Ok, after a few days of blog-detox post-challenge, I am ready to go back to writing. I will certainly not be posting every single day (nobody wants that) but I will, I hope, be posting much more regularly than I did pre-challenge. As in, I will be posting.
Today's post is also inspired by my classes, but in a much less rosy way. It has always confused me that professorship is viewed as the "pinnacle" of the teaching profession since, it would seem to me, it is in fact a totally different set of responsibilities and challenges. I thought about this quite often during my time in Newark, as I had a couple of friends who were pursuing Masters in English and were also teaching undergraduate courses. Sometimes they would try to commiserate. While I have the utmost sympathy for having to grade 20+ 15 page research papers, it is, in fact, nothing like managing a classroom of 20+ 7th graders. I'm not trying to place a value on which one is harder (the latter) or which one is less draining (the former). I'm just saying, they are totally different.
BUT if we are going to keep pretending like being a professor is the highest form of teaching, then here are some things I wish professors would learn from their "lesser" K-12 colleagues.
1. There are more ways to teach than a lecture. In your classroom, you have at least 3 different kinds of learners. Lecturing appeals to one of them. And the format of the lecture shouldn't be the same for each and every class - marching through your notes/outline is boring for you, and most likely boring for us, too.
2. Don't ask questions for your own benefit. Any K-12 teacher will tell you, doing "checks for understanding" should be to reinforce the student's understanding, not just to take your own lesson plan forward. One of my all-time professor pet-peeves is the "Let's play a fun mind-reading game!" problem. You know what I mean. When the professor asks a question like, "What do you think the most important element in this reading was?" and then proceeds to ignore, downplay or disagree with every answer until someone says the magic words. The magic words being whatever answer the professor already had in his or her head. That is a waste of everyone's time. As I learned in my 5 weeks of teacher preparation, questions should be to check for understanding, spur student reflection, or some combination. Maybe professors need a 5 week refresher, too.
3. Lessons should have measurable objectives. Professors of the world, your students can tell when you walk into class and you have absolutely no idea what you want to come out of the class or why, exactly, you even assigned the reading you did. It's annoying. It's a waste of time. It makes us all reflect on how much we're paying for tuition.
4. Grading should be transparent and easily understandable. This is especially true in a university setting, where the A versus A- distinction actually matters. It's unfair and frustrating to give little to no feedback and then assign an A-. Again, as I learned in my minuscule amount of pedagogical training, students should be able to articulate clearly and easily exactly why they earned the grade they did on any given assignment, and in the course or subject as a whole. The expectations and rubric should be so crystal clear that any disagreement can be solved by referencing those two things. I understand things get fuzzier as you move up in the academic spectrum. But the basic idea that grades shouldn't come out of the clear blue sky still holds, however old the students are.
5. Technology is a tool, not an end in itself. It's awesome that there's a smartboard in your room. If you know how to use it effectively, you totally should. But please PLEASE do not take 20 minutes of this class I paid for trying to figure out how to load your PowerPoint. Every time this happens in one of my classes, all I can think is, "you are so lucky you are teaching adults and not my kids in Newark - someone would definitely be in a fistfight by now."
Maybe that's how I can get some of these lessons across...start reacting like a 7th grader would.
Ok, first step: stop showering for a week. Work on my whine. See how many extra syllables I can squeeze into the phrase, "I have to go to the bathroo-oo-oo-oom. It's an emergency-y-y-y".
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