Category: College Teaching

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Business Department LLC Presentation | October 14, 2017

“We’re starting at what time?”

The idea of getting up on a Saturday morning to attend a writing workshop doesn’t appeal to most people, but most people are not members of the Elizabethtown College Business Department Living/Learning Community. I’d like to thank the Business LLC for inviting me to share a little bit about language and writing today, and I hope everyone finds something of use in today’s workshop.

When does it matter to you?

I once served as a writing tutor for high school students. One student stopped by the writing center in my school and asked for consultation on a writing project she was working on. We made small talk while I read her work. She planned on becoming a veterinarian. I made several recommendations and offered to help her later if she needed it. To my offer she said, “That’s OK. This is the last English paper I’ll be turning in before heading off to college. Thank God I’ll be done with this nonsense.”

“Won’t you need to continue working as you go through college and start your career?” I asked, knowing that even veterinarians need to know how to write.

“No,” she said. “I’ll have a secretary for this stuff someday.”

With that in mind, it is important to note that I later learned the student failed to gain admission into veterinarian school on her first try… and then again on her second try. On her third attempt she was finally admitted to a school in the Caribbean–not an American institution. While at college, however, she met a professor who was able to communicate the importance of written communication to her and tutor her on academic writing.

In our pre-college education we were all taught to write in the same way. In just about every high school and middle school classroom students are guided through a personal essay writing process and an academic research paper writing process. If you are able to master these two types of writing during high school It is our understanding that when you decide to attend college you are saying, “I have a desire to be a better writer. I want to move beyond the basic writing I’ve always done.”

I don’t know if you will ever have a moment where writing becomes more important to you, but I do know that we often encounter a number of challenges as we try to improve our craft. What seems unknown or mystical about academic writing to you?

In my experience, I often hear the following answers to this question:

  • Grammar/Language Usage
  •  Selecting and Citing other Writers in my Writing
  • I Don’t Have Anything Important/New to Say

The Parts of our Language

The English language derives from a variety of Germanic, Romanic and Latin roots. If you were to study the history of the English language you find that at certain points in the history of England the language spoken by the common people, now the most widely spoken language in the world, nearly collapsed several times. But it survived and is still growing rapidly throughout the world.

The words in our language serve 8 different roles:

  • Nouns
  • Verbs
  • Adjectives
  • Adverbs
  • Conjunctions
  • Prepositions
  • Articles
  • Interjections

These different parts of speech can be assembled to build sentences. The 10 patterns in the English language that codify nearly 98% of all sentences in the English language are:


When you understand how these pieces are parts can bring together the simple sentences, you also begin to understand how other parts can be added correctly. With practice you begin to build confidence with the language and your communication across all platforms begins to improve dramatically.

Saying What Other People Say

The best book I have read lately on academic writing is They Say; I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing  by Graff and Birkenstein. Now in its 3rd edition,  They Say, I Say shows how the parts and pieces of a well-written essay can come together for just about any college-level writer… or his or her professors.

Graff and Birkenstein give equal emphasis to the development of each critical section of an essay, the introduction, the body and the conclusion. They also provide a roadmap, of sorts, for writers to follow when making decisions about their writing.

The book illustrates how a writer can reasonably and persuasively respond to other writers without glaring and obvious bias. Take for example this segment from Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous letter he wrote in response to his fellow clergyman critics while he was held in a Birmingham jail.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In this one segment, King accurately summarizes what his critics convey in their letter to him. His response is to appeal to their common sense in saying that while the critics are not pleased by the demonstrations being carried out in their town, they should be equally displeased by the conduct that has initiated the demonstrations.

This is clearly a sensitive and important topic to write about and King’s response is one of his more well known pieces of writing. Writing about important, and sometimes divisive, topics with multiple points of view may be part of your college writing experience. The template below shows some moves one can make when one begins to talk about a controversial or divisive topic.

A good example of this approach being used in the real world can be found just about everyday on websites like the Huffington Post. Consider this example on a timely issue, how collegiate athletes should be better compensated. And take a look at this opinion piece posted to the Cedar Rapids, IA Gazette asserting that college athletes are already paid enough.

This is a big deal. Have you heard about the scandal that surrounds top executives at the Adidas company and major college basketball programs?

What if you worked in a professional capacity (accounting, marketing, finance, etc.) for a company tied to college athletics and your supervisor assigned you the task to write a response to the New York Times article linked above? Could you do it? In this scenario, I ask that you partner with one other person seated next to you to write a response to the article as representatives from a particular discipline (i.e. accounting, marketing, finance, and the like) and a specific company or organization (i.e. Nike, Under Armor, Octagon Talent, Gatorade, or the University of Kansas). Write a response that might appear in an opinion section of a news website discussing a point of view on how college athletes are paid and what should/could be done about it–if anything at all.

