Does anyone recall the professor who helped you best learn? Why that
professor among all the others?
The Chronicle of Higher Education <http://chronicle.com/> _____
>From the issue dated September 9, 2005
Notes From a Career in Teaching
By MURRAY SPERBER
I taught my first college class in 1964, at College of the Holy Names,
now Holy Names University, in Oakland, Calif. I knew almost nothing
about teaching, did a lousy job, and was not rehired for the next
semester. My last teaching position was at Indiana University at
Bloomington in 2004. After the spring semester, I retired as a professor
amid much praise from students, colleagues, and teaching professionals.
Over those four decades, my teaching had clearly improved. What,
specifically, had I learned? Here are 10 lessons that I'd like to share
in hopes other college instructors might benefit from some or all of
them:
Teach according to your personality. I went to graduate school at the
University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s and came out of that
era and ethos believing that instructors should befriend students and
dress like them. So I wore jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. But most
students were not very friendly, and my classes seemed to move at a
slow, sometimes painful pace.
One day at Indiana University in the early 70s, I was assigned to
observe the class of a young teaching assistant. He met me at the
classroom door dressed in a three-piece suit, tie, and polished dress
shoes. I assumed that he could not relate to the students and that I
would endure a long and tedious hour.
He asked the students to move the chairs from the discussion circle in
which they rested to straight rows from front to back. I considered that
a mistake, like his formal attire and stance in front of the class. But
as he talked, with very proper diction, his excitement about the
material became increasingly apparent. I looked around and saw that
students were paying close attention and taking notes. When he paused
and requested questions, many hands went up. The students asked good
questions, he responded well, and then returned to his lecture. That
format continued for about 20 minutes, after which he summarized his
talk and told the students to write answers to some questions that he
handed out.
As part of my job as observer, I asked the instructor, with about 15
minutes remaining in the period, to leave the room so I could discuss
his teaching with the students. As soon as he left, the students
spontaneously began to praise him. I was skeptical: "Wasn't he too
formal? Do you really relate to someone like that in a three-piece
suit?" But indeed they did -- even though most of the men wore torn
T-shirts and the women had on tie-dyed outfits. They truly liked and
respected his enthusiasm for the material.
That experience overturned many of my prejudices about teaching. I
decided to teach more in line with my personality. Although I wasn't a
suit-and-tie person, I wasn't as laid back as my appearance implied. I
felt most comfortable in front of a class in pressed slacks, collared
shirts, and loafers. I also tried to teach material that I cared about
deeply rather than literary works that the English department
recommended. (Fortunately, my boss encouraged my excursions.)
My classes became livelier, and my student evaluations improved greatly.
I had learned a crucial lesson: Most students possess superb radar that
quickly locates phoniness in professors. Thus, every teacher has to
figure out who she or he is, how best to appear before a class, and what
material to teach. And in long teaching careers, every instructor should
have three-to five-year checkups and revise their dress, approach, and
material as their personal values and circumstances change. Teaching is
a highly individual endeavor, and each instructor should work according
to what personally feels most comfortable.
Hand out complete syllabi and course instructions the first day. From my
Berkeley background in the 60s, I also did not believe in elaborate
syllabi and course instructions. Instead, during the first classes in a
course, the students and I would agree on what we would do and how we
would do it. Yet I came to see that such an approach resulted in much
confusion among students and wasted time for me answering logistical
questions like, "What's the policy on late papers?" I realized that the
ideal was interfering with learning.
Over the years, my initial handouts increased in size but also provided
a reference guide to all aspects of the course. During my last decade of
teaching, I noticed that many students wrote on course evaluations
comments like, "I always knew what was going on and what I had to do." I
took that as a compliment -- and a reinforcement that I'd been right to
abandon my original approach.
Vary your teaching methods. Nothing bores students -- and teachers -- as
quickly as relentless lecturing. A close second is relentless, yet
aimless, class discussions. After much trial and error in my early years
of teaching (my errors and the students' trials), I concluded that
mini-lectures coupled with focused discussions worked best for me.
In the process, however, I found that one of my key challenges was
encouraging class participation. Calling upon people with their hands
raised usually produced comments from the same five or six highly verbal
or chatterbox students and frequent hostility from the taciturn
majority. But randomly calling on students did not work well either;
some students felt that I was "picking on" them.
