught students cheating by reading their facebook wall. Students can't write about themselves in journal entries or class discussion posts ("I have nothing to write about," "I don't feel comfortable writing about..." X--or Y or Z) but seem to have no qualms about a totally public (as long as you yourself have an account facebook wall) conversations about all manner of topics.

Other positive aspects? Connecting with students (yes, I friend some of them), increasing immediacy between myself and students, and learning all the hip lingo the kids use nowadays. I would use some of said slang phrases here, but--much like a foreign language--I've forgotten it all because I don't use it in conversations.

These experiences have resulted in many of what us teachers call "teachable moments," which is code for: a) how we recover when things don't quite go according to plan; b) how we fake it when things gets really screwed up; or c) what we do when we don't know what the heck is going on but figure there's got to be something worth learning here.

Downsides? I think about the notion of surveillance and how my catching cheaters, while technically not illegal or perhaps even unethical, still conjures up notions of Big Brother watching over the public and private lives of students.

I also think about how applications like Foursquare, in which users "check in" to businesses and locations to accumulate points and free stuff, promote a gaming and consumption model of education. Yes, people use foursquare for teaching, primarily for scavenger hunt-type activities, among other things. This includes my alma mater Arizona State University, who is part of a case study of Foursquare for Universities

All considered, I think there's a lot of potential with social media in (and out) of the classroom. But teachers have begin using it in order to understand how it can be used. So, here are five reasons why teachers should use social media:

Five Reasons Teachers Should Use Social Media
1. You can finally justify the many hours spent playing Bejeweled and Words With Friends

2. You now get to deduct points from students who bother you with facebook farmville requests.

3. Letting your students see your foursquare check-in at Macy’s over the weekend helps them remember to compliment your wardrobe on Monday.

4. Calling your students on twitter “followers” instead of “students” makes you feel like a cult leader, compensating for crappy teacher pay.

5. Haven’t you always wanted to see pictures of your students doing a beer bong?

Top Ten Graduate Student Teacher Mistakes: Number 10

As I wrap up another year of serving as Basic Course Director for our school, I'm reflecting on the progress of our graduate student teachers. They do some amazing things, make me look good, and--to my bemusement--attribute their teaching success to me when it sometimes appears to me if I've had little to do with how good they've become.

I think I only really, truly, began to get the hang of teaching in about my sixth year. I've been teaching college and university classes for about 18 years, and only now do I begin to feel like I might have some sort of advice to offer those just beginning to teach. Of course, I've been doing for this several years but have relied heavily on what others have said. Like any good scholar, I've begun to internalize those things, synthesize them, and take credit for them.

So, here is the first in a series of installments on some mistakes I've not witnessed graduate student teachers commit, and mistakes of which I myself am guilty (and how could I effectively teach them if I didn't first experience them?). I've resisted doing the typical scholarly thing and use parentheses, as in "Top Ten (Graduate Student) Teacher Mistakes." But hopefully you get the idea.

These are in no particular order, although I think the lower-stake mistakes are generally near the bottom.

Number Ten: No Lesson Plan
I used to think lesson plans were for elementary school teachers. College professors didn't need them, right? After all, they were teaching their specialty. They were afforded academic freedom, which meant talking about what they deemed relevant and appropriate. Students, basking in the glow of professors' knowledge, would write things down and ask questions, allowing the teacher to re-direct where necessary. Right?

Thankfully, I didn't actually put these ideas, accumulated from years of bad movies about college life, into practice. But I was shocked when I got into the college classroom and found it difficult to fill the hour or so talking about what I was already supposed to know. Teaching my first college class as a first-year M.A. student was terrifying, and I had done theatre and competitive speech and debate my whole life. I believe I spent the first 10 minutes or so reading from the book and hoping students would react to it. No lesson plan. I wasn't taught about lesson plans in my orientation, wasn't taught Bloom's taxonomy, learning objectives or outcomes, assessment...nothing.

So, one of the things I stress to my graduate student teachers is to create lesson plans. To not just think about what they want to say, but literally write out a lesson plan, beginning with learning outcomes and ending with assessment strategies (qualitative, e.g. discussions, and/or quantitative) that pair with a particular learning outcome. I ask them to also include the time each section might take and, if appropriate, the learning styles to which they might be appealing (I know some people have issues with the whole "learning styles" approach, but that's another subject for another post--for that matter, so is assessment).


