Teaching

My first job out of college was teaching computer classes. The plan was that each of us would go through a week of “train the trainer,” when we would discover how to avoid saying filler words (like umm, ok, so, and like), where to stand when we were teaching (best spot was the back of the room, in order to spot whether someone was having difficulty following the steps), and how to have good dry erase board penmanship in order to display the topics for the day.

I never did get to complete my train the trainer program, however. I was in there long enough to have a service bell rang each time I said umm and to erraticate that filler word from my vocabulary. During my second day, my manager came and asked if I could teach a class the following day on an application I had never used before (Word Perfect for Windows). Trying to learn a new application was hard enough, but I hadn't ever used Windows before, making my first day of teaching quite eventful.

Because I wasn't actually teaching (David Merrill would have called what I was doing demonstration, I would later learn), the students were happy with the class and gave me straight tens on the course evaluations. Neither the students or I knew what we didn't know. We remained blissfully unaware of just how little we still knew about using Word Perfect for Windows, or even Windows in general.

The Word Perfect class was held offsite, so there wasn't anyone to observe me or provide feedback. Over the course of the next few weeks, I taught a combination of offsite and classes held at our main facility. After one of the local ones, my manager caught me as I was heading home and handed me something.

“Take this and give it a listen. You will learn a lot,” he said.

It was a cassette tape of me teaching a beginning Excel class. It felt strange to hear the sound of my own voice. Little did I know I would listen to myself at least once per week for four and a half years for the podcast, with no sign of stopping.

It didn't take too many minutes before I noticed the most irritating habit. I kept repeating the phrases “right now” and “go ahead” before each and every step I guided the students through.

“Right now, we are going to go ahead and go up to the file menu and choose open.”

“Go ahead right now and click insert-row.”

It drove me nuts to hear this repetition, but I couldn't stop listening to the recording.

It's hard to adequately describe how hard this was to hear. I used to sing on our former church’s worship band and used to dread whenever a certain guy would volunteer to do the sound on a given week. He just didn't have it down enough to prevent the loudest feedback noise I've ever heard in my life. I was already slightly hard of hearing during that time, but I pictured the additional loss that was occurring each time my weeks for singing were matched up with his weeks to run the sound.

Those cringe-worthy experiences were similar to the horror I felt at hearing my verbal repetitions of ‘right now’ and ‘go ahead.’ I vowed to do what I could to stop those patterns. Eventually, I did rid myself of those verbal tics, but new ones would take their places.

After some time, I finally figured out two approaches that resulted in more permanent change. First, I got used to shorter, more declarative sentences, which had been socialized out of me in my training to be a girl (side note – huge recommendation for episode 56 – part 10 – of the Scene on Radio podcast – The Juggernaut, which has me thinking about my own socialization as a young girl and my difficulties in being assertive). After intense practice giving more declarative commands in my classes, “Click file-open,” no longer felt like too abrupt of a statement.

Also, I let silence become more of a friend in my teaching (well, in my demonstrating – it would be many more years before I was really doing what I now think of as teaching). I didn't need to rely on catchphrases to fill the silence. It was ok to let people think and reflect.

That one cassette tape changed my teaching far more than anyone’s feedback might have who had sat in my first few weeks of teaching. Today, I have similar feedback mechanisms built into my practice with regularity. I listen to each episode of Teaching in Higher Ed, where I pick up on bad habits that have snuck into my interviewing. Also, I regularly see myself on video when recording panels, screencasts, or other video projects.

I was disappointed when I listened back to my interview with Peter Kaughman about compassionate teaching. I don't want to spoil the episode, if you haven't listened yet, though his life should hardly be thought of as a potential spoiler alert. After he so beautifully shared of his diagnoses and subsequent health challenges in his blog post, I didn't want to wind up asking a question that didn't facilitate the telling of his story in a way that would honor that incredible piece of writing.

I knew how much pressure I was putting on myself at the time, though I suspect only those who know me deeply would ever be able to spot the signs of these feelings. I heard it, though, in my repetition of the phrase, “I wonder if you would…” over and over again. “Stop wondering, Bonni – and just ask the question!” – I kept thinking as I heard my problematic phrase.