Use the template to help you get started, but apply some creative license to make the rhetorical “moves” work in your favor.

Speak up!

On of my lasting impressions that I hope to leave is that your writing does matter. You never, ever know how the things you write will impact your legacy. I have seen throughout my short life the amazing insights left behind by our most prominent and most forgotten historical figures. The handwritten notes of John F. Kennedy, the etchings of a final thesis in the rock walls of the Tower of London.

I was once walking down the aisles of a grocery store back home in Wichita, KS and a woman stopped me. She said, “Are you Lynn Skillen’s son?” I was a bit shocked by the question–my dad hadn’t lived in Kansas for at least 15 years. “Yes, I am.” I said. Then, with her hands shaking, she fumbled through her wallet to find a small note written in my dad’s handwriting. It was simply a word of encouragement in a very rough time in this woman’s life. She wouldn’t let me leave the store without knowing how much that note meant to her.

Take time to write every single day. The cognitive/tactile connections that need to exist in order to make the action of writing possible are quite complex and they can only be strengthened through routine practice. The more practice time, or mental reps, that you give to yourself will only strengthen your efforts to become a masterful communicator among a population of struggling writers.

Keep a journal, sketch ideas for your academic projects on a napkin, type an email to your parents. They will love you for it.

The most important writing I do every day are the handwritten notes I send to my grandmother who recently lost her husband to Alzheimer’s disease. Watching the slow, methodic and inexplicable decline of a person’s cognitive abilities has a lasting effect. She writes me everyday in order to strengthen the cognitive connections that remain for her.

You have everything to say. Your experience is unique compared to the person sitting next to you. Your perspective, if honed and properly researched, can be the very explanation that someone needs to solve a problem or see a better solution.

Writing takes time, and it is time well spent.

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The Chair Life: Year 1

The first week of June from the  Chair’s Desk looks very different from the first week of August. The waves of unread and unanswered email have subsided dramatically this week. The stacks of forms and papers are slowly shrinking and I can see sections of the surface of my desk. The first year in this post has revealed a lot to me about the nature of higher education, the importance of literacy and the value of people. I’m sure I already knew all of these things that were revealed this year, but this experience has enriched my worldview in ways I could have never anticipated.

Wins and Losses

In my methods classes I sometimes teach Bill McBride’s Entertaining an Elephant. The main character, a mid-career high school English teacher named Mr. Reaf, is in survival mode at the beginning of the story. A great illustration of his survival plays out in the first chapter as Mr. Reaf counts his “wins” on one had and his “losses” on the other. The goal: have just one more win than losses at the end of the day. What constitutes a win? If the class works steadily throughout the hour without disruption. Throughout the story, with the gentle guidance from an unlikely source, Reaf begins to reflect on more meaningful interactions with this students, and he ultimately finds new life in his teaching practice.

At the risk of sounding like Reaf, I find myself at the end of my first year as Chair reflecting on the successes, and some failures. I am going to choose to celebrate the successes and learn from my failures.

We’ve made remarkable progress this year as a team. Our year began with the department coming together to cast a vision of what we would like our department to be. Themes of unity, cohesion and collaboration. This really set a positive tone for the year ahead and everything that happened afterward is a direct result of the vision put forward by the department. Some of these larger accomplishments include:

  • In the fall I asked each division of the department to prepare Staffing and Curriculum Priorities reports. These reports revealed a great deal of positive ideas for the department. Most notably, the literature division devised several areas of international literatures that could be added to our curriculum through future hires.
  • Throughout the year we also examined our learning outcomes to see if there was, perhaps, room for consolidation and reprioritizing. The English Department wrote over sixteen outcomes eight years ago when the college developed a comprehensive program assessment plan. Sixteen is a lot of outcomes. With the help of everyone in the department we were able to propose a new assessment plan that measures five outcomes across all divisions in the department.
  • The development of a new Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL) college certificate program. We are excited to begin offering the new courses in this program to advance Elizabethtown College students’ application of the language arts in such a way that will lead to meaningful life work.

On Enrollment

It’s no secret that many, though not all, private colleges will struggle for the forseeable future to determine how many students it can reasonably enroll and serve given the resources available. I have believed for some time that our English Department has the capacity to enroll more students. Throughout the year our department participated in a number of recruiting events and made purposeful attempts to invite and engage prospective students to join our community. Did it work? I don’t know, but I have one year of data to examine.

