Mental Models of Purpose of College

 Been busy with not just classes, but meeting with students and also coaching (mostly) students.  All is going well and I look forward to collecting my thoughts into some coherent whole.

Currently reading The Real World of College: What College Is and What It Can Be by Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner and, first of all, how can I be at a place that talks about and cares about this sort of stuff?  Where I can discuss the ideas in this book with colleagues?  Oh well, instead I'll assign sections to my students so I can talk about it with someone.

The specific piece of this book that is currently occupying my mind is their categories for how people think about college.  They identify 4 general categories: inertial (viewing college as just the next step after high school -- in the same way high school is the next step after middle school), transactional (college as a mean to a job afterward), exploratory (college as a means to discover and better understand the world) and transformational (college as a way to 'level up' as a person).  They note that the level of selectivity at a school correlates with the mental model students have and that most faculty view college as transformational (regardless of the selectivity).  All this makes sense and it interesting.  They also discuss the change in students models from first year to graduation.

With these models in hand, I've been having two thoughts.

First, my dissatisfaction with my institution is at least in part due to the real doubling down on being transactional.  I think in the time I've been here, there's been a shift in how we are marketing ourselves to that it's nearly entirely transactional anymore and I disagree that this is what college should be.  Yes, we should definitely be making sure that our students are employable but to focus on this seems like focusing on the lowest possible bar and abandoning what college education could be doing and how we could be making people's lives much much better by helping them to do more than just be employable.  We shouldn't be communicating to anyone that the most important thing is whether or not someone can get a job -- that we are all, fundamentally, laborers.  There's so much more we can be and should be able to be.  To settle for mere employability is irresponsible.  

At the same time, I understand that this might be so-called 'low hanging fruit' -- that this is an easy way to convince students (and their parents) to give us their tuition dollars instead of somewhere else.

All this helps me to better understand the disconnect btwn the decisions being made and what I think makes sense.  The goals of the current administration are completely different from the goals I think we ought to have.  Of course, it's still true that given the goals the administration has, they are making (from my perspective) decisions that are not likely to achieve even their stated goals.  And, thus, my frustration isn't completely abetted.  I'd be much happier if they were to at least be collaborative with strategies for achieving the goals they've set -- instead of only talking with those they believe are likely to agree.  

But I digress.

My second thought is that I suspect the mental model students have for college greatly shapes how they understand what it means to be a learner.  Yes, this is super obvious once I thought of it -- and, conceivably, everyone else is extremely aware of this and it's been so obvious that no one ever discusses it, BUT it feels like an epiphany to me.  My hypothesis is that students who have a transactional view of college are far less likely to do the reading, think about the reading at a deeper level, participate, etc.  That is, they are simply less inclined to engage ideas because they view the point as simply to "fulfill the requirements' and get the degree.

The next question then is how to help students shift from transactional to either exploratory or transformational.  What inspires the shift that at least some students make and how can I be more intentional in making it happen?  This is now the question I'm going to sit with.

Trying to engage students not used to reading or discussion

 It's been a bit and so I want to collect my thoughts on a handful of things

(a) a class that's not going well.  argh.

(b) class that's going really well. yay.

(c) thoughts on handwriting instead of typing

(d) an idea to turn around class in (a)

(e) Anil Seth's Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

(f) incorporating (i) having students submit introductions to papers prior to papers & (ii) peer feedback for papers.

I probably won't get to all and already I know that it won't go in the order I've just laid out.  In what's below I address (a) & (d)

The class that isn't going well is my AI Ethics class.  This is, probably, the 5th or so time that I've taught this and it's a constant struggle.  At least some of the struggle is due to the fact that the majority of students taking this class are computer science (or CS adjacent) majors and so have few classes that involve reading, discussion or writing. In fact, I asked my class this week how many, of ~25, routinely write for their classes.  Maybe 4 people raised their hands.

I've taught this course a bunch of different ways and it never quite catches in the way I'd like (a quick sidenote: I've realized that I think of classes the way I do campfires -- trying to get them lit, nurturing a flame and then keeping the fire going.  And this class almost always feels like I'm working with lots of wood that isn't sufficiently dry).

