Random thoughts - Friday edition

• Wheee - a good class today! They got into it enough to forget that I was there and to direct comments directly to each other (this doesn't always happen in my classes, because although I make them talk a lot, I tend towards the air-traffic-controller style of teaching). And you know, it's funny, because while we'd been having good discussions, there was definitely a coterie of students who tended to talk the most. But all it took today was the statement, "We've been having good discussions, but I want to make sure that we hear from people we haven't heard from as much, so we're going to begin by going around the room and hearing from everyone," to get the silent folks to jump in. I didn't even have to make it all the way around the room - they knew I was going to call on them sometime, so they started jumping in on their own. Cool. I love the feeling of walking out at the end of a good, productive class.
      
• Does anyone else feel like they adopt a weird, "hearty professor" persona when talking to students? Especially one-on-one - if I run into students outside of class - I magically transform into this terribly hearty person who cracks dumb corny jokes and makes incredibly cliched small talk. Is this just me? Sometimes it's very hard just to talk to students as me, instead of as me-the-professor, and I feel obligated to express great friendliness and pleasure to see them all the time. Not that I'm not friendly, or not pleased to see them (or most of them), but I feel kind of like a bad vaudeville actor or something.      
           
• The ants are back. Earlier this week they even bridged the gap from their previous incursions to (gasp) the cat food, which was overrun by the time I got home. Of course, I'd been out of the house ALL day, so they'd had a good 12-14 hours of foraging, uninterrupted by blasts from the citrus-oil cleaner. Later, I found that they had infiltrated a brand-new, unopened plastic bag of brown sugar (still not sure how they did that, but note to self: do not store brown sugar in the ants' cupboard!). I can't wait till we get some rain and/or cold weather so I can stop worrying about these suckers.

Comments

[Celandine]

Does anyone else feel like they adopt a weird, "hearty professor" persona when talking to students?

Oh, totally. I think of it as my jolly persona. Different inflections and everything.

Sounds like your class discussion went better than mine - ours was okay, I'd say, but not great. Tough in a 45-student class with fixed stadium-style seats.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Ugh, I HATE fixed seats. And 45 is a lot - there were about 19 in class today, I think; very manageable.

[Sean]

I think you have to maintain some professional distance from students. We all have our workplace and our hanging out at home personae. You really can't, or don't want to, talk to them totally as you because YOU exist at home, outside of work. Remember you are also talking to people younger than you are. I find myself being very careful with language, jokes etc -- you have to know the boundaries of acceptable discourse. There are students with whom I know I can cut up, and some I don't know as well, so I end up speaking with them as "the prof." In your heart of hearts, YOU know who you are.

[Nels]

Yeah, I get into that persona, too. And I think students appreciate it because it's comfortable and they appreciate that we doing that rather than the arrogant jerk model.

And congrats on the good class! I, too, am primarily an air-traffic controller most of the time. I've learned to let that be okay, but I do love the moments when we break out of that.

(And thanks for saying that your classes normally follow the other style. I get really insecure when I hear people talk about how perfect their class discussions are all the time.)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Nels, I'm so glad you said that! I have the same reaction - I know my classes (generally) go well (especially when I know what I'm supposed to be teaching...) and that students talk a lot and are active and process stuff actively, etc., but it does tend to go back and forth through me - because that's what works for me; but I get insecure too that students aren't talking to each other as much as they should be if I were "really" encouraging discussion, and that there's something I'm missing or not doing that's completely disadvantaging my students...

[Celandine]

Actually a lot of students are just fine with lectures, too - not only that they're comfortable with the format, but they do retain information that way as well. I was always perfectly happy in lectures and felt like I got a lot out of them. What's important pedagogically IMO is to offer a variety of learning methods so that everyone in the class has a shot at their best option. Discussion isn't the only way, nor the best way for everyone.