The enrollment model suggested the English Department would enroll 9 incoming students this year. As of May 1st we have enrolled 16 who have declared English or English: Secondary Education as a primary major and 10 more indicating English as a second major. I’ll take this as good news for sure.

I am under no illusion that a small bump in enrollment is going to solve all of the concerns and problems we face in the humanities in higher education. This one small positive data point is not indicative, yet, of a roaring comeback we have been looking for in the last eight years. It is, however, an indication, a sign of life, and that may be just enough to muster the energy and enthusiasm needed to make it happen again next year.

At the beginning of the year I posted a brief reflection on becoming a chair, a phenomenon that my four-year-old is still trying to comprehend. In that post I said, “I have found that I love this work. It is challenging, it is engaging, and it is important.” Now, at the end of the first year I still love this work. In fact, I think I love it more than I did in October. Are there parts of it that are unpleasant and nasty? Sure. But that is true of just about any other job out there. The positive aspects of the job, however, are truly inspirational in the most meaningful of ways.

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Seeing The Forest: The future of English Majors

There’s a saying that goes, “he couldn’t see the forest for the trees.” It means that someone is so focused on the details of a particular project or aspect of an organization that he (or she) is missing the bigger picture. I have been guilty, for sure, at being so focused on the individual trees that I lose track of the larger mission, but I have been lucky, in some cases, to zoom out just in time and adjust my thinking to work toward the bigger goal.

A few weeks ago, while preparing for a guest lecture in a business writing class, I came across an article about a new art installataion at the National Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan called “Forest of Numbers.” The installation was designed by Emanmanuelle Moureax, and his work was to mark the 10-year anniversary of the museum by visualizing ten years into the future. You can read more about Moureaux’s work here: https://vimeo.com/203244686

I love this art installation. Its sheer size and scope are amazing. Thousands of paper numbers in a full spectrum of colors hung by hundreds of volunteers. The magnitude of this piece only amplifies its message: we are living in exponential times. There are, indeed, great waves of data streaming into, throughout and around our routines and rituals. We create data in our buying habits, our viewing habits and our seeping habits (checking my Fitbit now). And all of these data points inform our managers, the retailers we frequent and online advertisers.

I believe Moureaux has created a near perfect setting for us to consider the vastness of the human experience that we can expect to unfold in the next decade. And, as overwhelming as this may seem based on the pictures and video, I look at this installation and I think, “So what does the future hold for English majors?” And, I found an interesting answer from a very unlikely source, billionaire media mogul Mark Cuban.

Earlier in February Mr. Cuban gave an interview to Bloomberg News at the 2017 NBA All-Star Technology Summit in New Orleans. In this interview he had a rather grim prediction for the future of jobs in America. In short Cuban pointed to automation as the ultimate job killer as business owners continue to choose robots and computers over humans. When the interviewer asked Cuban what fields he would encourage young people to pursue, he didn’t recommend finance. He said,

Not finance. That’s the easiest thing — you just take the data have it spit out whatever you need. I personally think there’s going to be a greater demand in 10 years for liberal arts majors than there were for programming majors and maybe even engineering, because when the data is all being spit out for you, options are being spit out for you, you need a different perspective in order to have a different view of the data. And so having someone who is more of a freer thinker.

Think about that for a moment. Automation has essentially begun to replace even those who gather and crunch complex financial data sets. The processes have become so streamlined that in the near future the greatest demand is going to be for those who can look at the automated results and provide a unique analysis and perspective. In other words, those who can “see the forest” will be in higher demand than those who can only see the invidual tree.

English majors have a particular knack and training to look a large pieces of literature and develop an analysis that brings new meaning to a text.  If Cuban is right, and English majors become more highly sought after in the next 10 years, just as computer scientists were 10 years ago, then we needed to be thinking about how we teach and prepare English majors about five years ago. Because my colleagues in the Phyics Department have yet to develop a time machine, so they tell me, I am inspired to consider how we in the English Department should be changing to meet the growing need for “freer thinkers” and big data analysts.

We will need more faculty to “see the forest” if we are going to succeed.  But the good news is that I believe we are well positioned to get a bigger view of the landscape and adjust where needed.

 

 

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The Chair Life or #ChairProbs

I kissed my kids this morning as I left for another full day at the office. I love my job. In fact, I can’t tell you how long it has been since I have loved a job more than I love this one. It is a job that occupies my mind almost every minute of the business day, and sometimes beyond. But I love it. It is remarkable.

“Are you going to be at work all day and night today?” My six-year-old asks.

“No, I’ll be home for dinner. But I have a lot of meetings today, so I need to get going.” I said.

“Why do you have so many meetings?” He asked.

