how to teach

I was looking up information on learning styles because it was relevant to the class I am taking. I found this fascinating information.

Auditory Learners:
Learn through hearing
Talk to themselves while working
Move their lips and pronounce the words as they read
Enjoy reading aloud and listening
Can repeat back and mimic tone pitch and timbre
Find writing difficult, but are better at telling
Speak in rhythmic patterns
Prefer lecture or seminar to reading a book
Like talking more than writing
Repeat information over and over to memorize it
Make up little rhymes to remember thing
Are talkative, love discussion and go into great lengthy discussions

Verbal Cues:
“Spell it out for me.”
“I don’t hear what you are saying.”
“Listen to me.”

Visual Learners:
Learn through seeing
Are neat and orderly
Are good spellers and can actually see words in their mind
Memorize by visual association
Make up little rhymes to remember things
Prefer a map to listening to directions
Underline and annotate reading material
Concerned with form and format
Love the use of the overhead and PowerPoint

Verbal Cues:
“Let’s take a look at it.”
“I don’t see what you are saying.”

Kinesthetic Learners:
Learn through touching
Prefer a map to listening to directions
Underline and annotation reading material
Concerned with form and format
Use finger as a pointer when reading
Gesture a lot
Can’t sit for long periods of time

Love the use of the overhead and PowerPoint
Enjoy role-playing
Look for physical rewards
Memorize by associating events with ideas

Verbal Cues:
“Let’s move on.”
“I don’t get it.”

Other points
Auditory: Distracted by noise, like music more than art, move lips while reading.

Visual: Not distracted by noise, fast reader.

Kinesthetic: Pointing, expressive facial appearance and posture, move about.

Auditory: Like music more than art, prefer talking instead of reading.

Visual: Prefer books to lectures, like to doodle while talking on phone.

Kinesthetic: Prefer groups to lectures, like to take a walk to sort out ideas.

On writing, if a student is Auditory:

• likes group interaction to generate ideas
• appreciates verbal responses (conversation) to their work-in-progress
• likes “talking through”
• a paper idea/plan (explaining it) before writing
• tends to include quotations and dialog in writing
• verbally rehearse their writing (interior monolog), may even mumble to themselves when writing

On writing, if the student is visual:

• Likes to view models of papers assigned
• Appreciates written responses to their work-in-progress
• Prefers creating a graphic picture of the writing—a paper plan or outline—and graphically oriented invention strategies—flow chart, clustering, balance sheet, schematics, pro-con, etc.
• Cares about handwriting
• Tends to write carefully, correctly, much proofing during invention and drafting stages, but this penchant for appearance results in meager production

On writing, if a student is kinesthetic:

• prefers and profits from active reading (underlining, annotating a text) instead of reading straight through
• prefers writing in short bursts
• prefers active invention strategies that both reduce the writing task into discrete steps and manipulate material
• tends to write quickly, spontaneously, and abundantly, but without much regard for correctness or appearance (however, an extremely productive behavior)
• handwriting often unintelligible to a reader

from a LENS Workshop

But when I was reviewing my blog/using my outboard brain, I found that I read and referenced a cognitive scientist’s discussion of learning modalities. He says that learning styles don’t make that much difference in learning.

I believe that in one way (and it makes teaching easier) and in another way I think it must have some impact.

I think perhaps the information in this post says how it has impact.

In Learning to Teach: A discussion of a syllabus I wrote:

I am going back to a syllabus that more accurately reflects my “personality and style.” Do you think the school has antique parchment in hot pink for photocopies?

I think that the impetus to do something fun with my online syllabus at Davis English came from this thinking.

How to Use a Text You Didn’t Pick says:

The text is not supposed to be a bear trap that springs closed on your classroom and holds it still till it bleeds out. It is supposed to be a starting point, a jumping off point, a useful tool for your teaching. Use it; don’t let it abuse you.

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

The course I will be teaching is not a philosophy of social sciences, but I ought to do some reading in it before I head on out to teach.

Prof. Smith at Calvin College has a Philosophy of the Social Sciences course from which I took the following:

This course will investigate the foundational assumptions at work in the social sciences. Emerging in the wake of modernity and in concert with the rise of positivism, the social sciences have, since the beginning, been concerned with basic philosophical questions when reflecting on “method.” What does it mean to have “scientific” knowledge of the “social” world? What counts as “knowledge?” What is “science” in such a context? How has our understanding of “science” changed after the demise of positivism? What are the implications of hermeneutics for scientific observation and the notion of “objectivity?” And what are the implications of that for the project of the social sciences? Is positivism still with us? How are we to understand the “social?” Just what are human beings, and thus what is the nature of human community? Is social science merely descriptive, or also critical and prescriptive?

He also offers some additional readings which sound interesting.

