Ok, so it's only mid-January and I've already broken my New Year's Resolution to post "one blog entry a week." But it wasn't my fault. Not at all. There were numerous culprits, including technology itself, which, although touted by its apostles as liberation from the shackles of our limited, material reality, is nothing more than a vast conspiracy to make us worship at the alter of technocratic efficiency while we become dependent slaves to tyrannical machines! Fight the power!
[Translation: On Friday, I wasted an entire three hours of my life-never to be retrieved!--when this brutish computer robbed me of an entire class of grades and comments. Ok, so maybe there was some element of human error--a botched key stroke that made my grades inexplicably disappear from the (unsaved) web page where I was recording them prior to "uploading" them to Angel . But that's not the point! The point is that three hours of MY LIFE disappeared and I want them back! All three of them! The very three hours that I would have used to post my blog and maintain my New Year's Resolution! Truly. You must believe me!]
Well, actually, I must admit that this system of grading and making comments of which I speak is truly an efficient and time-saving procedure that I've used flawlessly dozens of times, probably saving me dozens of hours and the earth dozens of trees. I can't really complain. But computers--and ANGEL, our "elearning course platform," is such a convenient scapegoat. [The reader--and yes, Mom, that is singular, as in you--must now inevitably conclude that I am the tyrant, at least of this blog, employing the classic "create a scapegoat to divert them from your own flaws" strategy. To this I would only say, "No duh."]
So, the quarter has begun and there is much to discuss. But first what I learned from 2011 (teaching-wise)?
1. Don't try to be cute: I know what you are saying. "But Dave, how can you possibly keep yourself from being cute?" Here's one example of what I mean: sometimes I give titles to lectures, so as to frame a particular argument that I'm making. For instance, I might call a presentation of the Clinton years, "Clinton Conservatism," to underscore the point that Clinton took the Democratic Party to the center of the political spectrum and even co-opted a number of conservative issues and approaches (remember the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act," Clinton's welfare reform law?), or I might discuss the Bush 43 years under the heading "The Rise of Big Government Conservatism" to showcase how conservatives like Bush often speak rhetorically of "limited government" while dramatically expanding the size and scope of the federal government. Here’s the problem: while many students get it, there are invariably those who will explain in their final exam how Clinton was "a conservative" and how George W. Bush was a "liberal" who expanded the size the government. Subtlety does not work. Satire never works. And cute counterintuitives are not cute or counterintuitive if your audience has no background knowledge to begin with. This, unfortunately, is the case with most of my students.
2. Students like biography: My graduate school professors must have hated history as biography. I don't recall ever being assigned to read a biography for a class while in graduate school (although I read a few on my own), and I remember a lot of abstract seminars about "colonialism" and "classical liberalism" and "classical republicanism" and "liberal capitalism" and "nationalism" and "imperialism" and "industrial capitalism" and on and on. An alien eavesdropping on those seminars would have been hard-pressed to gather that history is fundamentally about people. I'm not even sure that I learned about any people in graduate school! Alas, I exaggerate. But truth be told, I'm kind of a sucker for abstractions. I can talk nationalism and industrial capitalism and Social Darwinism until the cows come home. But my students, weirdly enough, actually enjoy learning about people--their dreams and deeds and dalliances. The latter is, of course, a reference to Clinton again. I might talk for an hour about welfare reform, financial deregulation, and trade liberalization in the 1990s, and my students may vaguely remember some of it, but if I talk about Clinton's upbringing, his education, his marriage to Hilary Rodham, his stunning political intelligence and, yes, his marital infidelities, it seems as if students lock in and soak it up with near perfect recall. I'll get well-written bluebook exams that go on for pages about the gossipy, personal, human-interest bio material, and mention nary a word about politics and policies. Of course, this just kills me. I think the important stuff is in the politics and policies. But that's because I've been brainwashed. My students are tapping into what makes history compelling for most of us--and what has been drawing us in for centuries. Stories. About people. What a concept. I'm going to do more of that.
3. Students can write blogs: Some of my students gamed the assignment and did the bare minimum to receive extra credit, but many students created outstanding blogs. What more can I say. I was impressed.
4. I have a chip on my shoulder: As I was reminded recently by a fellow colleague with whom I am teaching a history/literature "learning community," I have a chip on my shoulder about how fashionable it has become for pedagogy experts to attack lecture as self-indulgent (the "sage on the stage") and ineffective, while advocating "student centered" or "active learning," which essentially boils down to various forms of group-work. I plead guilty. I really do have a chip on my shoulder about this. Which really means that I feel defensive. Which really means that I suspect that I lecture too much and need to do more "student-centered" learning activities, which truly makes me want to barf because I do not enjoy running my classes that way, at least that's my line and I'm sticking to it, for now…… Ok, so you can see that I have a chip on my shoulder. This means more fruitful blog entries about my inner struggles to grow and challenge myself as a teacher while still trying "to thine own self be true."
Well, this isn't all I learned last quarter, but it's late and I'm running out of steam. I think the real tyranny is this New Year's resolution that has kept me up past my bed time posting this blog!
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