“That’s the life of a Department Chair.” I said.

“You’re a Department Chair? How can a person be a chair?” My three-year-old, and very observant, daughter asked.

What a great question.  How does one become a chair?

I know what she was asking, but the question posed in the voice of my three-year-old made me think, “How did I ever end up here?”

From Reluctance to Opporutity

I began my career as a college professor nearly 8 years ago. I was hired as an Assistant Professor of English at Elizabethtown College and six years later I was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure.  Seems straightforward enough. I had set out to become a college professor after a brief four-year stint as a middle school English teacher, followed by a 2-year residency Ph.D. program at the Kansas State University College of Education.

In my pursuit to be a college professor I had but a few goals:

  • develop great classes for students,
  • write things people actually want to read, and
  • contribute to my college community in a meaningful way

You will note that I never set out to be a department chair, hold leadership positions, or seek fame. I didn’t have time for these things I thought, so they weren’t even on my radar.

But shortly after I was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor at Elizabethtown College the topic of when, not if, I were to serve as department chair became a conversation of some concern among me and my colleagues. There was a moment where I felt completely reluctant to even consider the idea. However, I quickly came around to realize this was a remarkable opportunity that I could not pass up.

There is No Training Like On-The-Job Training.

Larger colleges and universities probably send new department chair recruits to conferences and workshops on how to lead an academic department. Moderately-sized colleges might even host a series of meetings on campus to train new department leaders, but that is not part of my experience. And I believe this is the most important aspect of daughter’s question above. How did I become a chair, I just did–without much training or mentorship I assumed the role on July 1, 2016.

I did a fair amount of reading before taking over the department. I read over the most recent external review conducted right before I was hired in 2009. The extensive report written by outside reviewers provided important context. I saw the perceived areas of growth and read the criticisms as potential areas of developement.

I also found Jeff McClurken’s “Open Letter to 2010-2011’s New Department Chairs.” I think what I appreciate the most about Jeff’s letter is that he gives the new department chair a moment to reconnect with her/his/their humanity. At the end of the day, every department chair is only human, and humans make mistakes. Almost nothing that I set out to do will be perfect, though I have committed to do my work in this capacity with pride and keen sense of quality. There is, after all, nothing easy about this job. They take away nearly half of what you love–teaching, and they give you double of what you loathe–meetings. But I have found that I love this work. It is challenging, it is engaging, and it is important.

As the journey continues throughout the year I may look back on this post and think, “Look at that starry-eyed idiot waxing on and on about how his work is engaging and important…” But until I reach that point I’ll simply say this: I have found one becomes a chair when he or she finds (or develops) a passion (or love) for his or her discipline, his or her colleagues, all students involved and the collective work of the entire unit. This has become the fuel that burns every day that I wake up to do my job, and it is the guiding principle behind every decision I make–even the difficult decisions that often keep me up late at night.

Paulo Freire once examined education as “an act of love.”  I believe this is something I need to examine in a future post about becoming a department chair.

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Sabbatical Report: A Work of Speculative Fiction

I would first like to thank the dynamic members of my department.  In this day and age when resources are thin and the workload is heavy it is doubly taxing for a full-time member of the department to take an entire semester away from teaching, advising and administrative work. So while I was focusing for a time on my own professional pursuits, I also recognize that my colleagues have covered for me countless times.  Thank you.

To my wife and family, thank you for “going with the flow” during the last several months.  I have completely disrupted the routine of our family by changing my professional focus for a concentrated time this past year.  Thank you for giving me space to write when I needed to write.  Thank you for celebrating each breakthrough with me along the way.

I have noticed throughout the years that it is customary for a sabbatical report to open with photographs of an academic abroad.  A landscape of a castle or a middle eastern desert.  In this case, I have no photos to share. I stayed very close to Central PA region, but the work I was able to engage in was extremely revealing.

I began my work this past semester by making a short tour of roughly twenty-five different high school and middle school classrooms in the region.  Each is headed up by an Elizabethtown College alum who is now working as a secondary English/language arts teacher.  One of the many things I have always wanted to do is visit the graduates from my English: Secondary Education program, and I was elated to finally achieve this goal to see how the careers our former students have developed.

During these classroom visits I graded papers, made copies, tutored students and even taught a couple of mini-lessons to serve our graduates in their classrooms in some capacity.  From these first-hand experiences I have noticed that the profession has clearly changed a great deal from when I was a classroom teacher 10 years ago.  In a little less than a decade the expectations on our classroom teachers have doubled.  Previously, there was something of an enculturation period new teachers could use to acclimate themselves to the profession–to make small mistakes and learn from them.  This no longer exists, sadly. Teachers are now required to be polished, refined and efficient on the very first day of their new careers–that is their perception anyway.