Lori Gottlieb, “How Do I Love Thee? The New Science of Love,” The Atlantic Monthly (March 2006): 58- 70.
Daniel Izuzquiza, “Can a Gift Be Wrapped? John Milbank and Supernatural Sociology,” Heythrop Journal 67 (2006): 387-404.

Here is another Phil of soc sci, with lecture notes and audio of the foundation of philosophy in social science.

Preparing and Writing in the Social Sciences

Dr. Flaxman of Brown’s Writing Program wrote a paper on how teachers create writing assignments. The following quote provides language that I found useful.

In the Writing Fellows Program we distinguish three kinds of student writing: pre-socialized, socialized, and post-socialized. In all three cases, we describe the level of student sophistication in contextual terms. The process of education, in this model, is one of initiating students into the conventions of a particular discourse. First-year students at Brown who have never taken a course in Economics, for example, are termed “pre-socialized” to the conventions of writing Economics. Once they learn the vocabulary and conventions of writing in this discourse, they are “socialized” to the discourse. And, some, having learned the proper way to communicate economic concepts, begin to play with these conventions consciously, becoming “post-socialized” to the discourse.

In that same paper, Dr. Flaxman presents the case for the developmental model of writing, where each point is more complex than the one before. I think that will work very well with the social sciences class.

Dartmouth offers some good advice on stylistic differences between the social sciences and the humanities.

Understand, however, that writing for a particular discipline means more than simply writing good sentences. Every discipline has a preferred writing style. If you are a Humanities student, you will certainly be somewhat put off by the style of writing in the Social Sciences. The paragraphs seem surprisingly short, the sentences remarkably unremarkable, and what’s up with that pesky passive voice?

In the Social Sciences, sentences must be well-crafted but they mustn’t be “flowery.” The reader mustn’t feel that the writer is relying more on rhetoric than she is on evidence. Paragraphs must also be well-crafted and coherent, but they mustn’t belabor the point. Digressing to interesting but not immediately relevant observations is discouraged. In short, the Social Science paper should report clearly, concisely, thoroughly, and objectively the writer’s findings.

Finally, the Humanities student will find it difficult getting accustomed to the passive voice used in most Social Science papers. Perhaps it will help to understand that this voice is used for a reason: to keep the observer out of the narrative. Consider: “I observed no significant increase in aggressive behavior” vs. “No significant increase in aggressive behavior was observed.” In the second, passive sentence the observation seems more objective and impersonal, cut loose from the very subjective “I.”

An excellent introduction to writing in the social sciences is available through JSTOR. I think it would be a good place to begin.
“On Scientific Writing”
William F. Ogburn
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 52, No. 5 (Mar., 1947), pp. 383-388

I hate to admit that we are far behind the times in this presentation, but I found a journal article from 1977 which discusses the creation of the course I will be teaching next semester.

“Writing for the Social Sciences”
Eleanor M. Hoffman
College Composition and Communication, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 1977), pp. 195-197

“The Hierarchy of the Sciences?” by Stephen Cole in The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Jul., 1983), pp. 111ff argues that there is no difference between the natural (hard) sciences and the social (soft) sciences in terms of cognitive consensus or the rate at which new ideas are incorporated.

This might be an interesting way to address the feelings that social sciences isn’t as strong/hard/core as natural sciences.

These points are coming from my online class.

Taste, touch, smell
“What if you brought artifacts or props that were related to your lecture to class? Appeal to the students’ senses.”

We are starting storytelling today and I am bringing in the smell of New York in the autumn. I am also bringing three narratives that make a point. They are children’s stories, but I don’t think they are childish.

I am also thinking that we may play one simple kid’s game in class. The folding story game. Just as a starting point to get people talking and thinking.

Is change scary?

“Risk is the central element of all teaching.” Joe Kagle

Final exam questions

After the grades are handed out, give this as a writing assignment.

What did you learn in this class that was useful in your life? What do you think you will take away from this course and use in twenty years? What would you suggest to improve the course?

I am not sure how I would assign this with my present syllabus, but I really like the idea.

Literature

One of the people in my class had Robert Frost as a mentor. He asked Frost about the meaning of “The Road Not Taken.” Robert Frost’s response was, “I don’t know. I place holes in my poems so that you can put yourself into them.”

We should review our classes periodically if we are continuing to teach the same ones OR we need new sources because we are teaching new courses.

This may sound simple. Most of us have had to come up with something new. But sometimes, in the flurry of trying to get ready, we miss some useful sources.

Old class work as a student
This could be classes you took. I gave information out on Old English literature based on my notes from grad school. Also I talk about the six areas of research on Beowulf from the same source.

My introduction to Judith this summer came from two papers I wrote in graduate school.