As I listened to this week’s episode with Josh Eyler (which had been recorded before my conversation with Peter), I realized that this new pattern had been around for at least a month now. It wasn't as evident in the dialog with Josh, but I still heard myself saying it two or three times. I've got something new to work on.

I'm thankful for these opportunities to always be getting better at what I do, both in podcasting and in teaching. If it weren't for the constant feedback that comes from self-observation, I would no doubt have an abundant collection of distracting habits by now that would be much harder to change.

If you aren't regularly exposed to opportunities to watch or listen to yourself teach, I highly recommend you find a way to incorporate that practice into your professional development. It can start with something as small as recording some screencasts for your classes and viewing those to get used to watching yourself.

It does get easier to hear or watch yourself over time if you commit to doing it regularly. After the shock wears off, there's no finer form of feedback that I've ever experienced. It's raw and so very real. What you're seeing isn't filtered through anyone’s biases – except your own.

A more formal way of doing this kind of observation is to do some in-class recording. My colleague uses a tool called Swivl that she says is highly effective. I haven't tried it, yet, but am in the process of watching this video series on the research they have conducted on this practice in educational contexts.

If you want a more systematic way of setting goals toward personal change (including teaching), you may want to check out Michael Hyatt’s free goal setting video series, which is an introduction to his paid 2019 paid Best Year Ever course*. They also offer a “free” lifescore assessment that can help you identify the areas in your life most in need of some goal setting. I put “free” in quotes, since both of these options require that you provide an email address. They do comply with all anti-spam laws and make it very easy to unsubscribe in the future, should you no longer wish to hear from their organization. At least that has been my experience always with them…

An Update

I’m so sad to report that after I wrote the earlier portions of this post, I learned that Peter Kaufman (episode 320) passed away on November 19, 2018. I reflect more on this in a future podcast but wanted to also share the news here. Thank you to Alex for letting us know in the comments section for that episode. I share this now because while there are ways we can always be getting better as teachers, if we aren’t willing to run the risk of the failures we will make along the way, we won’t be able to have the kinds of transformative relationships that are possible.

I am glad I didn’t wait to be a perfect interviewer to speak with Peter, or I never would have had the opportunity to learn from him in the powerful way in which so many of us did through that conversation. May we all continually find ways to receive the needed feedback to improve our teaching, yet not wait until we are where we want to be before we experiment and take risks.

Also, in memory of Peter, may each of us find ways to be more compassionate in our teaching. Perhaps even starting with the approaches shared in his book (co-authed by Janine Schipper), Teaching with Compassion: An Educator’s Oath to Teach from the Heart*?

The following article was originally published on EdSurge. It is part of my new Toward Better Teaching: Office Hours with Bonni Stachowiak column, which you can learn more about in my first article for EdSurge, where I articulate my vision for the project.

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How can I best support students with very poor writing skills when the class is not one specifically focused on writing? I'm already encouraging them to use the Writing Center and giving feedback that highlights one or two specific grammar/ clarity issues to focus on. Yet I fear that those who enter college with major deficits in this area will struggle in every class, without sufficient resources available to catch up. Thanks Bonni!

—Kerry Moore, assistant professor of social work at Vanguard University of Southern California

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Let me start by saying that I hear this question frequently. We professors sometimes misjudge the skill level students will start from on the first day of class on a variety of fronts. And these students vary in which courses they have taken or plan to take before they finish, so there is a bigger picture of their progression to consider.

Recently I had a bit of a wake-up call regarding my thinking about developing writing skills. In talking with Asao B. Inoue, director of the writing center at the University of Washington Tacoma, for my Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, he stressed the importance of finding out from students what their goals were around writing, prior to attempting to provide them with feedback. I realize that sounds completely obvious, but it was not something I have always remembered to integrate into my own teaching.

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You can submit your challenges and questions here.

