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 FundamentalsCategory Archives: Teaching challenges
Teaching 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?Baseball and Teaching
As I was watching one of my favorite baseball players hang his head and make the long walk back to the dugout after striking out in front of 30,000 fans, I recalled how I feel after a disappointing class meeting.
I strike out when I assign tedious readings, give confusing directions for a class exercise, keep lecturing even though students’ eyes are glazing over, ask uninspiring discussion questions, or botch the answer to an unexpected student question. I do these things fairly frequently. It’s not a good feeling.
Continue reading Baseball and TeachingTips from My Students (on learning in Zoom)
Students were the main reason for my positive teaching experiences in Zoom in Winter Term. They were open, hard-working, and willing to be engaged. These first-year students prepared for each class meeting, wrote thoughtful reflections on our topics, and took steps to help create a supportive learning community.
Continue reading Tips from My Students (on learning in Zoom)I Survived Winter Term in Zoom
I was teaching a short-term intensive course during our January Winter Term. It was scheduled to meet synchronously in Zoom five days a week for three hours a day for 3 ½ weeks. Yikes. Winter Term at Elon is a challenging format.
Beforehand, I was quite nervous about how to engage the 34 students in Zoom. In a pre-course survey, students sounded a bit wary or worried too, even after having had some previous experience with online synchronous classes in the fall.
Continue reading I Survived Winter Term in ZoomWhat is good teaching?
While preparing a workshop about ways to do observations of teaching, my co-facilitator and I were thinking about how to adapt the traditional ways at our institution (i.e., sit in on a face-to-face class) for the many varied online and hybrid ways faculty are teaching during these pandemic days.
That got us thinking about the various benefits and limitations of any one way of evaluating a faculty member’s teaching (e.g., student ratings forms, observations, materials like syllabi and assignments, actual student work, communication and interactions in a learning management system, etc.).
Continue reading What is good teaching?Building a learning community during tough times
I was over-the-top excited when I received my first responses from students to my pre-course survey. After spending the summer reading, adapting, pondering contingencies, and attending course design institutes and digital learning days, I’m tired of being anxious about the semester and just want it to start.
I’m also ready to interact with real students rather than the imaginary ones I’ve been thinking and worrying about all summer.
Some of the students are eager for the semester to get started too. I sent out the survey much earlier than I usually would (11 days before the first day of class), and a couple of students filled it out right away! Responses have been trickling in since then; over 90% had completed it a couple days before class begins.
Continue reading Building a learning community during tough timesWho We Teach
Musing 3 on Teaching about Race
As I’ve been reflecting on teaching about race in the U.S., I returned to the framework I first encountered in a webinar taught by some great pioneers in multicultural education, Christine A. Stanley and Mathew Ouellett. (I adapted their framework in the image to the right.) For inclusive teaching, they advised we think carefully about who it is we are teaching.
Continue reading Who We TeachEmotions in Teaching
Have you ever before heard faculty talk so much about emotions?
Cathy Davidson, author of The New Education, asserted on the HASTAC blog that “our summer of planning for better online learning this Fall will be wasted if we do not begin from the premise that our students are learning from a place of dislocation, anxiety, and trauma. So are we.”
“Precarity, uncertainty, grief and feeling overwhelmed abound,” observed Becca Pope-Ruark in Inside Higher Education. She cautioned faculty to pay attention to signs of debilitating burnout.
Continue reading Emotions in Teaching
Mary Jo Festle 