This one realization had a profound impact in my practice as a teacher-educator.  I am now thinking seriously about how we need to be better preparing our students before they reach the conclusion of their undergraduate licensing programs.

My work with the Life Writes Project, an educational non-profit based in Harrisburg, continues as well.  While on my sabbatical I was able to write three different grant proposals from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and internally here at Etown College to fund a summer workshop for classroom teachers.  The workshop, currently in development, will host 14 fellows from the region who want to learn more about infusing personal narrative writing and dialogical teaching approaches in their daily teaching practice.  Upon completing the workshop our fellows will receive a classroom research grant that will likely fuel a number of creative, academic and instructional functions.

This work is probably some of the most important work I could have focused on in the last year.  You see, the classroom teacher is squeezed to create a great deal of time for standardized test preparation. These priorities often require specific approaches and methods.  But what the Life Writes Project does is work directly with classroom teachers to help them develop new ways to meet the standards for their disciplines using engaging dialogical methods. We also have some privately raised funds to help those who need additional materials, supplies or technology for their classrooms.  We have opened up a process through which any teacher can apply for an instructional grant.  These grant dollars are gifts we can award to deserving teachers who desperately seek to improve their craft.

As I only have a couple of minutes remaining, and I see another colleague cueing up her powerpoint presentation, let me leave you with these final thoughts.

In my sabbatical I saw tremendously powerful growth in the people we have taught.  They are out there carrying the mission of Elizabethtown College into the classrooms across our state and our region.  Their work is extremely difficult, but each has squared his or her shoulders to take on everything that is asked of them and more.  We should never loose heart because the people we meet here at the college are taking the work we do to new and exciting places in the world.  Be proud, friends.  We are doing a great work.

 

Webmaster’s Note: Dr. Skillen has never been approved to take a sabbatical from his teaching, advising and administrative responsibilities at Elizabethtown College. In fact, he has never applied for this kind of opportunity. The achievements described here are complete fiction.  However, the goals and aspirations discussed here are truly real.  They live and burn in Dr. Skillen’s heart.

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An Invitation to Imagine: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 4)

The imagination, when accessed and exercised regularly, can unlock a new world of possibilities.

Teaching requires a great deal of imagination. The extent to which the imagination is used to plan, organize, and execute instruction varies case by case, but in my experience, the imagination is critical in developing the rhythm, beauty, discourse, and possibilities enjoyed by each student enrolled.  The imagination enables me, the instructor, to examine new territory and related fields of study to bring variety and vibrancy to the class discussions, writing assignments, and assessments, thereby embracing a multi-modal, multi-dimensional learning experience for my students.

The imaginative teacher considers all possibilities in how he or she conducts a course.  While guidelines are established in the class syllabus, there is flexibility, when necessary, in expanding these guidelines and boundaries to allow those enrolled to progress to new levels of knowingness and understanding.  One way in particular that I have tried to creatively expand my teaching practice is to look to digital platforms to extend the work in my courses. Like most teachers, I read several drafts of my students’ written work before it is finally evaluated and graded. And like most, I often provide extensive written feedback on my students’ papers so that each student can focus his or her energy on improving his or her composition in the areas that need the most attention. In order to make this a more memorable learning experience I have also leveraged screen casting tools and web conferencing platforms to provide active feedback to my students during writing and creative processes. So, when students receive written feedback from me on an essay, research paper, or creative piece, they also receive a short video of me explaining my evaluation of their work. This approach often takes more time than simply providing written comments, but I believe this is time well spent. I have found that students respond more quickly and far more positively to verbal and visual feedback and their improvement is my ultimate goal.

The imaginative teacher understands that his or her role in the classroom is, at times, fluid.  Greene (1995) suggests that a teacher who instills a culture of active learning will create a “classroom situation most provocative in thoughtfulness and critical consciousness” (p. 23).  Green goes on to explain that these classrooms are those that “teachers and learners find themselves conducting a kind of collaborative search, deliberate attempt to break through ‘the cotton wool’ of ‘nondescript’ daily life, which Virginia Woolf thought marked by repetitions and banality” (p. 23). I want to create a unique learning experience for those who enroll in my classes at Elizabethtown College.  I am admittedly borderline maniacal on this point. After all, if the student doesn’t remember the course, did I really teach them anything? My hope is that when students reflect on their experiences in my classes they do so with the sense that it was not justanother class—that they saw something new in themselves they had not seen before.

