Our readings for this week by Parker Palmer reminded me of another of his books I’ve read. One of the ideas that I took from his writing was that to be a teacher is to take the good with the bad, because for many of us this is our calling and vocation first and our career second. For me teaching well come just as much from my technical subject knowledge, professional presentation and class management skills as it does from my personal values, believes and motivations. I think that this personal conviction is what we need to demonstrate to our students and help them cultivate in their own lives. We need to teach them how to use their emotions in constructive ways through their education and work.
Author: Bethany
Comment on Empathy is the new black by Bethany
I tried a role playing activity in my class two weeks ago. I was really nervous about doing it because of the unwritten rule that says science has no place for emotions. The students participated but I don’t know how much they really took it to heart and how much of a difference it made. I didn’t want to collect their worksheet for that day because I wanted them to have the freedom to write and think about whatever they wanted.
Maybe one of the problems is that our college education never leaves the building, literally. I had a class where I was learned about many new perspectives that were different from my own, but I learned about them by visiting people and talking, eating and living with them for several days. I could empathize with them because I had a personal connection with them. Not every class has the time and money to take a week long field trip around the world or across the state, but I know that with today’s technology there are ways for us to take ourselves and our students outside of the classroom and the world they know.
Comment on Weekly Pessimism vs Seth Godin, and “Famous Colleges” will outlive us all by Bethany
I was looking for a video to show in my class last Friday to introduce students to how important soil organic matter was. I was excited to find about 5 TEDx talk videos on youtube within a few minutes but it only took me about 15 minutes to realize that they all were basically useless. They were not any good, like both of you mentioned, because they didn’t have a good grasp on how their chosen topic really fits into the bigger scheme of things. Every single video I watched took only about 2-3 minutes to bring you climate change and never really got back to the REALLY cool science of organic matter. I think this and the post and comments illustrate that we as teachers and professionals will be around for a long time because even with all of this new technology, you still need someone to help you navigate and understand new ideas.
Comment on Educated Mind and Heart by Bethany
I think you actually have some good insights here. You probably, like I tend to do, did not expect to get much benefit from something that did not show results and quantifiable data because that is how we have been trained to evaluate things in the sciences. But maybe this is a good exercise for us, to take a step back and recognize that there is more to life than the right answer.
You make an interesting point about how kids change as they get older, but I think there are actually three phases. I think that when kids are little, probably under age 5 or 6, they enjoy school and are motivated by learning new things just because they can. But as they spend more time in school they are trained to do what we tell them to and to follow directions (the external motivations you mentioned). Only later (if we’re lucky) will they begin to develop their own drive to learn again. To me, this seems to point to a problem with what we do in school. The TED talk video about what school is supposed to be about is really good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXpbONjV1Jc).
Comment on The What and the How of Critical Pedagogy by Bethany
I agree with you Brandon, this was a very good point to remember. Sometime I need to remind myself is that if I accept that students have their own agency in my class, they likely will not be as passionate or value my subject as much as I do. I am not trying to recreate myself in my students. This is hard to accept because I do care deeply about what I study and teach, but if I can accept that my students bring and will have different life experiences, I can do a better job teaching them what they do need to know about soil science for whatever they end up doing in the future.
Comment on Won’t We Need to be Able of Critical Thinking Ourselves? by Bethany
So much good stuff here, thanks guys! I was struck by the comment about how we can be tempted “accommodate their inconvenience”, and how this can “discourage them to be become independent learners”. It makes me think about how we ask (require) students to submit assignments. If we given them very prescriptive forms and formats, I think we are at risk of limiting critical thinking. In my class there is a big project with lots of calculations and the professor created a excel spreadsheet with drop down menus that the students just have to click and fill-in. But I worry that when they do this they don’t really understand what they are doing and why. While I does make it easier to grade, I don’t think I want to use this spreadsheet in my class next year because I want students to think through these steps for themselves.
I have the same experience Armani had with most of the students in my classes, who, as far I as I know, do not have any disabilities. But this type of behavior has prompted me to adopt several strategies for my office hours for help on problem set calculations assignments. First, I will not work with any student until they have tried the problem for themselves. If they show up without any work attempted on their own I will send them to the empty desk in my office or the table in the hall to work on the questions first. Second, I never tell students the answers to questions. I frequent start by asking the student what they did and why. Almost always, I find some misunderstanding or incorrect assumption or missing units in their problem solving approach. The third thing I do during office hours is, after helping them understand what they were confused about, I have them try to solve a problem and I let them make what I know is a mistake. After multiplying instead of dividing or using the wrong unit conversion in step one, they will get to step two and realize that something isn’t right. And then I can step in and explain what happened and how they can avoid making this mistake in the future. Most of my office hour visits last between 15 and 30 minutes, because it takes more time to let students do critical thinking, but I have seen significant improvements in student understanding and critical problem solving from one week to another after coming to my office hours. I have been thinking about how I can take these techniques and incorporate them into a classroom setting with 30-60 students because I see so much benefit.
Comment on Sorry, No Internet Today! by Bethany
While your title was intended to be eye catching and thought-provoking, in some places it actually is still true. In some areas of Virginia, even, there is little to no access to the internet or the internet can only be accessed through smart phones. I live and work during the summer in one of these places and outside of work I only have access to the internet through my phone. I realized that I used lots more apps on my phone to manage my day-to-day life but the canvas app was clunky and difficult to use. Using blogs, twitter, texting and other apps was easier than more traditional forms of digital communications. Ironically, there are several VT graduate students who take online classes from this location and I have had conversations with them about how working with only canvas/scholar made it harder for them to get their classwork done, they were very much in favor of apps and other forms of digital communication.