I realize this sounds both simple and simplistic. But I'm always surprised, especially in the second semester onward, how many GTAs take the "been there, done that" approach and just go into class thinking, "I'm going to do this activity and it's going to be really cool." Okay, you've got the activity. So what? What's the purpose? How are you going to know whether the activity made any difference?

Now, I find myself doing this in my lectures: just going in and talking. Of course, I know what I want to say and what I have to cover, but I find myself glossing over learning outcomes as well.

As I write this, I can hear some of my colleagues advising teachers to stay flexible and not plan everything out, as some of the best teaching and learning moments emerge organically. And I agree. But I'm not sure beginning teachers can go there just yet. So, I advise creating lesson plans but maintain a flexible mind just in case.

One of the things I like about teaching is that I'm constantly learning. I'm learning as I write these, and as I present them to our graduate student teachers. And I encourage them not to take these as edicts, but as guidelines that will prompt a thoughtful and reflexive consideration of the classroom and of their teaching.

Next up, Number Nine: Asking Too Many Questions

Classrooms as Uncomfortable Spaces: Mark Twain and the "N- Word"

When you've read a lot of teaching philosophies and talked enough about teaching, you begin to realize that creating a "safe space" for students is part and parcel of many teachers' pedagogical approach. This usually means that these teachers strive to create an atmosphere in their classrooms that encourages students to speak their mind, not judge or insult others, and not use discriminatory language.

However, "safe" is not synonymous with "comfortable." I think learning should be uncomfortable. Students should be led into unfamiliar and uncertain territory. With good teaching, students brought to this "learning edge" can glean insight by viewing problems and issues in new ways. When it comes to discussing race in the classroom, however, some teachers opt for a "better safe than sorry" pedagogy, treading lightly for fear of offending others. I'm guilty of this, too.

And so, last Sunday I watched with interest the 60 Minutes segment on New South books' revised edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which changes the n- word with "slave."



I agree with Bradley's argument that Huckleberry Finn without the n- word isn't really Huckleberry Finn at all. I also agree with his assertion that, to a certain extent, if students are comfortable talking about race then they're not really talking about race. Where can we draw the line so we don't sacrifice learning for the sake of comfort?

As I ask this question, I'm reminded of The Daily Show's "Senior Black Correspondent" Larry Wilmore's take on this controversy:
                       

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However, discomfort for the sake of discomfort isn't the way to go either, as Michael Scott illustrated:



So, where does this leave us?
Obviously, it's easy to split the difference between two extremes, but I think the difference between these two bits is that The Daily Show segment acknowledges the structural components of racism, while manager Michael Scott locates racism at the individual level. In short, Michael Scott thinks racism can be eradicated by changing individual values and attitudes; Larry Wilmore humorously indicts the linguistic structures themselves ("slave" is a "occupation"). While individual attitudes are important to consider, it's socio-economic conditions like urban flight, school districting, incarceration levels, state and federal law, and media portrayals that enable racism to continue. Language is also something to consider, and of primary importance to a teacher of communication.

The problem with changing the language in Huckleberry Finn is that doing so seems to attend to individual attitudes without addressing the structural conditions of racism. While an extended discussion of the above conditions is probably out of the purview of a high school literature class, discussing the power of words can be a useful exercise, one that is  short-circuited by replacing making the aforementioned switcheroo.

Teaching public speaking has made me realize that many kids throw around words like "gay" and "retarded" with little thought about how and why they can use those terms in certain ways and others can't. Talking about the word in question, whether a teacher says it or simply defers to the "n -word" phrasing, allows students to consider how some groups have access to certain words and their meanings and others don't; when you get right down to it, there are comparatively few insults someone can hurl at a heterosexual white male. If we consider women, people of color, and gays and lesbians, we realize that in a name-calling contest, the straight white male will never run out of ammunition. This is a simplistic example, to be sure, but it illustrates the linguistic structures of racism.

Discomfort, for me (a straight, white male), comes from realizing I'm implicated in this system in ways I don't like and didn't choose. But once I begin to understand this, I can not only choose my words more mindfully (which is more than just saying, "racism is bad"), but I have a more comprehensive view of the sorts of dialogue that need to be initiated. Changing one word because we're uncomfortable with it doesn't teach us much of anything, except how to avoid talking about it.

