Pedagogy roundtable

Okay, I have no idea if the term "roundtable" is quite appropriate in this context, but it seems to get at what I'm thinking. Another Damned Medievalist suggested, in the comments to my last post, that we both post something substantive about pedagogy before the semester ended. And seeing how a burden shared is a burden lessened, or whatever the saying is, my thought was this:

What, dear readers, are your current teaching concerns? What pedagogical controversies gnaw at you? What elements of teaching would you like to see this part of blogland discuss? Leave your answers in the comments, and we can address them in turn.

Myself, having sworn not to complain about grading or evaluations for at least a little while longer, I have two current concerns:
    - how to rein in a class that has got a little bit too relaxed without being a hardass, and
    - how to keep the energy/momentum of a class going through the end of the semester.

Thought? comments? ideas? commiserations? criticisms?

Comments

[prefer not to say]

How to design a non-lecture-style classroom activity for a work of literature (ie, not composition classroom) that doesn't wind up being vastly reductive, or just busywork. I am all ears if anyone has ANY activity that works on ANY text.

How to teach non-modernist poetry. Really. Like Shakespearean sonnets. What are your aims when you bust out those sonnets? What concrete steps do you take to get there?

How to avoid feeling like a complete asshole in the classroom. Honest to god, I am so sick of my own voice that I hate me. Does this happen to anyone else? I keep thinking "No wonder they're not talking -- I'm so f-ing annoying."

[ianqui]

-how to deal with students who are taking a cross-listed course because it fulfills an elective who quickly find out that they really don't like the topic at all

[Dr. Virago]

Hey, Prefer Not to Say beat me to my question: seriously, how *do* you design a non-lecture style activity that's not reductive? And as a corollary to that, how do you do small group work without worrying that some kid on the other side of the room is saying something completely wacky and that the rest are agreeing with him/her?

And yes, PNtS, I *do* hate the sound of my own voice and I *do* sometimes think I'm really annoying. Take today, for instance -- I think I said "again" (in the sense of "once again, this is important to keep in mind") 10 times.

Actually, there's my original contribution: how do you a)notice your verbal ticks and (more important) b)get rid of them?

[af]

A big question for me is, How much can I depend upon students to read the book, especially in the intro classes? I hate just going over the textbook (or other assigned) material, and wouldn't do it if it were just for the people who don't read it at all; but what about doing it for the people who just don't get it (or perhaps can't get it, due to substandard reading skills)?

Also, how can I grade papers in ways that help them but take as little of my time as humanly possible?

And finally: how much do I really have to prep? I've taught a couple of classes the past two weeks where I've prepped less than usual and they've gone very well - sometimes it frees me to really make things more interesting, somehow. I don't know why this is.

I'm always looking for help with really good exam formats: they have to make good sense for the students, challenge them, and be reasonably fast to grade.

Prefer, email me at Bardiacblogger AT yahoo dot com, and I'll give you some help with teaching Shakespearean sonnets. They're amazingly fun to teach, really!

[La Lecturess]

I'd like help (from the literary types) on how to switch things up on days when I'm just d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g my class through a passage that I think is important, but when they're not producing anything and they don't want to look at the language closely enough.

I don't actually have this problem with sonnets and the like (in part because I usually teach those in classes with English majors, who are at least willing to believe that there's stuff in there, even if their skills aren't strong), but when I'm in a class with a high non-major to major ratio, and we're looking at a weird passage of dialogue or description that I'm trying to mine for everything it's worth, my students often give me that, "why aren't we talking about the BIG stuff?" shut-down.

Other than calling on people at random one after another, or moving on to something else, or lecturing them on the importance of close-reading, does anyone have any good strategies?

[Another Damned Medievalist]

My own concern is keeping them in class. I lost about a third of my students after handing them the syllabus ... I'm not too worried about next year, because SLAC has actual history majors AND a requirement, but for people teaching in public schools with no requirement, how do you present a class in a way that looks fun and challenging without scaring them off?