And so did my discussion starters on women’s roles in the Old and Middle English eras.

Old class work as a teacher
Sometimes as teachers we move away from a project, a paper, an activity because it didn’t fit the class or we were tired of it. Perhaps it didn’t work in execution although the idea was good. Or maybe it worked incredibly well, but we had other things we needed to do instead.

Go through your old syllabi, your old notes, your old handouts and see what is in there that would be useful for your classes now.

I’ve found old assignments (riddles) and old formats (aesthetic differences in syllabi) that were very useful doing this just this summer.

The internet
You can find just about anything on the internet, if you are willing to do multiple searches and take some time to get it done.

There are syllabi, for suggested readings in courses similar to yours.

There is history and cultural background information, for various periods, often including very interesting sites you could actually look at in class.

There are teacher’s plans, including quotes and activities, exercises and handouts, visual aids and videos.

If you plan ahead for time, or you take the time when you’ve been surprised at the last minute, the overabundance that is the internet can offer incredible source materials.

Journal articles
These can be a source of interest to you and the more excited about a topic you are, the more likely your students will become excited.

If this is a new topic for you, start looking for the references. Which works are referenced the most? Make sure you read those.

If it’s a standard topic, don’t be afraid to look at old articles for inspiration. I found a great article on voice in College English back in the 1980s.

Books
Don’t neglect the tried and true.

If you are doing a new class, see what your library offers. Look at interlibrary loan.

Erin at Critical Mass tells of her brother being assigned wussy, girly books for reading and how much he hated reading as a result. Her comment was in response to a thread on Joanne Jacobs’ blog.

Read the comments, too.

I agree with the whole, why make our students READ Shakespeare’s plays? We ought to be watching them.

I also agree that a lot of teachers have a poor background in their literature. If you have to teach a work you don’t like, go find something good on it. Look for the things you like in it. There is good stuff written about any novel that would come up in a high school reading class. Find it and use it.

The issue of students enjoying it (and its accessibility) is why we read Frankenstein. We used to read Gulliver’s Travels, which is a little less accessible because of the language, but the students still read it, enjoyed it, and “got” it. Another odd little book that is a classic and needs a good explanation as it is read is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Get the annotated version.

Find an angle.

It is all too easy to find the text, offer the info in the text, do the writing assignments in the text, and nothing else. The text is supposed to offer the students something amazing. (They’re paying $100+ for it after all.) But it shouldn’t be all there is. If they could just read the text, then you aren’t adding anything to the course.

So what can you add?

Find the things you are interested in and do those. My students are doing online writing. I think it is a great way to get a real audience and so I’m assigning that. If I were really into motorcycles, I might look for ways in which bikes are used in pop culture and introduce that during our readings on pop culture. I need to teach literature analysis, so I use fairy tales to introduce literature.

What does this do?

It makes your class unique and it keeps you interested in it. That, in turn, helps hold your students interest.

Offer an example or a visual aid.

I am a big story person, so I try to find, cull, borrow, or cadge stories from life that fit what we are going to be talking about in class.

Today, introducing writing, I talked about the man I knew who lost a $100,000 promotion (It was really $43K, but it was 30 years ago.) because he couldn’t write well.

Next class we are talking about audience, and we’ll be writing on the net, so I will remind them to be careful about the information they publish on the net with the true story of the police investigator who found and followed a local fifth grader to her home. She hadn’t published her name or her hometown or her address. But she said what her team was and the name of the practice field and her number. The police officer knocked on the door and talked to her parents. (Do you think she was ever allowed to use the computer again?)

It’s a story.

But if you’re better with visuals, bring those in. Bring in a real love letter you’re willing to share and a piece of junk mail and compare the audiences. Bring in a dirty smelly trash can and have them describe it. Bring in an old picture (buy one at a flea market) and have them narrate about the people in the photograph based on what they are wearing.

Bring something that is not written words to the class. Not everyone deals with words as well as English teachers tend to. They need something else, too.

Make it relevant.

This goes back to my angle issue, and the stories, but let the students see that what they are studying is relevant to their lives.

I clip cartoons, comic strips, and letters to the editor when they reference a literary work I might be teaching someday. If I get a few on one topic, I copy them and pass them out before we start reading. I have the students look at them and we discuss how much we don’t get about the discussion underway because we haven’t read the book or the poem. It’s an interesting attention getter because students often assume they will never again reference any work they read in college.

In business writing, I talk about the need to be clear about what words mean. I use the Challenger explosion and the problem with the secondary O-rings to illustrate it. The engineers said, “There is a problem with the secondary O-rings at such and such temperature.” The managers heard “back-up O-rings.” Since there wasn’t anything wrong with the primary O-rings, they sent the shuttle off. And an entire school filled with children watched their teacher blow up. And families all over the nation were left grieving. Because of a vocabulary issue. Words matter.