In-Class Versus Online Teaching: A (Dis)Embodied Enterprise

I train and supervise the graduate student teachers in our department who teach the basic course (a hybrid of theory/overview and public speaking). I love the job; it's wonderful to see them grow as teachers, to gain reflexivity in their curricular concerns, and move on to teach other classes.

But one of the most difficult things for me is articulating what it is I know about teaching. I've been teaching at the university level for approximately 17 years, yet I have trouble distilling that experience into any sort of overarching list of guidelines, do's and don'ts, or rules. Sure, I can provide advice on specific situations, both real and hypothetical. And we have year-long training meetings, a lot of which consist of me fielding questions regarding classroom management, grading, handling difficult students, etc.

But, I'm not sure I even "know" anything about teaching. Rather, my difficulty in articulating what I know is due to where I know it: the body, my body. Simply, teaching is an embodied experience. That statement will not shock many of my colleagues, especially those in Performance Studies. There have been countless articles and books written at this intersection of embodied performance and teaching, so I'm not forging new ground here either.

But this embodied approach to teaching and learning is increasingly coming under fire (and ire) from administrators and those supporting a consumer-based model of education. I don't use the term "consumer" with too much derision, as I understand the practical value of such positioning. Adjunct teachers, especially, may benefit from a pay-per-student model of education, perhaps best served through online education. The adjunct teacher featured in this story earned upwards of $120,000. That's full professor money at some universities.

While I have taught online classes and recognize the good and bad of the "democatization" of the teaching enterprise--or, perhaps, the move toward a more capitalistic, customer-driven model of education--one thing was always missing: the embodied experience of teaching. I realize that online teaching may complicate or problematize the notion of embodiment rather than simply negate or erase embodiment. I do know, though, that what I "know" about teaching resides in my body, in the ways I feel and remember feeling in the classroom. And however I may articulate that knowledge, it takes other bodies in the classroom as well.

The Department of Compartmentalization

One of the reasons I think I've been successful at--and enjoyed--my teaching career so far is my ability to compartmentalize. While the best teachers are lauded for being inspirational, emotional and exciting in their delivery style, ingenious in their activities, and dedicated and demanding in their grading, I wonder if successful teachers are successful because they've also developed the ability to effectively compartmentalize.

What does this mean? That good teachers leave their emotions and personal lives at the door? Partly, I suppose. Though all the emotion labor research I've read tells me this is ultimately harmful. So, I'm sure there are downsides.

My wife and I put our beloved Black Lab, Val, to sleep last month. I was scheduled to hold office hours that day and to teach a graduate seminar that night. I canceled both. But I went in the next day to teach my 10 am lecture. I was sort of walking around in a daze, though it did help me to be at work doing something. I realized that I honed my ability to take these worries and leave them at the door. I was able to engage students, concentrate on the material, and deliver the material in what I hope was a lively manner.

I again return to my question: does being a good teacher mean, in part, that we must compartmentalize? I know many would disagree, especially when so many teaching moments can be found in the lives we (teachers and students) live outside the classroom. But sometimes I wonder in what ways teachers' abilities to set aside our personal lives fosters effective teaching practices...

Stories as Teaching Tools

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busy with writing and teaching. In the first case, I've gotten caught up in the revise and resubmit cycle as I submit articles for publication. Same with teaching: prepping, grading, etc. In both of these cases, it's easy to lose track of the stories I'm trying to tell. All of which prompts me to consider the role of stories in my teaching.

For my morning classes, I come into the lecture hall at the tail end of a History professor's basic course. And I listen, caught up in the stories he tells to teach the class about English expansion and Napoleon's conquest, about the development of raw materials like gold and salt as precious commodities, about ethnic strife. And I think about what I teach: theories and concepts broken down into bits and pieces, partly because of who I'm teaching (first-year students), but also, I think, because of the subject matter.

I know that many communication scholars, especially qualitative communication scholars (like H.L. Goodall and others), claim that scholarly articles and theories are themselves narratives, stories. So, what are the stories in a basic communication course?

I'm sure they're there. But because the basic communication course (which often focuses on public speaking) is chunked up into discrete skills (language use, gestures, researching, using citations, supporting arguments, volume, rate, pitch, etc.) for the purpose of teaching students both "life skills" and skills that will be useful to them for the rest of their college careers, the format resists stories and a "big picture" approach. And believe me, I've tried time and again to stress the latter. But without much life experience, it's difficult, I think, for students to appreciate the big picture.