Incorporating the imagination, and its creative power, into each course I teach is important because I believe it injects new energy into the learning process—energy that is often missing in most K-12 learning experiences.  In just under one decade, a great deal of creativity and imagination has been cut from most middle level and secondary curricula—especially for those learners who find themselves in the bottom three quartiles of their graduating classes.  Constant remediation, skill and drill test preparation, and general standardization limit the educational experiences of America’s youth by focusing on a small set of literacy skills—those that are tested.  Learning is a quest or a journey of possibilities.  A hard-line policy driven by objective, measurable standards tends to suggest that at a certain point learning should stop.  A more subjective approach celebrates learning that seeks the unknown and the incomplete yet to be explored.  Again, Greene (1995) provides an excellent example from literature by suggesting that Ishmael, of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) is an illustration of the incompleteness of man.  Melville says, “I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete must be for that very reason infallibly faulty” (p. 135).

I believe this is perfect place to meet our students at the collegiate level—with the understanding that we, all of us, are incomplete.  With creativity, ingenuity, and a little imagination, we have a remarkable opportunity to reintroduce our students to the joy of learning. How can we do this? Sometimes such an experience can begin with a simple invitation.

Many of the courses I teach require students to venture into some form of writing—creative, persuasive, expository or otherwise. I often hear from students at the beginning of each semester say, “Dr. Skillen, I don’t write all that well. I hope you are okay with that.” Or, “Dr. Skillen, creative writing really isn’t my thing, but I need this class to graduate on time. Are you OK with that?”

My response to all varieties of this question is a resounding, “Yes!” I accept these sentiments because in my experience I know these feelings of inadequacy are often the result of a single interaction in high school or middle school. At some critical moment in the less-than-confident student’s academic experience a teacher probably gave the impression that the student could not write. When I encounter students who are not confident writers, I simply invite them to try. If they honestly make an effort to complete the required assignments, I believe we can work together through a rigorous and involved writing process to help the student develop something he or she will be ultimately proud of. My classes are dynamic, dialogical, and multimodal. We employ a process-minded approach to all matters of my course and I explicitly invite students to embrace our process of learning and writing.

The imaginative teacher harnesses the limitations of the current educational system to ignite a desire for learning.  Yes, each course is set on a specific timeline, and, yes, even at the college level, standards—or student learning outcomes—must be met.  However, by making proper use of every class meeting, framing academic activity within the context of the course, and engaging each student to access their imaginations, the teacher approaches meaningful and memorable instruction.  And, if we do our job correctly, we will pass on a legacy of critical thinking and authentic inquiry to those enrolled in our courses. While these instructional characteristics are often difficult to illustrate in class syllabi (Appendix B), my hope is that my dynamic approach to teaching is seen through the accounts and reflections of former and current students.

These three pillars of my teaching philosophy and methodology have been molded through the passing of each academic year. This process began when I enthusiastically opened my own classroom in 2003 and continues to solidify through every opportunity I have to teach.

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An Invitation to Imaging: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 3)

Great teachers know when to teach and when to guide.

In his book What the Best College Teachers Do Ken Bain (2004) articulates what I believe to be the most powerful description of a college teacher’s responsibility to his or her students.  In doing so, he says,

[The] best teachers often try to create what we have come to call a ‘natural critical learning environment.’ In that environment, people learn by confronting intriguing, beautiful, or important problems, authentic tasks that will challenge them to grapple with ideas, rethink their assumptions, and examine their mental models of reality. (p. 18)

As I have worked in teacher education for seven years, I can speak to the importance of a well-established learning environment.  There are in fact entire volumes written on this topic (i.e. Teaching with Love & Logic: Taking Control of the Classroom by Jim Fay and David Funk (1995), The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong (2001) & Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments by David Joassen and Susan Land (2012)). It is widely understood that by creating the right conditions, learning will often occur.  I believe that by understanding their role in the classroom, great teachers can make an honest attempt at creating such an environment.

If I were to combine every effective strategy, approach, belief and method from my personal professional practice in a large stock pot and boil it down, I believe two simple elements would remain: teaching and guiding.  As a teacher, I am an expert in composition studies, I understand there are aspects of the writing process that can be taught effectively to emerging writers. I am an expert in curriculum studies, and I am passionate about infusing instructional technology throughout the landscape of education.  My expertise in these areas, as well as related fields in the language arts, is often the focus of my courses.  And through a rather traditional model of higher education instruction, I deliver lectures and facilitate discussions on theory, form, structure, analysis, and authorship.  As a teacher, I assess and measure student development throughout the entire course.  I adjust and adapt my content delivery in order to address questions or concerns from students.  I create assignments and determine deadlines.  And, when it is all over, I assign grades—marks of achievement, outcomes of learning, or one more number in figuring the cumulative GPA. In my opinion, this is only part of the teaching profession.