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One example we talked about was all the time we might spend emphasizing a particular citation style (e.g. APA, MLA), when the individual has absolutely no intention of ever pursuing graduate school. Yes, I realize that many of us never had the idea of going to graduate school until well beyond finishing undergrad. I also recognize that in some disciplines, teaching students to use particular citation styles is essential, even at the undergraduate level. However, starting by identifying what goals our students have will allow us to provide far more powerful feedback than if we never are aware of them at all.

Inoue also articulated the importance of spending more time writing as vital to growing these skills. He stated that “The engine of learning is labor.” The more we write, the better we will get at it. This is particularly true if we have someone giving us useful feedback who is aware of our broader goals and aspirations.

John Warner’s forthcoming book, Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities, addresses this question directly. We might just be “teaching writing wrong,” he argues, by conditioning our students to perform “writing-related simulations,” which are too sterile to help them develop in ways that are most relevant to them.

I reached out to John to see what advice he has for us in these pursuits. He shared:

“I always like to remember and remind students that writing is thinking. If they're having trouble with the writing, there's likely an underlying problem with the thinking, and often it's rooted in them not being sure what they're supposed to be thinking about. I go back to trying to decide what kind of thinking I'm trying to privilege with the assignment and then helping students get started on that path.”

I asked others on Twitter for their advice and received far more responses than I ever would have anticipated. J. Scott Self, assistant professor in the school of educational leadership at Abilene Christian University, joked in a tweet that learning more about growing writing skills was the number one thing he was planning on asking Santa for this year, since it is such a challenge to help struggling writers make improvements.

I completely understand the frustrations, yet there is hope. We can look to those who have been able to address the realities while still challenging themselves and their institutions to change their approaches. I will weave the guidance received from Twitter in with my own advice and will link to the recommended resources.

Remember Writing Skills Fall on a Continuum

One paradigm that can be especially helpful is to think of developing writing skills as falling along a continuum. Ideally, we model for our students that we continue to grow our own writing skills and this quest is a lifelong pursuit.

Shannon Riggs, executive director for the division of Extended Campus at Oregon State University, stresses the importance of reading the kinds of writing styles we wish to emulate. That has been such a helpful practice for me—each time I have entered into a new form of writing in my work. It is also beneficial to employ this approach when it has been a while since we have written in a particular style.

Align with a Team

One challenge I have experienced at different times in my academic career is the feeling that I am trying to develop skills like this as a solo player. The more we can connect with others who are teaching in our program and across disciplines, the more we can brainstorm and share advice on improving our students’ writing together.

Approaches and resources that were recommended by people on Twitter include:

•  Writing Across the Curriculum: This is a movement that works to build effective writing assignments into courses well beyond English, composition and literature classes. There are several well-crafted books on the approach, including Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, by Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen.
•  Writing Across the Disciplines: Jason Ferguson summed up this approach best in a 2014 essay: “Every academic discipline requires writing of some kind and most of them require it frequently.” He provides an overview of the distinct goals and writing products within various areas of study.
•  Encouraging Active Learning: One recent book focuses on making sure writing assignments are done in way that promotes active learning, where students learn by doing rather than passively receiving information. It’s called Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, by John C. Bean

Thanks to Josh Eyler, director of the Center for Faculty Development at Rice University, and Matt Salamone, associate professor of mathematics at Bridgewater State University for suggesting that. Salamone also recommended the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse, which looks fantastic.

Building a relationship with your university’s writing center can also be foundational in aligning with a team. They often have far more knowledge than we do about resources to support the writing-related learning goals we have for our classes. They are also able to develop relationships with students that extend beyond a given course and can provide individuals with a place where they can see longer-term growth opportunities.

If your institution does not have other departments you can rely on as part of your team, there are online repositories that can support you and your students’ learning. Anthony Schmidt, an educator and Ph.D student, tweeted his recommendation for Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) website, which is one of my all-time favorite resources for my growing my own writing abilities over the years.

Give Plenty of Opportunities for Practice and Revision

If we want to develop better writers, opportunities for practice and for gaining an understanding of the importance of the revisions process need to be emphasized. Laura Gibbs, an online instructor at the University of Oklahoma, shared:

“Exercises on writing can help up to a point, but in the end, writing is a skill that needs practice, and it is a complex skill which means that feedback from a skilled writer is essential. My main job in [my classes] is giving students feedback.”