This time around I'm using an Oxford anthology on AI and ethics whereas previously I've used books.  The idea this time around was to aim for more breadth and that with many articles there's a greater chance that students will find something interesting.  

I may have made an error in how I've assigned articles since I began with the applied section (which is the last section of the book).  My thinking was that students would get caught up in cases and that would energize them, then we could move to more theory and the theory would connect back to the cases.  And, well, it isn't really working in that getting them to talk is laborious.  I am finally coming to terms with the fact that they just are a group that is going to discuss (in part I blame the room which is horrible).  

However, this means I leave class every single time feeling like yet another class was a bit of a dud.  Not spectacular failures, just duds.

So, I've been reading for this class far ahead of time letting the article marinate hoping that I'd come up with something that could hook them in.  I've had some success but, to return to the fire metaphor above, the spark may lead to a bit of flame, if I'm lucky, but no fire has materialized*.  HOWEVER, I've had an idea this morning which I'm going to try this week.

Here's my idea.  

The class meeting before they do the reading, I'm going to do the following:

a. Just give them the topic of the next article -- the next one is "AI and Migration Mitigation" and ask them to think about the topic and hypothesize (i) how AI might be used with issues of immigration, (ii) what ethical issues might follow from such use and (iii) how to address these issues.  Have them discuss this in their small groups (if I haven't mentioned before, I've become convinced that the ideal size for initial discussion is either pairs or threesomes -- somewhere, long long ago, I read that 5 is the ideal number and stuck with that because someone who presented themselves as an authority said so.  I have finally gained enough confidence to reject their authority).  Then...

(b) have them read the introduction to the essay (and only the introduction) and have them generate questions, thoughts, observations, etc. with them ultimately working, in the group, to hypothesize/anticipate how the article will unfold.  And, of course, to compare what they came up with in (a) with what they are seeing in the introduction.

(c) give them the headings of all the sections and have them, again, discuss, generate questions, make observations, note surprises and revise their hypotheses/anticipation of what the specifics of the article are and make guesses about the specifics in each section

(d) have them read the conclusion and then, again, discuss, generate questions, guess what likely happened in the article they've still not read.

(e) now, read through the body with the intention of answering the questions they've developed.

Now, my guess is that we won't get to (e) in class and that's fine, they'll ideally go home, read with the goal of answering questions and then return the next class to ask any lingering questions.

This feels like something that will work because it's (a) breaking things down into remarkably manageable pieces; (b) does not, I don't think, put anyone in a position where they might feel stupid; (c) is done with support (the folks in their triad); (d) hopefully, demystifies reading; (e) requires independent thinking and some creativity as they have to make predictions about the issues prior to reading the article.

My sense is this will work (and by 'work' I mean, engage the students so that they feel like their time is not being wasted...and if they remain engaged, they will, in fact, learn something).  

Fingers crossed.

* I'm incredibly grateful for the coaching experience I've had and continue to have because it's really put me in a frame of mind that I can do something about this and that I needn't simply curl up in a ball and wait until next semester to try again.  If I think about the metaphor of trying to light a fire, when I try to light a fire in my fire insert I genuinely will not give up.  I may pause, say that I'm going to give up, but I try again, because I really like fires in my fireplace (and I've got nothing to lose, besides matches and kindling, in trying again and again and again).  Historically, if a class hasn't gone well, I've tended to conclude that if something isn't going well it's because of me and if things are still not going well a month into the semester then, well, there's no hope and each meeting of that class is just another data point for me to conclude that I suck. 

But something has changed and this semester I've had an attitude of "okay, well, let's roll up the sleeves and figure out something to do that'll change things. It's got to be because of the coaching I've been doing and the time sitting and working with folks to figure out what outcome they'd prefer, what is currently getting in their way, what might need to shift to get to what they'd prefer. It's seeped in and led me to a place where I've honestly started to believe that things can be improved. I mean, I'd have always said I believed that, but here I am realizing that I really hadn't and now I do.

Tyranny of the syllabus

 I can't remember what I've written here and what I've just thought so if this is a repeat that's why.

Main point is that I feel like I'm finally (after more than 25 years teaching) feeling like I've cracked the nut of at least one of my classes -- sadly, I don't think what I've learned is terribly transferable.