Whether in the classroom or in the field observing pre-service teachers, there are times when a professor must step back and allow students to advance their own understandings.  In doing so, the teacher operates more as a guide, providing support and advice as students work to solve problems and demonstrate their skills in a given task.  Admittedly, teachers take a risk in devoting time within the course to allow for student-directed study.  However, there are significant advantages to symbolically dropping the reins and allowing the course to run wild for a bit.  From a purely existential stance, such instances offer learners the opportunity to carve their own path, to experience learning on their own terms.

Looking back once again on my own education, I can honestly say that I remember very little of what was said in a class.  However, I have very clear memories of what was experienced in Kindergarten through my graduate course work.  In these moments, the teacher allowed me to find my own path to success or failure. When I visit with former students, whether they are students I have worked with in the middle school or college classroom, they rarely reflect on a lecture I provided on writing pedagogies or plot structures.  Instead, students tell me how much they enjoyed creating, discussing, analyzing and experiencing the content of the course.

Author and educational philosopher bell hooks (1994) refers to these experiences as part of a “progressive, holistic engaged pedagogy” (p. 15) that has the power to press the limits of traditional teaching styles.  hooks (1994) explains further,

I have been most inspired by those teachers who have had the courage to transgress those boundaries that would confine each pupil to a rote, assembly-line approach to learning.  Such teachers approach students with the will and desire to respond to our unique beings… (p. 13)

Clearly, hooks is calling for a more engaged approach to teaching, and in doing so she is calling on participants, teachers, students and supervisors not to settle into a “passive consumer” (p. 14) role.  Rather, hooks encourages everyone connected to the classroom to contribute regularly to the progress of everyone else involved.  While hooks suggests this is a courageous approach to teaching, I would hesitate to categorize active teaching strategies as dangerous.  When a teacher allows for self-actualization or student-guided instruction, he or she does gamble with the time allotted for the class.  However, in returning to the second core principle, “Great teachers know when to teach and when to guide,” a good teacher knows how to utilize these approaches to the benefit of his or her students.  He or she weighs the risks and the rewards and seizes moments in a class to lead through a dynamic lecture, as well as guide students to new appreciations and perspectives.  Striking a balance between teaching and guiding requires finesse and professional judgment that develops through experience in the classroom.

Transitioning from the teacher to the guide establishes a new dynamic in the classroom.  In this way learners can stretch their own understandings in directions that the teacher in front of the room may have neglected to emphasize or highlight in his or her lectures and presentations.  This new dynamic has the power to provide fresh context and perspective to the content of the course.  And, in courses specific to the humanities, I believe there is always room for expansion in this regard.

No matter the level of course I am teaching, I believe the students can bring valuable information and insight to the rest of the class. When operating as a guide, I ask students to develop a deep understanding of a topic or text related to the content of the course. With my guidance students then prepare a short presentation for the class on the new information they have gathered during their time of research and preparation. This single approach allows each student to take ownership of one critical component of the course and it expands the content covered and digested by the class exponentially.

When choosing to operate as a guide in the classroom the teacher takes an opportunity to be inspired as well.  In an environment where the teacher and the students are actively engaged there is no limit to where the combined efforts of everyone involved can take the content of the course.

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An Invitation to Imagine: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 2)

Experience is often a great teacher.

This principle may seem out of place in a so-called philosophy of teaching and learning written by a teacher. If one can learn all he or she needs from experience, then why on Earth does our culture need organized education? I believe new experiences can both inform our understanding of our past and shape our future. And throughout our lived experiences we often encounter a number of guides who help us make sense of our experiences and therefore forge lasting impressions in our memories. In some cases a qualified, observant teacher can serve as this guide. Sometimes these encounters are big and can change a life altogether. But, in most cases, these experiences are small but equally liberating and powerful.

In my own experience as a student, there were times that I certainly didn’t understand the significance of a well-informed guide (or mentor).  As a sophomore in college majoring in English, I enrolled in a British literature survey course that included the works of William Shakespeare.  At first, I found Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter to be clumsy and confusing. No matter how I divided up his words, evaluated the lyrical gymnastics necessary to maintain the flow and rhythm of his plays and sonnets, identifying the nuances of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter was impossible for me.  When I clearly demonstrated my trouble in assessment after assessment, my professor attempted to show me how the very same lyrical pattern I was struggling to grasp could be found in other modes of media. I wouldn’t hear of it. To pass the class I put on a pair of blinders and I charged on through the course—working twice as hard through the moments of struggle and frustration. I memorized foot placement of a few lines here and there, and maybe I fooled the professor in giving me a passing grade in the course.  But, I wasn’t fooling myself.

