This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from:
altany@email.wcu.edu
The following message was enclosed:
I am hoping many of you new (now not so new)faculty at WCU
will open up one or more of your fall classes in the Open
Classroom Project.
No one has to teach, or develop as a teacher, in isolation if
she or he would like to experience a community where talk
about teaching
flourishes.
Just email me.
Alan
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http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i37/37b00501.htm
- The text of the article is below -
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What Am I Doing Up Here in Front of This Classroom?
By RACHEL BREM
I'm still working at home at 1:15 a.m. Feels like I have to
stay up for the rest of my life. I could go get a handful of
cereal from the box, but then I'd just have to sit back down
again. Four more papers to read. Middle of the night, lights
blazing.
It's my first year as a college teacher. I'm 30 years old.
My office on the campus has a yellow 1970s chair, an orange
1970s chair, a veneer table, and mostly empty metal
bookshelves. In one corner there's a giant old overhead
projector, which I checked out from the media-loan office.
Nothing on the walls.
Last June, the deans hired me away from the lab where I was a
postdoc, and in September I was introducing myself to 100
psychology students packed in an auditorium. Supposedly I am
going to teach them biology this year. Supposedly I am -- as
part of a team of four -- leading a yearlong, full-time
interdisciplinary undergraduate program. Supposedly I am now a
biology professor.
I begin to learn the students' names. In my office, Dave sits
in the chair across from mine, his face perspiring -- his polo
shirt is buttoned up to the top. Tamara, waiting outside our
classroom for the previous class to leave, puts a hand on my
shoulder and asks sweetly whether I've tried her favorite
yogurt drink for breakfast. "Really, it's so good for you!"
she says, nodding.
In a lecture, I work out this whole analogy -- I explain that
DNA is a precious set of instructions for protein machines,
kept in a notebook sequestered in the cell's nucleus. (I
count: about 80 people here today. Tracy appears almost
asleep, spread out in a seat in the upper balcony with her
coat over her. Other students politely take their pens out.) I
had the greatest time looking on the Internet for pictures.
Found a blueprint for a toy tractor: "So the cell has a whole
assembly plant on site." I'm starting to hop around the stage.
"I want you to picture it turning out tractors and
steamrollers and cranes. But they're made out of atoms, right?
The cell uses them to do work. That's what proteins are."
As I take down the projector at the end of class, Jason comes
up to me and asks again, if he turns one paper in late, really
just one, will I mention it in his evaluation?
Late afternoon, windowless classroom, me and 25 students. The
deans did tell me when I was hired about "seminars." It turns
out that all courses at the college, even science, have a
weekly reading-and-discussion section. You can assign novels,
essays, anything that sparks debate. Supposed to teach
students to operate in a community. I think.
Tables in a circle. We're in the second week already, and our
book is about adolescent psychology. I have no idea how to do
this. "OK, are we ready to get started?" But the students know
how to break into groups of three and four and talk on their
own. They start scooting chairs. Some are talking about how
the book is too expensive and they were up too late last
night. I hear Florianne (who has deep dimples and
red-yellow-orange-dyed hair done up in barrettes,
Renaissance-style, and who takes off her shoes under her
Little House on the Prairie skirt) prodding her groupmates:
"So, what do you think the author meant by that, though?"
For my next big lecture, I write up a problem set about DNA
and proteins as an in-class activity. I hand it out and then
put down the microphone. The room is like a cafeteria, with a
concrete floor. The students sit in their groups around big
tables. They know the drill for class exercises: One's got the
pen; another is paging through the book, looking for the right
diagram. When I edge up to a table, most of them don't even
notice me. Someone takes a swig from a water bottle. I drift
away. A couple of young women lay their heads on their arms.
When a hand shoots up on the far side of the room, I hustle
over. What's her name again -- Kathy? All she can say is, "I
don't get this. The DNA uses the cell to make ... I don't
know." Her group looks up at me. That's from the lecture.
Looks like they didn't get a word of it. OK. I say, "Remember
what I was talking about yesterday? With the tractors? What
was the story there -- can you remind me?" There are five of
them (all returning students -- voluble moms over 40), but no
one volunteers. They try to josh about it, look past me,
shuffle their notes.
I pull up a chair.
The science-faculty meeting is right after class every other
Wednesday. I go straight there with my backpack full of papers
I'll have to grade later. Sad, pinched vacuum in my stomach.
Take my chair; the meeting's already started. All my stomach
gets is a watery apple I brought from home.
