Anyone experienced a class like the one described? How did you respond
to the students' response (or lack of response) to your teaching and the
course?
Is the ability to motivate students the same as the ability to teach?
Congruent? Necessary but not sufficient? One challenge I face is to
differentiate students who are trying but are not doing well from those
who are not trying. One indicator of this is whether or not the student
consults the syllabus. Students who find themselves in repeated
difficulty because of the failure to refer to this basic document are
disqualified from any extraordinary assistance I might otherwise have
provided. A second basic indicator is attendance. Students who miss
25% of my course, for example, get less consideration from me. For
those who demonstrate signs of an honest attempt, I respond as
encouragingly as humanly possible (even in cases where the attempt was
not very good).
If the entire class is just mopey (I have had a few), I encourage,
cajole and attempt to inspire through the midterm. Then I try the stick
approach. In at least one case I can recall, most students in the
course responded to neither the carrot nor the stick: they just wanted
to pass so they could graduate in the spring. Ultimately, in that case,
my response was exactly that of Dr. Roper. (Everyone did ultimately
pass, but some just barely.)
What does it mean, in theory and in practice, for a professor to say
that students "are responsible for their own learning?"
It would be nice to respond that 'teaching is not filling a bucket but
igniting a fire.' I will take a more conservative position: if you lead
a student to water, s/he should at least take a sip. I think the meaning
of the phrase is the same in theory and practice. The teacher can
describe, explain, synthesize, review related problem-solving attempts,
try to inspire, try to spark curiosity, imagination, etc. But
*ultimately* if the student does not internalize the information or the
process under consideration, the student is unlikely to really learn.
The act of internal cognitive processing is a mysterious one - but there
is nothing mysterious about lack of learning if it doesn't take place.
And that last, critical act in the learning chain is really up to the
student.
_____
Gary H. Jones, Ph.D
Western Carolina University
Assistant Professor of Business Communication
Cullowhee, NC 28723
Forsyth College of Business
Ph: 828.227.3615
Home Page <http://paws.wcu.edu/gjones/>
-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Altany
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 9:22 AM
To: teaching@cowee.wcu.edu; newfaculty@cowee.wcu.edu
Subject: When A New Ice Age Descends in a Course
from the current issue of the Chronicle of Higer Education
A glance at the November issue of "First Things": A professor can only
do so much to reach students
During his annual May pilgrimage across the Midwest for the
International Congress of Medieval Studies, Gregory Roper, an associate
professor of English at the University of Dallas, had an epiphany about
teaching. He had been agonizing over a miserable "Intro to Composition"
course that had just ended -- one in which almost all students performed
poorly and "had become downright surly by the end of the semester." It
suddenly occurred to him (somewhere in Illinois) that their failure was
simply not his fault. "I had given them the same assignments, the same
pep talks, the same advice and instruction that I had given numerous
sections of the very same course many times before, and they rejected
it."
Up until that drive, Mr. Roper says, he had believed that with enough
passion, creativity, and hard work, he could reach every student. "What
I discovered," he writes, "was that I thought of my students as innocent
and malleable, uncorrupted, unspoiled, and it was only my task to light
the fire in their souls." It was a harmful philosophy, he says: "I was
exhausting myself, and I was, unaware of it, condescending to my
students." In light of his revelation, the author now makes it clear to
his students that they are responsible for their own learning. He no
longer takes their failures so personally, accepting that "students
have free will, and in fact are shot through with original sin."
At one time or another, he explains, "even the best students will
become lazy or turn aside from proffered good.""Perhaps we could do a
great deal to help teachers and students by instructing teachers in the
depredations of this liberal pedagogical theology," he concludes. "Once
we give it the boot, we might find happier and healthier teachers, and
better educated students."
The article is not online, but information about the journal is
available at http://www.firstthings.com
_____
Alan
Alan Altany, Professor & Director
Coulter Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723 (U.S.)
Email: altany@email.wcu.edu
FAX: 828.227.7340
Web Site: http://facctr.wcu.edu <http://facctr.wcu.edu/>
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