BTW -- my evals from last quarter rocked -- the students who do stay say my classes are some of the best ever, but I have had a 50-60% attrition rate.

Oh, and I've got lots of ideas for good discussion.

[Shelly Malone]

I'm worried about keeping the Alpha Male at bay because this is the first semester that I've had one (and forgive for me not qualifying the term "Alpha Male") put an arm around me. There seems to be this shifting in my teaching personae and I can't quite get a hold of it in time to rectify problems that didn't formerly surface. I must appear more accessible, and apparently too accesible.

[Medieval Woman]

Friends! Soulmates! I'm so glad you posted this today NK b/c I just griped about what I'm dubbing my "novacaine class" on my blog this evening. It was a horrid class today. I too have a hard time 1) maintaining momentum for the rest of the semester and 2) keeping them from just phasing out. I think it's because I'm not a very good *lecturer* (and I don't really mean this as self-deprecation) - I'm a good seminar/discussion-based course teacher but lecturing in a really engaging way is a skill they don't teach you in grad school and it's one that we rarely (if ever) get to practice there. I still remember my grad school Shakespeare professor (I TA'd for her) because she gave the most fantastic lectures. She wasn't the most popular teacher with the undergrads, but God - did she give awesome lectures...

As far as discussion-based activities (at least for lit courses I've taught) - group work is hit or miss - it depends on the class personality. But, I've always had really good luck leading them through a really intense close-reading (sonnets are great for this and some really dense passages from Chaucer). This seems like "first-year" stuff to a lot of lit majors, but they've always been some of my best discussions - they almost always take to it; even the skeptics.

Good luck fellow pedagogues...

[Another Damned Medievalist]

Shelly -- an Alpha Male Student???? Put his arm around you? You need to snap him right back into line. And get some colleagues to watch your back. I only say this because I had scary Freak Boy in one of my classes, and it turned out he was pretty predatorial. But students who don't understand boundaries can be at best problematic, at worst, dangerous.

[Dr. Crazy]

Ok, I'm going to post on my blog about some of the lit-class-oriented questions (not that I'm an expert, but I've thought about those a lot), but I've got a question of my own: what do you do in a class when students are supposed to be working independently on some kind of a major project (i.e., they are not necessarily reliable to be prepared with non-related work for in class) but you can't just not have class for two weeks? How do you keep the semester moving forward when, ultimately, you know they're not going to be prepared. (And also when you kind of don't blame them for not being prepared, because really you want them to be working on the big project and even you feel like the in-class stuff is busy work.)

[meg]

The trick to group work for my classes has been to form permanent groups in week 2 or 3. Each group develops a rapport and a set of shared questions they're interested in. So on those days when I Got Nothin', I have each group work on something intense, like "Make a sentence outline for a paper on [whatever we're reading]." At least that works for me, and it's always a high point on evals.

My problème du jour is a 20-year-old who acts like an 8-year-old know-it-all in class -- interrupting, popping his hand up for every damn question, trying to say things that the other students won't understand but I will, etc. I smack him down repeatedly (in class and in private) but he keeps bobbing back up. According to colleagues, he's just the cross we bear.

Oh yeah: Give yourself permission to suck occasionally! Student memories are very short, and half the time they don't even notice suckage (really!).

[shelly]

ADM, I know... I did turn around and told him it wasn't "cool" but it was weird because my personality is such that I've never had problems with people crossing boundaries like that. I think he has a weird mama-teacher-crush on me.

That said, though, it's something that goes beyond that one act. He's simply loud, aggressive, overbearing, and obnoxious with his posturing in class. It's complicated by the fact that he's intelligent and I want to see him thrive, and I've never had problems with someone so over-the-top in class before and sense that I need to rein him in in some way. I guess this isn't exactly a pedagogical concern as much as a behavioral one.