This semester I'm teaching our entry level ethics course for something like the 50th time.  This is a course I've just about every semester for my entire career and each time I've taught it I've tweaked it, sometimes significantly and other times just slightly.  I've usually returned, in all these experiments, to focusing on historical texts -- Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill and then rights theorists.  For each, I've also included a contemporary author (selecting for people who are not white men).  But, there was a spate of years where a good chunk of the course was a role playing game and other semesters when I just used an anthology.  

This semester I couldn't make up my mind.  Every time I went to make a decision and map out a semester, I just couldn't.  I realized that when I map out semester's I tend to really visualize the semester, the ebbs and flows and what makes sense to follow what articles.  And I was just stuck this time around.  It was feeling like I was trying to predict something that was, fundamentally, unpredictable.  At the same time, I spend a decent amount of time writing up cases for my ethics classes.  Frequently inspired by tv shows or the news, I write up paragraphs with situations that should mess with people's minds (ethically speaking).

So, I decided this semester to simply focus on cases and to assign the readings that made the most sense given what we'd discussed.  I uploaded to the class site on the LMS all the articles I could imagine using (and have now thought of more that I need to upload) and then, pretty much, let them know at the end of one class what we'll be discussing for the next class.

This has been revelatory for me.

The result has been multifold.  First and foremost, I'm going more slowly through the material. Instead of being focused on making sure we get through the syllabus (because the syllabus is a contract), I've been focused on making sure the students are ready to move on to something else with the result that I'm going far more slowly.  And, of course, the second piece is this in listening to the students I'm both giving them agency in the class and, I hope, communicating that what's important is their learning, not simply getting through the material.

Now, I'd have said for the last 25+ years that, of course, it's more important to focus on student learning than to get through the syllabus.  But, simply the presence of a syllabus and a schedule of readings gives it power and so it was always a question of whether it made sense to alter the syllabus -- so 'sticking to the syllabus' (and what I was thinking prior to the semester beginning) becomes the default and I need to find a 'good' reason to justify any alteration.  

Now, the reason I can do this in this class (or, rather, the reason I feel comfortable doing this in this class) is that I know this material inside and out which means that, whatever a particular conversation seems to be leading to, I can, without any effort, identify an article that will be helpful for the next class discussion.  In my other classes, where we're reading more contemporary discussions (my AI Ethics course and my course on higher education), my knowledge is less comprehensive and so I don't think I'd be able to be this freewheeling -- though I can certainly slow down in those classes and not give in to the tyranny of the syllabus.  Well, that's something to at least work on. I find I'm better able to do this in my higher education class (because I am really familiar with what we're discussing) than in the AI Ethics class because there's so much being written and so much I don't know and my knowledge is. focused on books not articles (hmm, this is a good observation to have made and a reason to start focusing on articles).

Whoops, off to a meeting!

Some background

 I was thinking, this morning, about what got me started really thinking about teaching.  I began teaching the summer after my first semester of graduate school.  I'm not sure why I was asked but a more senior graduate student was supposed to teach, I think, critical thinking or, perhaps, introduction to philosophy and was unable to.  I was asked and I, of course, agreed.   And, I really enjoyed it.  There were very few students in the class (maybe 5?) and so perhaps the reason that other grad student backed out was that the pay would be less.  Regardless, I found that I both enjoyed teaching the class and felt like I was doing a good job.

I then spent my remaining years in graduate school teaching in the summer, for the university's night school, then 'graduating' to teach during the day and also teaching at another university.  

Two moments stand out as the first time I really began to think about teaching and both were in the summer prior to starting my tenure track position.  The first was simply about grading and how to make it easier to be consistent in how I graded papers.  I'd been grading, obviously, in my classes and as a teaching assistant but I had no thought through approach to what made one paper deserving of one grade and another deserving of another.  It was more that I just intuited the essence of the paper and gave it that grade.  Obviously, not an ideal approach to grading.  So, I sat with a friend in her backyard and offered my thoughts on what a paper had to do to merit each grade A-F, she provided feedback and together we ended up with a document that I used from the outset in my new job. 