So, the question for me becomes not only what stories do I tell, but how do I tell them? It's a shame that many of the basic studies-general education classes we ask students to take resist the story form, as that's what students are most used to (in songs, movies, television shows). My task, then, is to figure out the stories embedded in common communication experiences and attempt to tell them. But whose stories? Mine? Some students could surely relate, but there's a generation gap that may be difficult to cross. Theirs? I can't speak for them. I continue to look for the stories to tell.

Making the grade, assessing our grading

I know there are smarter people than me who have written about both of these subjects, but as the semester winds down I can't resist revisiting in a more colloquial way the two topics that are (likely not) near and dear to most teachers' hearts.

It is the point in the semester when students begin asking about their grades, points, can they be "bumped" up since they're so close to the next highest grade, there was an illness they forgot to bring a note in for, they over slept the final exam period, etc. I know these are valid concerns for students, and I was certainly the sort of student who was hyper-concerned with his grades. So, I can give forgive them the barrage of e-mails here. And I don't blame students for often missing the big picture of whether and what they actually learned in class (this is the assessment part). However, the grades-assessment dynamic is something that's easy to lose sight of for teachers as well as students (if students even think about assessment).

I'm not saying grades and assessment have to be dichotomous; it just all too often seems like they are. Students are concerned with grades. Teachers are concerned with assessment. Students don't care about assessment unless it's tied into their grades. After some students engage in what is commonly called "grade grubbing," many teachers just want to chuck the whole grading system out the office window.

I admit, grading is my least favorite teaching duty. I also admit that assessment is one of my favorite. I think this is because I enjoy the myriad possibilities of assessment. In addition to exams, I use reflective writing, presentations, discussions, and short performances. Of course, I have to assign grades (in my case, points) to each of these activities so students will take them seriously. And I suppose that's a common way grading and assessing are folded into each other.

What I'm more concerned with is where these folds rip and grading and assessment appear if not incommensurable then two patches from a different quilt. As I'm sure many teachers and students can attest, getting a good grade doesn't always mean that one has learned something. And, certainly, one can learn something valuable and not achieve the desired grade.

I'm not necessarily offering answers; most teachers will tell you there are no easy ones. And then they'll digress into a highfalutin discussion about it: "isn't interesting that...," "the pedagogical tensions..." Which is what I suppose I'm doing right now. But teaching is a learning process, so I constantly have to ask myself: Am I making the grade on assessment for my classes?

Students cheating: What to do?

I have my own ways of preventing plagiarism on scholarly papers, most notably using turnitin.com and relying on the vigilance of the graduate teaching associates in our School. I'm also very careful, perhaps overly cautious, about student privacy as per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). For example, I have on more than one occasion refused to tell parents who contact me how their child is doing in my class. Of course, dealing with "helicopter" parents is another subject altogether. Needless to say, these parents were none too happy that I was not forthcoming with the performance of their children in my class.

But when I read this article about a professor going "vigilante" on students he caught cheating, I had to take a step back and wonder how best we can prevent cheating and plagiarism rather than trying to catch students in a "gotcha" sort of way.

One of the ways I do this to make the turnitin.com match reports that tell me how high a match is to other papers and articles in the database (numbering in the millions) available to the students themselves. What I've found, and this is especially useful for graduate students, is that doing this helps students understand the importance of paraphrasing. First, there's less a chance that they will plagiarize if they have it in their minds from the outset to mostly paraphrase. Second, since a high match only indicates a match to existing text and not outright plagiarism, a closer look reveals how much the student is quoting.

This last part is important for graduate students, as I try to communicate to them that they shouldn't let other scholars speak for them; they shouldn't quote unless the original language is poetic, unique, and otherwise something they couldn't themselves put in a different but equally explanatory way. So, a student sees the match report and gets a first-hand look at how often he or she is quoting. A high match in this case may not mean plagiarism, but it does mean that the student's scholarly writing skills need work in terms of synthesizing ideas and paraphrasing others' ideas.

One certainly fallible way I do my part to prevent and educate students about cheating. I'm not saying the professor in the article linked above eschewed this attitude. It just got me thinking.

Students as facebook friends: Too much, too close?

What's the harm? I innocently thought. Having a facebook group for the basic communication class I teach was a great idea (started by a student and now handed over to me and the GTAs for the class). It wasn't long before undergrads (first-year students) started adding me as a friend. Given the group we all belonged to it, I felt refusing to confirm students' friend requests would be a bit of a double-standard. Sure, I would be well within a traditional student-teacher relationship if I had refused, but it seemed a bit hypocritical to encourage them to use the technology to foster community among lecture students and then refuse to fully be a part of that community.