[theartofdistance]

some thoughts on teaching big lecture classes would be helpful, how to keep students interested, how to stop them from surfing the internet on the laptops during lecture

also thoughts on incorporating controversial current events without alienating students on either side of the issue

[Dr. Crazy]

Thoughts on teaching big lecture classes: When I was a TA in a huge class, the professor assigned each of us a third of the class. Those groups were then "on" for discussion 1/3 of the time, and when you were "on" you needed to sit in a certain portion of the room and had actively to participate in class. A worst case scenario is that people only pay attention 1/3 of the time (but still, that would be better than nothing) but the usual thing was that everybody was much more invested in paying attention and participating because they knew that if they didn't pay attention on the "off" days that they'd embarass themselves when they were "on." Again, this only works if you've got TAs to keep track of things.

For those interested, I just did a big post related to some of the questions in this thread related to lit classes over on my blog. Maybe it will offer some ideas? (NK - Sorry to hawk my wares in your comments, but I didn't want to dominate your comments with the lengthy response that I ended up posting :) By the way, this is a great thread! So constructive!)

[turtlebella]

This is so great! Nothing to add, really, but I'm getting good ideas and it's fun to read about humanities type issues since I'm a scientist. I don't know why I end up on the non-science blogs. But I know I want to incorporate more discussion and group work into my future classes (am a post-doc right now) so I agree that it would be great to hear more about that.

And wait- people surf the net on their laptops?! During class?! I guess it's been awhile since I taught (2 years), but jeez. I thought reading the paper was bad (same problem though I guess). Why do these people show up to class?!

[Cats & Dogma]

Great thread--I hope we can find ways to have roundtables on some of these issues individually on the blogosphere--maybe a day where we each blog about one of these (ours or another's) questions and then can travel from one space to another to weigh in--kind of a pre-teaching-carnival festival.

At any rate, my dilemma: I think I'm pretty good at teaching a text or concept for the first time, and letting a class discussion roam freely to come to its own conclusions. Those classes almost invariably come to really interesting conclusions, but then every time I teach the idea or text after that, i find myself trying to steer them to the same excellent conclusions? So how do you maintain the spontaneity of that first foray, while still hoping against hope that they get to some of the same great destinations?

[Probably shouldn't tell]

How can I deal with education majors (or any other student) who always approach every concept in the class by first asking "Do I have to know this for a quiz/homework/exam?" How do I get these people to THINK about the course content?

[Gullible]

This stuff is all fascinating. When and how are we all going to answer these questions? My problem is that as a student I was justly skeptical of a lot of stuff that I'm teaching. Yet now (my first year full time in the classroom) I find myself defending and even loving stuff that I formerly despised. And I am getting angry at the students who, like my former self, don't find all the material I now teach (largely out of a sense of "duty") of life-changing interest! I've become a mouthpiece for "the man" but I'm not quite sure how to change that.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Hi, Gullible! meg and Dr. Crazy, who've commented above, have written good responses, and I am going to come back this evening and sort out some further discussion. Thanks for joining us!

[Rebecca]

Mmm..New Kid, sorry I'm late to the party, but how about some/a post(s) about syllabus designing? I'm about to teach my very first self-designed class and feeling a little nervous. :)

[trillwing]

Ooh, ooh--I have one. I've taken on a 40-student, upper-division undergrad course in American Studies this quarter and I made a goof with the books. They're topical but much drier and fragmented than I'd like; I picked them with too much haste. Of course, I'm happy to focus class meetings on other topics, but how can I integrate what students will probably find to be boring material into my mini-lectures and class activities without making it seem like I'm totally brushing off the reading? When I taught lit, I dove in fearlessly to some rather complicated material, but there's something about the nonfiction nature of these texts, and their historical remove (a century) from my students' lives, that strikes fear into my heart. LMK if I'm being too vague, and I can provide details. Thanks for your consideration! :)

[Susan]

I'm thinking a lot about how to run discussions (which is a kind of thing I think I shouldn't be thinking about after teaching for 10 years! I mean, it's kind of a basic topic, but somehow this semester it's been an erratic aspect of my grad seminar). ANd that's related a little to how to simultaneously teach the first course in a field and the only course in a field (how to deal with required courses that function as both distribution requirements for non-specialists and gateway requirements for specialists).