Grey Collars: The "Mechanics" of Teachings

Full disclosure: This isn't an entry about how to teach (hence the ironic quotes around the word "mechanics"). I like to tell the graduate student teachers that I train and supervise that teaching is like yoga. With yoga, if one thinks she's mastered a pose, she's not really doing yoga. Same with teaching. If she thinks she's mastered it and there's nothing to left to learn, she's not really teaching because, to me at least, teaching always includes learning.

Another simile occurred to me today while I was changing the air filter in our car. I initially thought, "No problem." I must have been thinking of a previous car I owned, in which the air filter was a simple, flat style wedge that slipped in and out of a similarly-styled cradle accessible under the hood. Two clips and you're done. However, I opened the hood and realized we have a cone-style filter, which requires more than simply popping a couple of clips. As it turned out, this replacement involved disconnecting tubes from housings and muscling other things out of the way.

Whenever I work on cars, our house, or do any sort of work with my hands, I often think of my Dad. He was a "do-it-yourselfer." He was also a car aficionado, "wrench head," whatever you want to call it, from his teenage years on--always souping up cars and doing repairs himself. When he got hurt and ended up in a wheelchair, I was the one actually doing the repairs on things he couldn't reach. Replacing this air filter, wriggling the housing from its nest of bolts, wires, and tubes, I found myself thinking, "Hmmm. How is working on a car like teaching?" I thought there were several similarities: taking care to assess the situation and your end goal, the approaches to get to that goal, paying attention to detail, problem-solving, etc.

Granted, one could probably liken teaching to just about any endeavor. But my reasons for these comparisons are more important than the comparisons themselves.You see, I was never really interested in the same things as My Dad; I was into literature, writing, and theatre. Laying on my back under our van, assembling parts and pieces that may as well have been from an alien spaceship for all I knew about them, I'd often try to find similarities between his interests and mine: Playwriting is like building an addition to a garage (which my brother and I actually did, in part, assisting a carpenter friend). Writing a story is like shingling a roof (did that, too). Writing a song is like replacing an alternator (yep). I came up with these comparisons to feel closer to him, and I realize I made these comparisons to help convince myself that my leisure pursuits were just as important, just as meaningful, and just as taxing as his.

We were a middle-class family, but all the manual labor I did growing up made me think of ourselves differently. My Dad, although a brake engineer at Ford Motor Company, seemed to me decidedly blue-collar. Growing up, I considered myself from a blue collar family. Thinking about teaching in a more blue-collar way helps me feel closer to him, and alleviates the inexplicable guilt I sometimes feel for doing a job that doesn't require me to use many of the skills he taught me. But teaching does require one to get her hands dirty, to roll up his sleeves and really do some taxing work. I have no misconceptions about that. I suppose my only misconception is that my Dad, were he alive, would somehow see what I do as less valuable than those tasks he and I shared.

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.

When research and teaching isn't enough

Getting tenure this past Spring has got me re-evaluating my role of as a professor (Associate Professor, to be more precise). I'm sure everyone who gets tenure goes through a similar process. But this and other events have also prompted me to re-evaluate what it means to be a professor more broadly.

As the higher education system comes under fire, including tenure, tenure-jobs become scarcer, and budget cuts in many states threaten the very foundation of higher education, a lot of teachers have realized they have to look out for themselves as much as for their students.

This chain of thinking is not new and didn't originate with me. Our organizational communication textbooks have consistently discussed the "new social contract" between companies and workers that has resulted in a diminished sense of loyalty on both sides, portable 401/403 k/b etc. plans, and regular attendance at self-help classes, self-improvement seminars, and graduate schools. Certainly, academics aren't exempted from this and may have been some of the first to capitalize on this. After all, what are research agendas, pubs, and grants if not vital parts of a CV one can market to other universities for better pay?

So, I'm sitting on the couch thinking about all this, and my colleague and former office mate appears on television. He's one of the newest house guests on the CBS reality show Big Brother. This person, in addition to being a great writer and super smart, is also adept at self-branding. Again, I'm not the first to make the connection between personal branding and the academy, but I worry (even though I've embraced it to a certain extent).

Maybe I worry because I don't think I'm that good at it. I remember the difficulty I had in "branding" myself in my personal statement as part of my tenure files. Having to articulate and argue a particular research agenda, arc, and coherent body of work was difficult. Not because it wasn't there, or because I hadn't been trained to think that way by my great advisers, but it because it required me to think of myself as something more than a summation of my publications. And it was precisely this "summary thinking" that had prompted me to keep churning out articles.

Now I worry because I don't have much experience translating my ideas to a broader audience, something I think will become vital in the personal branding academics are and will continue to be required to do. Radio and television appearances, social media updates and plugs: all will become increasingly important. Does this mean the watering down of genuine (i.e., complex, problematic, heuristic) ideas? Does it mean a change in what we think of as ideas traditionally in the domain of academics? Both?

Fortunately, many academics are already blazing trails here. From podcast reviews of articles to blogs to more blogs to alternative forms of online scholarship. While not all even roughly fit into this notion of personal branding, they all illustrate the potential to move to more diverse, wider audiences, a necessary consideration in personal branding and marketing.

So, when is research and teaching (and service) not enough? Soon, if not already.

Top 10 Plagiarism Scandals of All Time | Online Classes.org: Find the Right Online Class Match

Ah, so this is where the students learn it's okay to plagiarize...

Top 10 Plagiarism Scandals of All Time | Online Classes.org: Find the Right Online Class Match

Work-Life-Furlough Balance

It finally happened. After months of speculation swirling like a hurricane off the coast, California State University Employees (faculty and staff) are on a furlough system. Other state workers have been furloughed for months before this, and getting IOUs on top on that. I think the IOU days are just about over. But my furlough days are just starting.

I'm sitting on the couch, laptop open, The People's Court is on television (glad I don't have to experience daytime TV too often, though there is something soothing about the easy conflict resolution portrayed on the show). And I'm thinking about how silly it is to expect someone like a professor, who doesn't normally work 9-5 hours, to reduce his or her workload simply by not coming into the office. Many of the academics I know write at home, on the weekends, and during off-hours anyway.

I'm resisting the urge to do any work, thinking that I may actually have to do some work today to stay caught up, and wondering whether writing articles counts as work. If the question is, "Would I write anyway?" the answer is yes. Do I get paid to do it as part of my workload? Yes. So, is it work? Is it enjoyable play? Yes on both counts. It's a wonderful part of my job that these two strands are intertwined. Even my writing this entry could count as a pre-writing for possible articles: work-life balance, organizational identification, emotion labor... I could go on. But am I allowed to?

And so, I've come to the point at which the furlough system breaks down, no longer makes sense, though I'm sure all my academic friends have already come to a similar conclusion.

I turn the channel from the People's Court to a Tool Academy marathon on VH1. On this show boyfriends who cheat on their girlfriends, verbally abuse them, and don't respect them (hence, the "tools") are tricked into coming to a school where they will supposedly learn better relationship and life skills or be booted out of the school and possibly their romantic relationships. I study the communication of gender and masculinity. This show could make a potentially interesting artifact of analysis. Uh oh. Am I suddenly working again? Should I change the channel?

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.