Near the end, they write about what to do when those strategies seem insufficient, when students aren’t engaged and class doesn’t gel. “We can all learn from ‘teaching fails,’” they write.
Academe prizes working hard for long hours, demonstrating professionalism, and having the answers. It is “a grinding profession,” said Davidson, a distinguished professor of English, the digital humanities, and data analysis and visualization at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, in a recent interview.
It can be hard to give up the goal of perfection, but learning requires a bit of failure — for professors as well as for students. And the authors sought to address this head on.
“Our teaching does not have to be perfect all the time,” they write. “The best gifts we can offer our students are a set of tools to support their courage and a vote of confidence to try.”
So what’s a professor to do when things aren’t going well? Go back to the heart of participatory education, the authors suggest, and ask students for their input. Try an exit ticket at the end of class, such as having everyone write a response to a prompt like, “Everyone acted like a zombie in class today because…,” they suggest, or, “If I had designed today’s class, I would have…”
Or, they continue, try an entry ticket at the top of the next class, asking students what would help them going forward and listing some examples.
It’s OK, then, to relax a bit. Aim for success most rather than all of the time, admit that to students, and be ready to regroup as needed.
The authors, who collaborated remotely through the early stretch of the pandemic, want the book to give instructors across disciplines, institution types, and experience levels a sense of hope. “The classroom is one place where we have the freedom to make changes,” Davidson said, “even in the most structured situations.”
And the classroom, added Katopodis, associate director of the Transformative Learning in the Humanities initiative at CUNY, is also a place where professors can make a real difference. “What I like to start my classes with is asking students, ‘How is this class going to change your life?’” It’s based on an optimistic idea, she said, “that this one course could be memorable.”
And nothing, the authors think, makes that more likely than getting students engaged as active participants.
Reconnected?
Speaking of student engagement, Beth and I have been wondering if the widespread challenges to attendance and participation we heard so much about last spring have continued, or if things are looking up on that front. What have you found so far? How does it compare to last year? Let us know at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, and your example may appear in a future newsletter.
Renaming ‘Office Hours’
Many students — particularly those who are the first in their families to attend college — don’t understand what office hours are for. Part of the problem, some professors have realized, is that the name “office hours” is pretty unintuitive.
Lauren S. Hallion raised the issue last week in a tweet that’s gone viral: “PSA: I changed ‘office hours’ to ‘drop-in hours’ a couple years ago and attendance more than doubled,” wrote Hallion, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. In response, other professors shared what they’ve renamed office hours: “student hours,” “coffee hours,” even “candy crush hours.” They also described how they explain the purpose and possible uses of this time to their students.
Other people responded by recalling the hesitation and confusion they felt about attending office hours as students. The responses are full of good ideas for anyone looking to rename office hours, or wondering why they might consider doing so.
Sometimes, social media is helpful. Hallion later tweeted about the incredible number of views her initial tweet received. And when I emailed to ask where she’d first gotten the idea for renaming office hours, she replied, “from someone else on Twitter; I wish I could remember who.”
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
— Beckie
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