Two years later, during my senior year, I was listening to the radio when the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman” came blaring through one and a half working speakers of my teal green 1996 Chevy S-10.  Maybe it was the solid backbeat laid down by Charlie Watts.  Perhaps it was the unmistakable lyrical interpretation provided by Mick Jagger.  In any case, I remember singing along, tapping my thumb on the steering wheel, and identifying the iambic pentameter structure of each verse.  I immediately turned my truck back to my apartment, pulled out my Bevington anthology of Shakespeare’s plays from the dusty bookshelf, and saw the beauty of metered verse for the very first time.  The British literature class was over, I had turned in my final exam two years prior, and a grade had already been decided.  But, the skill of identifying iambic pentameter did not crystallize for me within the course calendar.

In this case, through the timeless guidance of the Rolling Stones, I finally unlocked the secret of Shakespeare’s poetic style. This one moment not only informed me of a very important aspect of British literature that I missed in the context of an academic class, but it also gave me important insight on how a well-meaning professor was trying to help me. I had ultimately found one possible way that I might be able to teach students to engage in content they find difficult or obtuse.

The majority of the courses I have taught thus far at Elizabethtown College are in the first-year writing program.  EN 100 Writing and Language is a foundational course that offers students the opportunity to expand and sharpen their academic writing skills.  As an experienced teacher, I know that not all students arrive with the same previous experiences.  This is one challenge that I have attempted to meet head-on by engaging a number of techniques and technologies that help foster a sense of community in my classes. In my EN 100 courses students collaborate on a number of small and large projects, building on each other’s strengths and learning from one another when necessary. I also attempt to extend the learning of our course through web-based communications, like Twitter, to engage learners in a variety of conversations related to the course material. For example, particularly during election years, my students and I have carried out a number of Twitter chats during live political debates to discuss the uses of propaganda and politicalspeak. Together, we examine the language unfolding in the media around us in an attempt to become better informed.

By the end of the course, I know that most students will meet my expectations for the class.  And a few may not internalize the important concepts of our course at all.  However, I hope that at some point in the near future something we discussed, viewed, or read will resonate in their academic, professional, or personal lives. If I may but serve as a mentor or guide in those critical moments, I believe experience can truly inform those who are open to learn from it.

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An Invitation to Imagine: A four-part series on teaching and learning (part 1)

Earlier this year I began my twelfth year as a teacher. For nearly one-third of my life I have dedicated myself to creating memorable and lasting learning opportunities that shape how people see themselves and interpret their surroundings. I began my career as a middle school language arts teacher in Maize, KS. Working in a middle school comes with its own occupational hazards. The middle years are often a minefield of emotions and hormones that pose a serious threat to an adult’s sanity and livelihood. However, the greatest risk that one must contend with while teaching at a middle school is that it is dangerously endearing.

The pace and rhythm of a middle school language arts classroom requires a great attention to detail and a focused game plan. The work is excruciating but doubly rewarding and I point to these first four years at Maize South as perhaps the most influential in shaping my teaching practice. From these first years of classroom experience, I have built a dynamic and meaningful teaching practice that has informed my professional development and my academic work. The pages that follow will illuminate on the high points of my academic record—the spirit of which was born in room A-101 of Maize South Middle School.

Foundations

Learning, the best variety of it, happens naturally throughout the course of a person’s lived experiences.  We teachers are lucky to witness that moment, when “a-ha” meets bliss, within the limitations of a normal academic term.  However, much to the frustration of the most passionate teacher, it can take years for some learners to finally grasp a critical concept once covered at length in an academic class.  I understand much of what we discuss in my classes at Elizabethtown College may in fact be realized in the minds of my students well down the road in another course or in their lives beyond college. It is, therefore, my teaching mission, and ultimate intended outcome, to create quality, memorable and lasting learning opportunities for all learners—in class, online, or in attendance at a professional conference.  This important goal is founded on three simple principles that characterize my philosophy and methodology of teaching.

  1. Experience is often a great teacher.
  2. Great teachers know when to teach and when to guide.
  3. The imagination, when accessed and exercised regularly, can unlock new worlds of possibilities.

These three principles overlap and weave in and out of all aspects of my teaching practice.  They are present in the construction, enactment and reflection of every course, workshop, or presentation.  And they are the foundations that I hope to pass on to the next generation of classroom teachers.

In the next three posts of this series, I will expand on each of the three foundational points listed above.