Importantly, I was sitting with my friend in her backyard with my brand new puppy. I'd wanted a dog ever since I knew people had dogs but my parents waited until the summer before I went to college to get one (yes, still a source of bitterness); so this dog (a German Shepherd puppy) was the first dog I'd ever had.  And, crucial to my thinking about teaching, I got the book The Art of Raising a Puppy by the Monks of New Skete.  My primary take-away from this book was to look at the world from the vantage point of the puppy.  While I may have thought I was teaching her one thing, I was actually, inadvertently, teaching her something else.  For example, if your dog constantly runs away from you and when your dog returns you yell at it for having run away from you, your dog simply experiences getting yelled at for returning and so, well, you've just taught your dog to avoid returning to you.  

I took this nugget about learning -- that everyone is always learning but not necessarily what you want them to -- very seriously and began to think about what was it I was actually encouraging students to do even as I was telling them I wanted them to do something else.  And so I was off and running thinking about my teaching.

The third crucial moment in my evolution as a thinker was going to a ANAC conference at Hampton University with a handful of administrators  all of whom were incredibly thoughtful teachers.  It was at this conference when I heard for the first time about intellectual development of students and, with that, began to think about what students bring to the classroom in terms of their own growth and how that shapes what makes or doesn't make sense to them.

These three things stand out to me as the most important and it's clear to met that what I learned from the Monks of New Skete made it possible for me to understand the importance of what I heard at the conference.  

And then a final important event was attending the first of a handful of programs at Harvard's Graduate School of Education that were all focused on the integration of neuroscience and education -- part of their Minds, Brains and Education programming.  It was here that I began to get immersed in the research about learning both in terms of what's happening in our brains, the importance of educational psychology and attending to what student experience is prior to coming to my classroom.  In particular, two things stand out in my mind at this moment: (a) every student is recovering from K-12 education and (b) learning is difficult (and includes lots and lots of unlearning).

But, I think, really the key idea in all of this is what the Monks of New Skete had to say about the importance of seeing the word from the perspective of the other, that is, empathy.

More on initial one-on-one conversations

 Wrapping up the one-on-one discussions with students and just want to record the questions I end up asking them:

(a) Tell me a bit about why you decided to go to college and then, given those reasons, why you decided to come to Drake.

I started asking why they chose to go to college because I teach a course on higher ed and I'm curious about students reasons.  I fully expected all the students to say that it was just expected of them and that they didn't really think it through that much.  I was surprised that for a fair number of them not going to college was a live option and so they really did decide to go to college.  So, expectation #1 upturned.

(b) Aside from a degree and being employable, what are you hoping to get out of your college experience? 

Now, I mixed this one up a bit.  For some students I asked about "college experience" and for others "college education" and for some just "college" -- predictably I got different responses.  For the most part, if I didn't specify they interpreted 'college' as 'college experience' and the responses were focused on relationships, maturing, 'practice being an adult,' etc.  The response to 'college education' was more along the lines of be more well-rounded, educated, etc.  So those responses were, to my mind, evidence that students really hadn't thought about that very much which, honestly, isn't surprising.

(c) As you think about the class you're taking with me this semester what, besides a good grade and fulfilling a requirement, how do you see this class fitting in with your larger goals for a college education?

Because this was close to a question they were asked in the document I gave them to fill out ahead of time, their responses were prepared (as opposed to their responses to (a) & (b) where they frequently hadn't thought about it), most of them said that they wanted to learn more about what other people think.  So it wasn't about what I would call "learning" but instead about simply becoming more familiar with the wide variety of views.  So, a clear awareness that other folks have other views and an interest in understanding why they have those views.  Little articulated awareness that learning what other people think might change their minds, but that makes sense.

(d) Are there particular skills or dispositions that you'd like to continue to work on developing in this course this semester?

This again was something the form they filled out prepared them for and so many students said one or more of the following: writing, discussion, being open minded while listening to others.

(e) So, when I ask you, midsemester, if you are making good progress toward the goals you've articulated, what will you look to to determine if you are making progress?