Needless to say, this is no longer a traditional student-teacher relationship, and refusing to confirm students' friend requests of me is not like refusing to give them my home or cell phone number. It's more like asking them to be part of a phone tree with me and then refusing to give them my phone number.

So, social networking technology like facebook (which I believe can be an effective teaching tool) has changed the student-teacher relationship. This isn't news. And others have theorized, speculated, and written about this change better than I can.

More specific for me, I now get news of their photo albums on my own facebook news feed. While none of these photos are of a...compromising nature, some come close. Some involve activities that could be illegal, and others just provide more information about the students than I'd like to know.

The students aren't to blame, although they should think about taking down some of these photos before embarking on a serious job hunt or be "found out" by potential employers doing the regular google-facebook-myspace search of applicants. No, I think it's just a matter of technology fostering unintended consequences in a more nontraditional teacher-student relationship.

Interestingly, I think the next step is to use these experiences of mine as teaching tools in the classroom, examples of the ways technology is both open and public (even when we think it's private or, at the least, harmless to our "online reputations"). I'll certainly include this little talk in my lesson plan for lectures to the basic oral communication class I teach.

So, all I can do now is grin and bear it...and not click on the pictures when the icons pop up in my news feed!

How to "fix" a basic communication course?

Well, not fix so much as refine, revise, and improve.

My colleagues and I did some work on our basic communication course this past year with a grant from San Diego State's Course Design Institute/People, Information, Communication, and Technology institute. Here's the presentation from the CDI YouTube channel. Thanks to Suzanne and the ITS/CDI crew!

I'm planning more changes for this year, though it's a bit daunting when considering the impact on the 5,000 or so students we get in the basic course every year. Imagine steering a very sensitive, 50 foot yacht--even the slightest adjustment will be felt relatively strongly by all the passengers, and given its size it may be more difficult to readjust as the trip goes on. I've never been "yachting" (in case you get any misconceptions about professors' salaries here at SDSU!), but that seems to me to be an apt metaphor.

At any rate, watch the presentation and you'll get an idea of the complexities of teaching 5,000 first-year students (probably about 96% of all first-year students at SDSU) in a large lecture/break-out format. Of particular interest to me is the use of the facebook study group, which just happened by accident this past Spring but I plan to use deliberately this Fall. The clickers to which I refer, course response systems from einstruction.com, also worked out well. I'm interested to hear from others who've used similar technology in their classes.

What will imitation get us? Playing With Identity in Classroom Performance

"For one of my class group presentations, the students created a game show. One of them was performing you being the host."

The graduate teaching associate who told me this seemed amused. And, on hearing about it, so was I. Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm not sure that's what this student had in mind when he dressed and spoke like me, but I was game to find out.

In the large lecture this student attends, I asked him before class if he wanted to start things off in lecture...as me. Luckily, he was still had his shirt, tie, and glasses from the presentation. I turned over the mic and, without saying a word, took a seat and let him do his thing. He introduced himself as me, walked around the class reviewing different concepts we'd already talked about, and proclaiming himself a Detroit sports fan (which I do in lectures when providing examples of group cohesion: the Tigers--maybe not this year, though).

I'm happy to say he was hilarious. I'm not sure how good the imitation was, but I suspect that others would tell me this student's version of me was "spot on."

Now, here's the interesting thing. As I started the lecture for that day, I found myself painfully conscious of my own voice and gestures. Everything I did seemed to repeat what this student had just performed. "Do I really sound like this," I thought. "Does my body really move like this?"

This imitation, "mimesis" as Derrida might call it, enabled a sort of subversion of traditional teacher-student authority. By audiencing this playing with identity, the class explored ways I might not live up to the traditional classroom authority figure (of course, no one person can anyway). Considering I gave permission for this student to "play around," I'm not sure how subversive it might be considered. But it's probably one of the few ways it could be achieved in a 500-seat lecture.

What I'm more interested in is the pedagogy of this playing around. This student's performance prompted me to consider ways I may or may engage the students with my own classroom performance. It gave me an idea of how the student's might view me (albeit, a circumscribed view exaggerated for comedic effect). In short, he made me question the way I teach, which is always a good thing. I'd hate to stop learning when there's always something my students can teach me.