I decided one day to have every student bring a question on the reading
assignment to the next class, but that produced many questions scribbled
quickly, and without much thought, immediately before the class began. I
then modified the format and asked students to write single-paragraph
answers to their questions. That approach produced much better questions
as well as coherent answers.
I then tweaked the format and asked students to make two copies of their
questions and answers and to hand in one before class. I then ordered
what they'd given me according to topics and used that order to guide
classroom interactions. I asked each student not to give her or his
answer until the class had discussed the question. On occasion, I also
assembled students in groups of five or six to ask other members of the
group their questions, or to make up new questions and answers and then
ask the class.
The surprise element of the "Q-and-A papers" was that some students,
particularly shy or reticent ones, participated in class discussion
despite their inclination not to, and they seemed to enjoy the
experience. I recall one young woman telling me at the end of a course,
"I'm graduating this semester and I talked more in this class than all
my other classes at Indiana combined. Thank you."
Let students choose their grades. I've always had this policy and, in
recent years, I articulated it on the course handout with:
"You are paying a great deal of money to attend this university and your
grades play a significant role in your future. As the instructor of this
course, I see my role as a messenger: When students do all of their
assignments carefully and extremely well, I deliver an 'A' on their
assignments, and if they sustain their exceptional work throughout the
course, I mark an 'A' on the grade sheet at the end of the semester.
When they choose to do less than outstanding work, or do mediocre or no
work, I deliver the appropriate grade. Obviously, with this grading
philosophy, I do not numerically curve the grades on tests, papers, or
at the end of the course. It is possible for every student who sustains
exceptional work in this course to earn an 'A' grade. I have had classes
where quite a number of students made that choice. I have also had
classes where many students selected much lower grades."
I then stated in detail, and with examples, my specific criteria for
each letter grade.
Over the years, students seemed happy with that policy. Although the
average grades in my classes were lower than those of most of my
colleagues, I rarely received complaints from students.
Don't take attendance. I've always assumed that universities are not
high schools and that college students are adults, attending class as
their choice. In my course handout, I wrote:
"If you choose to use the time of the class meeting to do something
else, that is your decision. ... You are responsible, however, for
understanding the material done in class during your absence, and I will
grade your work in the course under the assumption that you have
mastered that material. However, if you miss class because of illness, I
will help you make up the work."
An equally important reason for my policy was that otherwise I'd have to
deal with many students who, having no desire to be in the room, would
shuffle papers, pop gum, snore loudly, and engage in other distracting
behaviors. They changed the ambiance of the classroom, and I decided
that I much preferred to teach a smaller number of volunteers than a
large army of conscripts.
In addition, not requiring attendance allowed students to vote with
their feet on my teaching. If attendance dwindled, I realized that I
needed to rethink the section of the course where students did not come
-- or, on several occasions, the whole course. But if they showed up in
large numbers, I knew that I was doing a good job.
Take a hard line on late and incomplete work. I always believed that
turning in late work or receiving an "Incomplete" grade are special
privileges that should be reserved for extraordinary occasions -- when
students had serious physical or mental problems. I also required any
student in that situation to have a signed letter from his or her
doctor, stipulating the nature of the student's illness and when the
physician thought the student would be well enough to finish the work.
I took a letter grade off for late work -- including missed quizzes,
exams, and Q-and-A assignments -- without a medical excuse. I know the
policy seemed punitive to some students, but I had to be fair to other
class members who turned in their work when it was due.
Ironically, the people who complained most about the policy were not my
students, but a number of my colleagues. They said that some of their
students were asking them for "extensions" and even "Incompletes" in
courses so that they could get their work for me in on time. I suggested
to my colleagues that they switch to my policy.
Give students lots of options for major assignments and exams. During my
early years of teaching, I realized that the best student work came out
of a student's real interests. If I assigned a narrow essay on a
specific topic, a few class members wrote it exceptionally well, others
earned good grades on it, but many students did indifferent or poor
work. If, instead, I encouraged students to identify their own topics
connected to the course and to pursue them with my help, many more
students wrote good papers. My assignments remained analytic approaches
to the subject matter, however, and one group of students still
underachieved on papers and exams -- even though they had demonstrated
in class and office discussions that they thoroughly understood the
material.