[kmsqrd]

I'm glad you had a great class. As for the ants I find we get our whenever the weather changes or the condo next to ours sprays. It's as if they're a common cold being spread back and forth. We've even had to change how Jess is fed because the ants wouldn't stay away.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

No, there's nothing wrong with lectures, but I do prefer to emphasize discussion. Partly because I learned much better from discussion myself (so it's a self-centered response, I realize); I really had to train myself to absorb information by ear (like conference papers) in grad school, because it doesn't come naturally to me. And there's a lot of evidence that actively processing material helps students - all students - learn it more effectively. Although there are lots of ways that you can make lectures more active, and discussions done badly can be a huge waste of time, for me it's easier to make the students be active in the context of discussion than of lecturing (in which I tend to build up a head of steam and just keep going).

I definitely would rather see someone do good lectures rather than run bad discussion. And overall, I agree with your main point, that variety is the big thing - sitting around the table and talking about the material gets rather dull when it's the only thing we do day after day.

The general line here is that because it's a small school and these are small classes, discussion/seminars are favored over lectures. Although I think more people lecture than this official line lets on...

And I should add that when I talk about being an air-traffic-controller I'm not really talking about lecturing, but about the kind of ping-pong class where I throw out a question, someone answers, I respond, I ask for more responses, someone else responds, I comment on the second response, I ask a follow-up question, someone answers me, and so on... it's discussion, but the conversation goes back and forth through me more than jumping directly from student to student. (Even if a lot of my responses consist of "What do the rest of you think of that?")

(As you may have noticed, I clearly do not feel like working very much right now! Sorry to hijack my own comments!)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

kmsqrd, I'm glad it's not just me who's got them! The weather's definitely a problem - we haven't had any changes in aaaaagggggggeeeeeesss, it's just been hot. And dry. (I read somewhere that when it's dry they come inside in search of water.)

And now I really AM going to get some work done!

[Rhonda]

Try cinnamon oil for the ants.

[ianqui]

(Hmm, writing on a public computer is interesting...Not putting my website...) It seems funny that the alternative to NK's 'hearty prof' image is 'arrogant prof'. I would prefer to be the cool, laid-back prof, but definitely take on a weird persona because I don't know what the boundaries with undergrads are. Are they more like teenagers? Or like the grads? Maybe it'll get easier when I'm farther from their age.

[cousineddie]

I too do the hearty prof thing. I'll be bitching about how much my feet hurt with a colleague, and a student will walk around the corner and I'll whip my head around, paste a smile on my face, and say in an overly-loud voice, "How's it going?" It's like I think they think I'm not a real person with feelings or something.

[What Now?]

Although I wish I were the cool, laid-back prof. that Ianqui mentioned, I am so definitely the hearty prof. And the funny thing is that I'm a naturally outgoing person, but the hearty prof. persona is over-the-top and wears me out. I am completely exhausted after every student club event because I've been overflowing with (forced) good cheer for the whole time. I'm fine in class, but somehow working with students outside of class changes the context enough that I'm never sure how to act and go into hearty prof. mode without even thinking about it; then I have to take a nap or have a drink afterward, just to recover from the experience. Not so good.

Congrats on the good class! I've been having good discussion in classes, but always from the same coterie of students, so I'm going to try your approach on Monday.

[Brian Ogilvie]

I too adopt more than a bit of the "hearty prof" persona when talking with students, especially those I don't know well. Probably due to residual shyness and my desire not to overwhelm them with my "normal" sardonic remarks. And many of our students are intimidated by professors' offices, so I think I go to extremes to make them feel comfortable.

On lectures and discussions: Parker Palmer, in a book called "The Courage to Teach" (but which is worth reading despite the title...), urges teachers not to try to conform to some ideal of teaching style (as in "discussions are the only way to go, lecturing is for dinosaurs") if it doesn't fit their own way of teaching. After all, college students take a wide range of courses with a number of profs., so their education won't be ruined if they take one or two courses with a prof. whose teaching style doesn't match how they best learn. Palmer also argues that teaching should be neither student-centered nor teacher-centered; it should be centered on the discipline, with the teacher doing what is necessary to introduce students to a discipline or deepen their understanding of it. I was in a teaching discussion group in my college a couple years ago, and this was definitely the most useful book that we discussed all year.

[Mel]

yeah, my teaching persona makes way more jokes than my "real" self does.

most ants will not cross a line of red pepper -- if you draw a line across the opening to your cupboard they won't get in (that way at least)

[philhalliburton]

Education is a real honorable profession and one that always has inspired me to encourage my students.