Riggs, of Oregon State University, also recommended regular practice as a means for improvement. She tweeted that getting three pages down each morning can help all writers become more fluent and to reflect more on our writing.

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Thanks for being among the first to write in with a question for my new EdSurge column (I should note that I work with Kerry at Vanguard University).

The fact that you are inquiring means that you care about supporting your students in developing these vital skills. I wish you success in these pursuits. I was going to ask you to let us know how your efforts are going, but now I’m thinking we should read Bean’s Engaging Ideas together and report back to each other on how it helps our teaching evolve.

I'm excited to announce that my new column is now live on EdSurge's website.

The purpose of this column is to:

• Recognize that teaching is both an art and a science. Share the scholarship of teaching and learning that is helping to inform our teaching practices, while recognizing that our experiences are diverse and unique. Just like an artist, sometimes we learn the rules, so that we can then break them for a given purpose.
• Focus on the joy and the pain that can come from the pursuit of good teaching. Celebrate with you when things go well and mourn with you when they do not turn out as you wished.
• Provide guidance from my experience as a teacher and faculty developer and reach out to others when my expertise is lacking.

You can read more about my aims for the project and the ways in which the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast has inspired me to take this on by checking out my first EdSurge column, which came out in mid-August:

• Teaching Is Both Art and Science. How to Work Toward Improving Your Instructional Practice

I also answered my first question for the Office Hours column, having to do with developing our students' writing skills:

• How Can Profs Support Students Who Come In With Poor Writing Skills?

If you would like to submit a question for consideration, my Office Hours are open at:

• Facing a Thorny Teaching Issue? Ask Bonni!

I will occasionally post past EdSurge Office Hours columns here on the Teaching in Higher Ed blog, once it has been out for a week or two on EdSurge's site.

But your best source for the latest columns is on the EdSurge Office Hours guide. Special thanks to Jeff Young at EdSurge for the opportunity and the collaboration.

 

This time of year is always both exciting and terrifying for me. Maybe the fear isn’t quite as bad as terror, but I definitely experience some anxiety thinking about the start of a new academic year.

Overall, these nerves mostly seem normal and perhaps even healthy in some ways. I care about our students and want them to have a transformative experience in my classes. As I am now spending more of my time in a faculty development capacity at my institution, I consider it a sacred responsibility to also be working to help us all collectively be becoming more effective in our teaching.

Lawrence M. Lesser posted a beautifully written piece for Faculty Focus this week:

Opening Intentions for the First Day of Class

Lesser has clearly done ample reflection on the role we play as teachers in serving our students well. He was motivated by reading a poem in a Jewish prayer book that described the ways in which we might enter a place of worship. It stressed the intentions that those who gathered might emphasize. Lesser decided to write his own intentions for what he hoped those who entered his classroom experience.

He writes:

May the door of this classroom be wide enough

to receive all who seek understanding.

May the door of this classroom be narrow enough

to keep out fear or closed-mindedness.

May its threshold be no stumbling block

to those whose knowledge—or language—is shaky.

May the window of this classroom inspire us

to connect our learning to the world beyond these walls.

And may this classroom be, for all who enter,

a doorway to growth and purpose. Welcome!

That’s only a portion of his poem. I encourage you to read the entire thing. Thank you, Lawrence, for inspiring us for the new beginnings that are upon us. May this spirit of welcome be present for all of us, as we embark on our respective learning journeys.

A favorite recent musical discovery of mine comes from Brandi Carlile, as she invites a young musician (Benicio Bryant) to join her to sing her song, The Joke, on Late Night with Seth Myers. It’s a beautifully written and performed song, with Carlile showing her joy in mentoring this young talent who is accompanying her. It also reminds me of the important work we must do to welcome everyone into our classes, particularly those who may not feel like they belong there.