This was a really good question as evidenced by the common response of "hmm, that's a good question."  One of the points of these discussions is to get students thinking about their own learning and so having them take a moment to step back and really think about how they will know if they're making progress was, I think, a good exercise.  For the most part they were able to articulate what concrete evidence would count as progress so that's a win.

(f) For most students I end up finding out, as this conversation progresses, what their major is and so the next question is: What is it about [major], beyond you're being good at it, that draws you to it?

(g) What are you interested in outside of school?

This is just a way for me to get to know them a bit more and be able to see them as more than just student in class -- I always know that they're more than just a student in class, but I rarely get glimpses of who that person is outside of class.  It's just good for me to know the whole student.

(h) Is there anything else you think it'd be helpful for me to know to work on making this course a positive learning experience for you this semester?

Many students say that there's nothing more but some students share that they have ADHD, anxiety issues, fidget/doodle a great deal, have speech impediments, etc..

I close out the conversation then by thanking them for their time and telling them that I look forward to getting to know them as the semester progresses.

Overall, the students appear to be really grateful for these conversations (many have said as much).  So, if nothing else, this is setting their view of me as someone who cares about them and their learning in the class.  This is another of my goals with these conversations -- that they have a really clear (and accurate) picture of my goals and hopes as their teacher.  My hope is that simply setting this anchor helps if/when things go less smoothly than ideal.

And, despite the fact that these 75 or so conversations have taken a fair chunk of time, I have genuinely enjoyed all of them.  The connection with the students feels good and is part of the reason I enjoy working with them.

Immunity to Failure

 Well, the first week went well and second week is off to a fine start.

One thing I've noticed is my willingness (a very new willingness) to amend the syllabus on the fly.  To a large extent this is because this semester my classes have not required the student purchase books as most of what we're doing is available online.  I had no idea how much my. desire to not have the students feel like they'd wasted their money was influencing my rigid adherence to the syllabus.  It's really quite liberating.

What other insights?  Oh, one that I'm not sure I've mentioned (or one that's clearly on my mind because I'm mentioning it again) is that in my conversations with students at least 75% of them (though probably closer to 99% of them) have identified 'discussion' as something they'd like to improve.  When I ask what impedes discussion they say it's their fear of being judged/wrong.  Now, of course I know this.  When I talk to folks about teaching I spend a fair amount of time discussing the human fear of being cast out of the group and the way we interpret being told that we're mistaken as being told that we are not worthy of being in the group.  Students fear, we fear, being thought to be stupid.  I know this but I don't think I do enough in the classroom to address this.

Over the summer I read Tom and David Kelley's (of IDEO) book Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All and they being up the idea of "immunity to failure" -- at least I think it's them -- my copy of the book is at home — and I love this idea.  I'll have to do some work to find out if this is how the recent spate of work on grit is discussed but I love the phrasing of 'immunity to failure.'  The example that I used with a student when I was responding to his fear of failure was that of video games.  I asked him if he played video games (was pretty sure he does) and when he said that he did, I asked him what impact losing a life on a video game had on him.  Did it make him not want to play the game any more and, of course, he said it didn't.  When you play video games you get so used to losing that playing again is not only something we do but it's something we do compulsively.  So, far more than failure discouraging us it appears to motivate us.  My suspicion is that it isn't the failure that motivates us but the feeling that we were so close to succeeding or at least a confidence that another attempt might be successful.  So, the question is how can i get students to feel this way in class about talking.  Of course, in a video game no one is watching so it's just you but my sense is that even if someone is watching many people will want to try again before handing the controls over to someone else and letting them have a try.  There's something about our attitude to failure in some cases (with video games being a really clear example) that would be really helpful if I could get folks to have a similar attitude in the case of saying something in class.  

Historically, my approach was to reframe what they were calling 'failure' to say that not getting the right answer in class isn't a failure because it can further conversation, but this has not been a successful approach.  Learning from Creative Confidence, one thing to do is make failure inevitable.  If everyone fails then no one individual is going to feel stupid for failing.  If the expectations are crazy unreasonable, then doing less than perfectly (and, let's be honest, this is what many students identify as 'being stupid' or 'unworthy") is 100% expected.  The way that Kelley & Kelley achieve this is with crazy time constraints.  So, maybe I'll try that.  Have students write a paper in 20 minutes and that's all the time they can use?