I talk about how a spelling issue, a single one, will push a resume into the trash can.

I discuss revision and how it is important. Then I bring in 15 or so versions of my curriculum vitae. I show them where I started and where I am now. And I show them all the steps in the middle. Revision is important and I show the students that I don’t just say it, but that I believe it. They are more likely to believe it at that point.

If information doesn’t help them, don’t give it to them.

This is kind of an answer to “is this going to be on the test?” If it’s on the test, teach it. If it’s necessary for their homework, teach it. If it’s not something they are going to use in your class, don’t. Yes, it may be cool and interesting, but if they’re not going to be able to use it, then there’s not a lot of point in them hearing about it right now.

You are probably wondering why I tell stories, and bring in cv’s, since those aren’t on the test. I don’t test them over my stories, but I do expect them to learn the principles the stories emphasize. That’s part of why I tell stories, because it gives them something concrete to hang the theoretical knowledge on long enough for them to learn and use it.

If you still want to teach them something, go ahead. But make sure they have a chance to use it in your class.

An old song says “Do what you do, do well, girl.” I’d say, “What you do well, do.”

Sometimes we have to work with what we are given, but we can still find what we do well in that area and teach with it in mind.

Example from composition and literature
In comp and literature, the adjuncts at one of my colleges are allowed to pick a novel from a list of ten that the full-time teachers have chosen. We are not allowed to pick any other novels. So, from that list of ten, I picked the one I thought I could teach the best.

I chose Frankenstein, which is now one of my favorite novels, because it was short and because the students would have some familiarity with it because of the movies. I didn’t know anything about it other than that.

But, when I began preparing for my class, I went looking for the things I care about and the ways the book fit my interests.

I love genre issues, which Frankenstein clearly fits. Is it a science fiction novel? a fantasy? a romantic novel, since it was written during the Romantic period? a gothic novel?

I’m a strong proponent of biographical and historical criticism.

Frankenstein is perfect for this. Mary Shelley put a lot of the scientific and literary knowledge of the day into her novel. There are jokes that we don’t get without historical criticism, such as Columbus and the egg, that add to the reading. There are references to the Ovid and Milton’s Paradise Lost. The novel has also been a fruitful field for biographical criticism in areas delving particularly into Shelley’s childhood experience of motherlessness and paternal indifference.

I have a lot of modern friends who are Goth, so I even delved into the gothic-ness of the novel. The exotic settings, the gloomy weather, and the scary supernatural (the living creation) are all part of the goth experience.

I went looking for those aspects of the work to introduce in class. And, because I did, my introduction to the book is strong. I am using my strengths (in this case my interests) to teach the book.

The critical articles in the class edition didn’t deal with the things that interested me, but I still pulled those things in anyway, using them as I do the textbooks- to hit the high points as an introduction. The students can go back to the works later if they are interested. Also the critical articles give the students a fast (but inaccurate) view of what is out there on the novel. That’s good since they have to write a research paper over the literary criticism of the novel.

Example from business writing
Another example is from business writing. I love stories. I like to hear stories and I like to tell stories. I think people can learn a lot from stories. In business, we call them case studies, but they are still stories. I collect stories that relate to points I want to teach and when I am teaching, I use those stories.

These include stories about the Challenger explosion and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. They are things that catch the students attention. Sometimes it shocks them. (We had a nuclear accident in the US?)

Example from freshman composition
I use stories in all my classes.

When I give students their narrative assignment, I tell them not to confess any crimes. (They usually laugh.) Then I tell them about a teacher in Illinois, who spoke at a conference I was at, who was given a process paper in which the student described how he murdered and buried someone. I tell my students that she spent days wondering what she should do. “I won’t. I’ll call 9-1-1 as soon as I start reading your paper.”

They are very caught up by this story. It makes the narrative more real to them.

What if my strengths aren’t supported in the text?

The texts I’ve usually taught from do not have case studies. That’s okay. I find them and supplement the text that way.

These stories make my teaching stronger because I am using my strengths to help my teaching.

I don’t know what your strengths are, but I am sure you have them. Use them in your classroom.

You can’t always ignore something because it isn’t your strength though.

I have found that the best thing for me to do is use the text or supplementary material to shore up my weaknesses.

There may be things that are done well in the text that you don’t do as well in on your own. Use the text to help.

When I am talking about controversial issues, I don’t always remember what the best arguments are for both sides. But one of the texts I was required to use had readings that were in pairs: one for, one against. We would read those essays and, using them, begin a classroom discussion of the pros and cons of the issue.

It was a good use of the text (Tip 8 ) and it helped me do well at something that is one of my weaknesses.

Tip 3 also has a discussion on doing what you love.