I’ll be blogging here periodically. The posts might be related to great instructional practices, specific dilemmas faced by me or my colleagues, useful resources, or interesting discussions in history, teaching, or higher education. I see this as an opportunity to think through some ideas and to do so while writing in a less formal way than I usually do.
National Park Service Historic Sites
Recently (before the federal government shutdown), I was able to visit the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, which I’d been hoping to do for a long time.
It was a great visit. The grounds were gorgeous, and we had an excellent tour guide who took us through the house where Roosevelt lived in much of her later life. We learned about Eleanor’s childhood, education, marriage and family, other relationships, writings, and community and political activities.
Eleanor hosted all sorts of visitors to her home – royalty, Nehru, Hollywood stars, friends like Pauli Murray, and JFK hoping for an endorsement (which eventually she gave, reluctantly). You can learn more about her life on the cultural landscape page.
The site included a biographical video, small exhibits, and walking trails that she traversed regularly. I especially enjoyed seeing some of her powerful quotations highlighted. Yes, I even bought a t-shirt and magnet featuring two of them.
Our tour began in front of placards about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which she saw as her proudest achievement. Eleanor had chaired the United Nations committee that drafted the declaration, which in the wake of the atrocities of World War II, aimed to find common ground among diverse nations and cultures about individual rights. Getting it passed was extremely difficult.
I found the visit inspiring in many ways – except for one. It was clear that National Park Historic sites are feeling the chilling effects of the Trump Administration’s desire to control messages about American history.
Continue reading National Park Service Historic SitesRetirement, Part 2 – What I’ll Miss
Writing about what I won’t miss about being a professor helped confirm my feeling that I’d made the right decision.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot that I’ll miss.
What I’ll Miss about Teaching
Course planning was one of my favorite aspects of the job.
I loved thinking hard about the main ideas, perspectives, and skills I wanted students to take away from the course. I liked searching for high-quality readings that would be interesting and thought-provoking, designing projects that would help students be engaged in history, pondering how to set students up for success, and imagining the arc of the semester. It was like putting together a big puzzle.
Retirement Thoughts, Part 1
I just retired from my position as a full-time history professor. Between the normal end of semester hectic pace and some additional hullabaloo, I haven’t had much time to reflect on how I’m feeling about all this. Now I do have time!
Many have said they envy me and wish they could retire. I get it. This is a tough job. There are definitely some things I won’t miss.
What I Won’t Miss
The stress
It wears you down over time. We know it’s not good for our health. Stress comes from many aspects of teaching along with the other aspects of being a faculty member.
Long hours and time pressure to be prepared
Sure, some of this is my fault for wanting every class meeting to be fantastic, but a lot of it isn’t. Like most professions, there’s just a lot of work to complete. The pace is relentless.
Remembering I Should Teach Fundamentals
I hate it when I forget what I once knew. Why are there some lessons we need to continually relearn? Although this question may be relevant to my whole life, here I’m discussing the phenomenon related to teaching.
Continue reading Remembering I Should Teach FundamentalsTeaching a New Course – Anxieties and Pleasures
Unfortunately for my loved ones and colleagues, my anxiety level is always sky-high before teaching a new course. And this isn’t just before the semester begins; it’s before every single class meeting!
That was true this past spring for my new course called Disability and Disease in U.S. History. Want to hear a snippet of my conversation with myself as I tried to talk myself down?
Continue reading Teaching a New Course – Anxieties and PleasuresHow Are My Students These Days?
Thoughts at the End of 2022-23
The well-being of college students rightfully has been a widely discussed topic in higher education and among my colleagues for the last few years. For a few examples, see the Chronicle of Higher Education’s story, “A Stunning Level of Student Disconnection,” the National Education Association’s summary of the Healthy Minds survey, and American Psychological Association’s story “Student Mental Health is in Crisis.”
I found myself thinking a lot about this topic this past year. I worried about how students’ difficult educational experiences during the pandemic and increasing mental health struggles would manifest themselves in my courses. Now that the academic year is over, I’m reflecting.
Continue reading How Are My Students These Days?My New Favorite Assignment
Because I worried that students might lose track of the order and relationship of different events, I needed to design a new kind of assignment for my course, Disability and Disease in U.S. History, one that focused on periodization.
In this course, there were days when we studied trends in all disabilities in chronological order, following the work of our synthetic text, Kim Nielsen’s A Disability History of the United States. We started reading about indigenous beliefs before the arrival of European explorers and then attitudes and practices during the early and later colonial eras. However, there were also days when it made more sense to focus on one topic or disability and follow that topic over the course of multiple centuries.
Continue reading My New Favorite AssignmentFocusing on Ideas
While planning a new course this summer, I remembered something from when I was director of Elon’s Honors Program some years ago. Our advisory committee had been pondering the requirements of the program, including how it would be determined whether students could continue in it and retain their scholarships.
We knew it shouldn’t just be a matter of taking the right courses and maintaining a minimum GPA. Instead, we wanted to know that the students were learning and growing.
Continue reading Focusing on IdeasMessy and Fun Course Design
Designing a new course over the summer is fun.
I’m working on a course on the History of Disability and Disease in the U.S., and a great deal of the content is new to me. I enjoy searching for possible sources. I like reading them and I’m excited about what I’m learning.
I don’t think of myself as a creative person, but I like the creative aspects of designing a course – using my imagination about what happened in the past and what the experience could be like for students.
To be honest, I enjoy the preparing more than the actual teaching. I love teaching, but it’s very intense. There are many people to be aware of and interact with, things to manage (like technology), and so much to think about (content, time, instructions, clear communication, comprehension). I get ramped up, I feel a lot of anxiety, and the experience can be exhilarating, disappointing, and/or exhausting.
Continue reading Messy and Fun Course DesignEquity-Minded Assessment – The Challenges
Do you hate grading essays as much as I do?
I suspect I’m not alone. In her “Why I Hate Grading” post, Katherine Pickering Antonova describes all sorts of work she’d rather do besides grading, and she concludes, “I would rather lick the bottom of a New York subway car than grade papers.” Yuck.
Of course, many of our students hate their work being assessed as much as we hate assessing it.
Many students feel a great deal of performance anxiety – which can get in the way of doing their best work. Some put too much weight on the importance of their grade on a specific task, confusing the grade with their potential or even their self-worth. In addition, some of them don’t know whether they can trust their instructor’s grading process.
Continue reading Equity-Minded Assessment – The Challenges
Mary Jo Festle 