Seminar again, week three. When everyone's arrived, I make a
bustle out of shutting the classroom door and finding my
notebook. Still not sure what I'm doing. The students get
quiet. Everyone's looking at me. I say, "Maybe we should start
by talking about your papers." Because I have discovered that
I have to read and evaluate 25 student papers a week on the
seminar book. Which is why I was awake at 1:15 that morning,
reading papers with a cereal box for company.
Thomas has one arm in his backpack, rummaging for something;
he stops to listen. All their faces. What am I supposed to
say? "Remember that stuff about a thesis? I think it's time
for us to start putting some effort into this way of writing
papers, where you center it around a creative opinion or a
critique of the text. I know it may be unfamiliar to some
people, and I know it's genuinely hard ... "
After 10 minutes, I'm still talking. They're still looking at
me. No reaction.
New tactic. Think fast. A good paper is -- well, I picture
myself at home, reading The New Yorker on the couch. What
about when they read a magazine article about a new idea?
Isn't it the same thing as a good paper for class? "I want
this thing about papers to make sense to you. Do you read
magazines? What kind of magazines do you read?"
"People," Tracy says, nodding blithely. "I mostly read People,
and I like gardening magazines, too."
Whoops -- not the serious new ideas I had in mind. But OK. "So
what makes a good magazine article?"
Last August, when we planned the quarter, I heard a lot from
my teaching team about group assignments. The college mandate
about community learning again. Faculty members here call all
this stuff "process." As opposed to academic content. Which no
one seems to talk about much.
So we thought up a quarter-long project on adolescence and
puberty, based on group research, and we scheduled a
pick-a-project-theme fair for the students. We'd tape sheets
to the walls, and the students would sign up.
My topics are all in biology. I make posters like ads for the
topics: "Do girls get their period earlier now than in the
past? Weigh in on this important debate!"
Madness on the day of the fair. A hundred people circling the
room, trying to borrow pens from one another. They come up to
faculty members in consternation: "Can I sign up for more than
one? I haven't decided yet. The good topics are all gone. I
don't know what I want to do. I can't find my friend ... "
Before the next class, just like every Thursday, I run from
the aerobics room to the shower to the classroom. Damp gym
clothes are going to have to stay balled up in my backpack all
day. My glasses fog up. I try to wipe them off. I'm standing
onstage in the auditorium making announcements through the
microphone, and my hair is wet.
Yet another seminar. Douglas sits, snuffling from smoker's
catarrh, on a table instead of in the circle with everyone
else. He blurts out, "I don't see how any of the stuff we've
done in this class makes any sense at all. Like, I don't see
about the DNA and what that has to do with anything."
I nod. "What do people think about what Douglas just said?"
One by one, Florianne, Tamara, Michelle, and others chime in:
"I mean, we learned about hormones, and then we learned how
the hormones work, and puberty and stuff, and then we learned
at another level about the psychology." Douglas is silent now,
stabbing at his coat with a pen.
Early morning prep time. I'm on my hands and knees cutting
plaster gauze from the arts-and-crafts store. My teaching
partners wanted an activity that would allow students to
reflect on their own adolescence. More process, as far as I
can tell. "They need to make meaning of their own experience,"
everyone kept saying during planning meetings. We set up a
papier-mache workshop, where students make masks and then
paint them to depict their adolescence. A creative outlet for
the students. A different modality of learning. Right?
So today 100 students spend the afternoon lying on the floor,
slapping plaster on their faces. They laugh and screw around
and then fall silent with concentration. I'm circling the
room, looking on ("Wow, that's going to be great!"); I watch
them cut out eyes, paste over lips, paint teardrops and
lacerations. I guess they love it.
Afterward, someone goes to borrow the janitors' big push
brooms. The sun goes down. We mop around the room, cleaning up
plaster and shreds of paper.
Another late night at home. Unable to sleep at 11:30 p.m., I
get out of bed. Pull a piece of paper out of the printer, sit
down at the kitchen table in my pajamas. I'm obsessing about
the group project, which starts in earnest tomorrow. They're
supposed to assemble in their groups and start work.
I picture the seminar room, industrial carpet strewn with
chairs. The students come in and ... what?
Well, I don't know. Maybe I'll give them a form to fill out.
Questions for them to answer, like: "What role do you usually
play in group work? How might you challenge yourself for this
project?" Um. I'm just making this up. "What ideas does your
group have for a theme that will bind together the individual
parts of your project?"
Fine. I'll get up tomorrow, type it up, and print it out. Tape
it to the wall next to their topic sheets. Make 'em do it.
Hope it flies.
Rachel Brem is a visiting faculty member in the
scientific-inquiry planning unit at Evergreen State College.
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