At the time, in the 1970s, the research on left-brain and right-brain
dominance became public knowledge. I decided to allow students to
substitute some creative papers and take-home exams for analytic ones.
For example, when we read John Dos Passos' U.S.A. in a course, students
could write a creative paper -- equal in length and difficulty to the
analytic ones -- using one of Dos Passos' techniques, like a
biographical portrait of an historical figure in the style of Dos
Passos, or a "Camera Eye" personal commentary on an American scene of
the period. Or students could suggest another type of creative paper or
take-home exam connected to the material. While only about a fifth of
the students took the creative option, most of the results were
excellent and continued to be so in subsequent years. Moreover, I could
reward the right-brain-dominant students with the grades that they
deserved.
Require clear and coherent written work. As a reader and a professional
writer, I respect the English language, so I always insisted that
students avoid sloppy prose, jargon, and careless presentation. In 40
years, I must have crossed out over 40,000 cumbersome passive
constructions. That always required a fair amount of line editing of
student papers and marking low grades on many of them. But it paid off:
It caught students' attention and often their writing improved quickly.
Combat plagiarism. Long ago I realized that the best way to combat
plagiarism was to require some in-class writing from every student, and
then to line edit it to become familiar with the writing style. In the
course handout, I explained why I wanted their in-class writing samples:
"An experienced English teacher can easily tell the difference between
original student writing and plagiarized work. Because you will have to
write various exercises in class, I will have an excellent idea of your
true writing abilities. Thus, when you turn in longer pieces of writing
-- although more careful and polished than your in-class work -- they
will still reflect your abilities. Your writing is like your signature,
unique to you. To turn in someone else's writing -- published critic,
friend, tutor, doofus on the Web -- is foolish, easily recognized, an
insult to your instructor and fellow students, and a good way to get
yourself into serious trouble."
Even more effective than my warning was requiring students to turn in
their notes, outlines, and drafts with their final projects and
take-home exams. I suppose that a student could have bought a polished
paper from an agency on the Web, but then the student would have to
deconstruct it into draft, outline, and note form. Doing the
deconstruction would probably teach the student so much about writing
and the topic that it would negate the plagiarism.
Fortunately, that scenario never occurred in my classes. In fact, to my
knowledge, I never had a case of plagiarism.
Get out of the way. The best teaching occurs when students take
something that the instructor has set up and then develop it on their
own. Sometimes that occurs in class discussion when students seize a
topic that the instructor mentions and start to argue about it in a
focused and productive manner. The instructor is often tempted to jump
in, but the best thing is to shut up and get out of the way.
It took me many years to realize that less can be more in teaching --
that, in the end, the instructor must disappear from the learning
process, and students must learn on their own. I don't know why it took
me so long to realize that simple truth; as an undergraduate and even as
a graduate student, I mainly learned on my own. Indeed, I came to
believe that the main point of course work was to direct me to the
library and show me how to use what I found there.
The single best course I taught in 40 years was the last one: an
undergraduate class on Beat Generation writers. I finally understood
that my job was to set up interesting classes in ways that encouraged
students to explore the subject matter. Almost every student rose to the
challenge: They built upon the assigned works that we discussed and then
went off and studied the writers and topics that most interested them.
One student discovered that the papers of the Beat poet Diane DiPrima
were in the University of Louisville library, and she traveled there to
examine them. She subsequently used photocopies of some of DiPrima's
drafts as illustrations for her class presentation on this writer. Many
other students ended up doing superb major projects and take-home final
exams, and they earned high grades in the course.
So, my final and best piece of advice for good teaching is: Construct
interesting courses, with the logistics clear from the first day, and
then get out of the way. If you have done your job, students will learn
on their own -- and that knowledge will stay with them long after they
have left your classroom.
Murray Sperber, a professor emeritus of English and American studies at
Indiana University at Bloomington, has written four books about college
sports and college life, including Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College
Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education (Henry Holt, 2000).
Alan Altany, Professor & Director
Coulter Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723 (U.S.)
Email: altany@email.wcu.edu <mailto:altany@email.wcu.edu>
Fax: 828.227.7340
CFC Web Site: http://facctr.wcu.edu <http://facctr.wcu.edu/>
SoTL at Western: http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/ <http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/>
MountainRise, SoTL eJournal: http://mountainrise.wcu.edu
<http://mountainrise.wcu.edu/>
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