The lyrics are powerful, as Carlile shares two stories of individuals who are feeling marginalized and discouraged. The website Genius offers further insight into her intentions in writing the song. Carlile has shared that she wrote the first part of the song for boys feeling marginalized and forced into these kinds of awkward shapes of masculinity that they do or don’t belong in.” She also extends the invitation for healing to girls who have had the dirt kicked in their faces and been called weak.

The chorus powerfully asserts:

“Let ‘em laugh while they can

Let ‘em spin, let ‘em scatter in the wind

I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends

And the joke’s on them”

Any nerves I may have about these precious first impressions within my learning environments could very well pale in comparison to how the people I meet there might be feeling. The faculty I work with may be wrestling with how to respond to last semester’s devastating course evaluations and not feeling like they are able to live up to their teaching ideals. The students I encounter may be struggling to balance all the priorities they already feel pulling on them as they enter our classroom.

May we transform any sense of fear we have into empathy for those we are so fortunate to teach this year. As we encounter those who are embattled, marginalized, and feeling like their joy has been stolen, may we listen to their stories without judgment or unrequested prescriptions.

We also must guard our hearts and minds against the toxicity that can come from engaging too frequently with those who have an antagonistic attitude toward their students. Christopher Emdin reminds all of us in his book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood:

“The kind of teacher you will become is directly related to the kind of teachers you associate with. Teaching is a profession where misery does more than just love company—it recruits, seduces, and romances it. Avoid people who are unhappy and disgruntled about the possibilities for transforming education. They are the enemy of the spirit of the teacher.”

Let’s do this, friends.

With humility, grace, patience, love, hope, and a strong sense of purpose. Let us challenge our students and encourage them along the way. I look forward to being in community with you throughout it all.

Our kids have started their summer camp routine. They won’t wind up going every week, but there will be times when I can tackle those things that are hard to keep up with during the academic year.

They did such a wonderful job of making the transition that I wanted to reward them. I shared a number of possibilities of what we might do to celebrate. They picked the place I least wanted to go – but such are the chances we take when we let them decide.

That’s how I found myself at Chuck E Cheese earlier this week.

How I found myself bawling at Chuck E Cheese involves Sean Michael Morris’ keynotes at the University of Warwick:

Imagination as a Precision Tool for Change

Sean writes about agency in such a powerful way. I know that my understanding of it is childlike and immature. He writes about how some of us might think we are giving our kids agency when we get them a car for their 18th birthday. He shares:

“The car is a symbol of freedom without being freedom. In offering that car, a parent also offers with it an indoctrination into the world of car insurance and car payments, into the world of traffic violations. Cars are not themselves free from policing, and therefore neither will the teenager driving one be.”

I wonder how many times in my feeble attempts to give my students agency in my teaching, I have actually given them a car. I’m also pretty sure that give is the wrong verb to use when talking about agency. Is it something I can give to someone else?

When I teach doctoral students, they can resist taking risks and experimenting far more than my undergraduate students ever do. I make clumsy attempts at fostering an environment that might facilitate greater agency, while they ask for more specifics on assignments and where they might find the rubrics. Sometimes I get hopeful when learning from people like Sean, while other times the existing system and culture feels too massive for me to ever hope to have any impact on (particularly as an adjunct, which I am in the case of teaching doctoral students).

As I sat in Chuck E Cheese, I was being hammered by cognitive dissonance. I subscribe so wholeheartedly to what Sean was advocating in his talk, yet I felt so incapable of breaking free of the oppressive systems my work is often embedded within. He talked about how we get tempted to perform “what Freire might call an adaptation, a shift in behavior designed not to alter the status quo, but to maintain it, even within a slightly altered framework.” I suspect I regularly do this, sometimes being aware of my failed attempts, while other times thinking I “succeeded.”

I managed to get myself together after a rather unexpected event took place within the walls of Chuck E Cheese. If you have been there, you know that every hour or so, this giant mouse (well, it is a person in a mouse costume, but you’re probably with me still) comes out and parades around the restaurant. All the kids follow the character as if he were the pied piper until they all get to the front of the restaurant.

