I’ve been a teacher for 44 years. I’m not bragging; it’s just a fact. From teaching first grade through post-graduate, I’ve learned a lot about teaching and I’m good at it–just ask my students. My classes fill up as soon as registration begins and I’ve had to instruct the registrar to fill other professors’ classes before over-tallying mine. And it’s not because I’m an easy marker nor my classes are ‘gut’ courses. So,I have an urge to write about what I’ve learned but to do so without coming across as pompous is a daunting task. So dear reader, let me know if I stray into pedagogy.
It seems to me that there are 8 maxims of good teaching:
1. Teach what interests you. If you’re into the material, your students will be too. Your enthusiasm for a subject is contagious. One semester, I was asked to teach a course in Consumer Behavior, which is not my area of expertise; but like everyone else, I am a consumer so the focus of the class for all of us was to study our own consumer behavior to see if general patterns emerged. The class was a great success. In fact, students informed me that their other professors were advising students to register for this class. This was a great vote of confidence from my peers.
2. If the students don’t learn it, you haven’t taught it. A colleague told me that every student in his class failed the final exam. I told him that if EVERYONE failed, then you failed to teach the material. 3 Good teaching is as much a process of interaction as it is a mastery of material. Marshall McLuhan said it and Postman & Weingartner reiterated–“The Medium Is The Message”. The emotional atmosphere of the classroom is what is taught. I can’t remember a damn thing about the principal exports of Uruguay, that I learned in the 5th grade, nor have I needed to multiply two fractions together but I do remember how red Mrs. Saltz’s face turned when she yelled at us or when she told me that I couldn’t even draw a straight line with a ruler. I was turned off to drawing for years after that, realizing in adulthood that I enjoyed color and wanted to draw no matter what that insensitive teacher said.
4. Don’t work any harder than your students. I tell my classes, on day one:” I know a lot of stuff. Your job is to motivate me to share it. Ask me questions for no other reason that it will increase your grade. If I know who you are, it effects my opinion of your class performance when grade time rolls around. 5. There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers”. Sometimes on the first day, a student will ask me:” Why do we have to study Sociology (or Psychology)?” Usually there’s a murmur of :” Oooh” from the class,as if to say that’s a wiseguy question. I pick up on that and say:” No- it isn’t a wise guy question -it’s a smart question. Why do we need to study Sociology?–because I said so”. Then I say that any “ology” is a way to understand the world. If you’re at all interested in understanding, predicting and controlling human behavior Sociology and Psychology — provide the tools. Then I launch into a short lecture (I keep it short because 18 minutes has been shown to be the upper limit of most people’s attention span) on the concept of the hypothesis as the building block of all science–more about this later.
6. Start where the students are interested. Sylvia Aston-Warner taught aborigines how to read when she asked them what THEY wanted to learn. She taught them to read the names of their gods, the ones that controlled all that was important to them, live, death, weather, crops, enemies and so on. Once they could read about their immediate needs, they became interested in reading about other things about the world.
7. Encourage, support and incorporate the use of group projects over the course of the semester. Student are more creative, feel less inhibited and have more fun mastering the material working in groups with their peers. Unless you are an exceptionally gifted lecturer, pontificating on a regular basis is boring to everyone, professors included. I have often noticed that when students meet in groups, the interactions are often quite lively. When the groups come back together into the classroom setting, all conversation ceases. On these occasions, I ask the class:” Am I a wet blanket?” My presence is an inhibiting influence on the group dynamics for several reasons, not the least of which is that students are self-conscious when I’m around. They are less worried about what their peers think of them than what I think of them. I certainly can understand their trepidation; after all, I determine their grade. For my part, I have learned more from my students’ groups than I would have from just lecturing alone.
8. No student is allowed to be funnier than I am. If someone gets a bigger laugh from the class, they get a demerit ;).