I happened upon this link yesterday where the idea of a 4 sentence paper was shared and, quite frankly, I love the idea.  So, perhaps today in class I'll ask the students to do this and only give them, like, 5 minutes and then they can discuss what they've written with others and in that discussion further develop the ideas.  Yup, that's what I'm going to try.  I'll let you know how it goes!

ETA:

Worked well! Somehow class flew by but then gave students just 5 minutes to write the 4 sentences and then put them into breakout rooms with one other person to share.  I emphasized that I expected that these 4 sentences wouldn't be very good and that this said nothing about them but was only about the unreasonable time constraints.  With only two minutes left in class, 2 of the 18 students volunteered that they thought they felt better about those 4 sentences (which I noted is pretty much an outline of a paper) than they do on many of their papers.  I also prefaced this with an explanation of why I was doing it and the idea of immunity to failure and the example of video games.  So, a win for today.  We'll see about tomorrow

Authenticity & vulnerability

 Happily (in terms of getting some space in my day) it appears my next appointment is a no show which means I can get some thoughts down here. 

I was thinking last night as I was feeling so good about classes, that what I'm really enjoying is feeling like I'm being truly authentic and genuine in class.  Not that I've been inauthentic previously but that I've had this professor persona that I've wrapped myself in that is, I think, different from who I am outside of that.  This is noticeable in the difference in student perception of who I am btwn the students who just sit in class with me and the students with whom I have a closer relationship (because of a smaller class or they are in a leadership position that leads to us having more individualized conversations)

When I say that I feel like I'm being more authentic, the way this is showing up is that I'm being more vulnerable with my students.  I think this is my way of being authentic.  I am the person who, with my friends, will randomly, when I'm in a mood, send an email telling them how grateful I am for them in my life.  I am the sort of person, I've discovered, who feels compelled to share how I'm feeling (hopefully not in an icky boundary-free way).  This is showing up in my classes this semester by the fact that I've posted a letter on each of my classes' sites where I explain how it is that I've decided to grade the way that I am (ungrading -- so no grades throughout the semester, only feedback, and they get to decide what grade they deserve and I'll more than likely give them that grade).  In this letter, I didn't try to appear to be all knowing.  I talked about what I want for students in terms not of learning content but in terms of having a good life and helping them figure out what they want out of college.  

The conversations I had in classes yesterday felt very much in keeping with this.  I told students to write down their initial responses to the following: 'grades' 'good grades' 'gpa' 'learning' and to also recall and significant memories they have around any of these.  Then I put them in breakout rooms (on zoom) to discuss.  When they returned to the large group I had them share their observations.  After they did this (and they had such great conversations), I shared with them my desires for what the class would do for them.  I used the language not of content or even academic skills but found myself really speaking from the heart to say that I want the best for them whatever that might mean.  That I want to help them grow in the ways that they want to and that I also see myself as someone who is charged with working on behalf of their future selves.  I think what these conversations (I had two classes yesterday and will have this same discussion in my third class today) had in common with the letter that I wrote is that I was really speaking form the heart.  I wasn't filtering what I was thinking into some more 'professorial' language that was speaking from on high and with authority.  I simply was sharing with them what I want for them and made clear that these desires for them are really from the heart (though of course they connect to the head as well -- I am a philosopher after all).

At any rate, it feels good to be able to speak this way and to have it so well received.  I've had students already commenting on their response to the letter I posted "I've never gotten a letter from a professor.!" "That letter was so thoughtful and I was so interested to hear your thinking about teaching" are common comments -- both the pleased surprise at getting the sort of communication and their (apparent) genuine pleasure in understanding my thinking.

One part of me wants to immediately jump to 'everyone should be vulnerable in class' and thinking that that's the key.  But I think that it's more being authentic and the importance of that.  Of course, it may be the case that being authentic requires being vulnerable -- I'll have to think more about that -- but these are my thoughts of the moment.

that's it for now.

Individual meetings a success (so far)

 Well, a few days into the semester and having these 20 minute meetings with students and it's going swimmingly -- except for the fact that I'm booked from 9-6 every day.  I did not anticipate that though given that I had a sign up sheet for those times, I completely should have.