This parade was like none other I have ever seen at Chuck E Cheese. About 20% of the kids were under five years old and the other 80% appeared to be at least high school age. A basketball team was celebrating one of their players’ birthdays and they seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as the younger kids were.

I was expecting them to show that they were attempting to be ironic. Instead, their smiles seemed genuine and this sense of pure joy continued as they began to dance. The mouse led everyone in the movements and every person joined in without reluctance. The young men modified the moves only somewhat to better let them express their more advanced dance abilities. I even found myself grooving a bit, never having recognized that the Chuck E Cheese theme song was so danceable.

When I sat down, my tears were completely dry and I was back to celebrating with the kids as they brought over fists full of tickets and a raw sense of delight. When they ran off to play other games, I would go back to Twitter, this time with a renewed hope that no, I can’t do this, but we just might be able to do it together.

When we got home, I had our son watch one of the Playing for Change songs: Stand by Me. If you’re not familiar with them, they create songs using musicians from all over the world. They combine the audio tracks that were recorded with gifted artists from Indonesia, France, Japan, Brazil, Morocco, India, England, the United States, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Australia, and beyond.

The first musician starts out reminding us:

“No matter who you are. No matter where you go in your life. At some point, you’re going to need somebody to stand by you…”

Stand by Me | Playing for Change | Song Around the World

I’m thankful for people like Sean Michael Morris for pushing us to be better at what we do. He does that on a collective basis through his writing, his talks, his workshops and his collaborations. However, he also has done this for me on a personal basis for agreeing to be on the podcast twice and for engaging on Twitter regularly.

At some point, we are going to need someone to stand by us. And despite the evils of Twitter (and there are plenty) – there are also phenomenal opportunities to connect with others in solidarity.

Just some of the people who I feel standing by those of us who teach in higher ed include:

• Sean Michael Morris (website; Twitter) – critical instructional design
• Maha Bali (website; Twitter) – intercultural learning
• Clint Smith III (website; Twitter) – spoken word poet, contributor to the Pod Save the People podcast, Harvard PhD student
• Jesse Stommel (website; Twitter) – co-founder of Digital Pedagogy lab and Hybrid Pedagogy
• Robin DeRosa (website; Twitter) – open education, interdisciplinary eduction
• Chris G. (website; Twitter) – Digital redlining and privacy
• Pooja Agarwal (website; Twitter) – Visit Pooja’s Retrieval Practice website, if you don’t already have it bookmarked
• Laura Pasquini (website; Twitter) – Digital pedagogy, eclectic higher ed interests and experience
• Isabeau Iqbal (website; Twitter) – Coaching, faculty development
• James Lang (website; Twitter) – writer, faculty development
• Viji Sathy (website; Twitter) – Inclusive active learning
• Josh Eyler (website; Twitter) – His new book, How Humans Learn is available for preorder.
• Laura Gibbs (website; Twitter) – If you use the Canvas LMS, check out Laura’s Canvas blog
• Laura Gogia (website; Twitter) – Recently published a fascinating look at competency-based medical education
• Jacinta (website; Twitter) – PhD student, inclusive teaching and learning
• Angela Jenks (website; Twitter) – Anthropology professor
• Annemarie Perez (website; Twitter) – Inclusive teaching and learning
• Kevin Gannon (website; Twitter) – “History, teaching, and technology with a custom paint job”
• Asao Inoue (website; Twitter) – Writing theory, antiracism, teaching, race theory, writing assessment
• Katie Linder (website; Twitter) – Writer, podcaster, “learning like it’s her job”
• Alan Levine (website; Twitter) – “Barking about and playing with the web since 1992 – and sharing it all openly”
• Derek Bruff (website; Twitter) – Teaching and learning, faculty development
• Sarah Rose Cavanagh (website; Twitter) – Psychologist, professor, writer, and faculty development
• Peter Newbury (website; Twitter) – Teaching and learning
• Stephanie Lancaster (website; Twitter) – “Occupational therapist, learning scientist, teacher, and an activist at heart.”

Twitter List compilation of all the above individuals and others

Your Turn

Who has been someone who has stood by you as an educator and encourage you to keep growing and changing?