As expected, talking to students now means we all have clean slates and everyone is hopeful.  The students have been very thoughtful in these discussions and seem to appreciate that I'm asking them what they want from the course (besides a good grade) and how we can work together to make that happen.  I'm also asking them to articulate what would be evidence of progress on the goal such that when we meet in a month what might they look for as a solid indication of forward movement.  They seem on board with the concept so that's exciting.

As I've asked each student what they've struggled with in past courses that we can work on this semester, a common response is a reluctance to participate in discussion.  When they say this, we are then able to get into a discussion about why they are reluctant and start to chip away at whatever it is that underpins this reluctance.  What many (though not all) have said is that they fear being wrong.  Of course, this isn't a surprise but hearing the first person say this triggered my recollection regarding cultivating creativity in a book by the folks who started IDEO.  The point they made (at least I think it was them) is that be creative involves becoming immune to failure.  As a way of making this point to students I ask about playing video games and if they avoid video games because it almost always involves losing.  And, of course, they say no -- if they avoid video games it's for other reasons.  I use this then to point out that in the domain of video games 'being wrong' isn't problematic and, in fact, helps them to get better at the game.  But there is a way in which they are immune to the failure in video games.  That helps to reframe things a bit but I'd like to work on how to help them not simply reframe failure intellectually but to actually develop an immunity to failure (an immunity I most assuredly don't have).

I haven't read much on the latest discussions of 'grit' (or as I'd call it 'resilience') but it occurs to me that I may be simply using a different term.  Or, it could be that I've found a better way to think about the idea.  I'll be exploring this.

That's it for now.

January 2022 -- another beginning

 One quite fabulous thing about teaching is that you constantly get to try again.  As something of a perfectionist (in the creation of ideals, not in getting close to those ideals), this is both a good and a bad thing as each semester I can tell myself "this semester I'm going to get it right" and by the end of that semester I'm telling myself "next semester I'm going to get it right."  The good part is the promise of constantly getting to try again where the bad part is feeling like I've never quite achieved what I want to.

That said, I'm feeling good about this upcoming semester.  And, honestly, at this point in the semester (the weekend before it all starts) that's unusual.  Usually, I feel best about an upcoming semester in the final moments of the previous semester.  But, as I work on the upcoming semester my enthusiasm wanes as I become convinced that my plan will not achieve what I'd like it to.  So, the fact that I've planned my courses and classes start on Monday and I'm feeling good about them is somewhat novel.  And, since I'd really like to get some writing done (and published), I'm going to start articulating my thoughts on teaching here as I go through the semester.  So, my thoughts.....

A significant reason for feeling good about this semester is that I completed a wonderful coaching training program that not only helped me develop the skills to help people achieve their goals, but also provided me with the support and encouragement to work to be more the sort of person I'd like to be in the world.  I've long wrestled with who I'd like to be (a wise, thoughtful, supportive, generous, kind person who sees people in a way that leads to folks feeling seen and cared about) and who I think I ought to be (some version of rigorous professor who helps people understand difficult but interesting ideas) -- think Dumbledore vs. Snape.  My experience in the Hudson Institute of Coaching gave me the confidence to do more that gets me to the what I want to be instead of how I think I ought to be.

I'll share more about this later, but now I want to get to one thing I'm instituting this semester that I'm really excited about -- early semester one-on-one conversations with each student in my classes.  I've asked students to answer these 5 questions and to both submit their answers and come to our first meeting with their answers (just so I'm not taking folks by surprise and they can think about their answers).

Presumably one of your goals in this class is to get a good grade.  I assume that.  Let’s assume you are guaranteed that A as you answer the following questions

(1) As you think about this class, what are some specific areas where you’d like to really focus your time on improving (e.g., writing, discussion, patience, listening, reading, taking other positions seriously, etc.)?

(2) What do you take to be your current strengths as a student (obviously these may also be areas where you’d like to improve)?

(3) Thinking to other courses you’ve taken, where have you struggled to be as successful as you’d like?

(4) What are the characteristics of classes that you’ve felt really excited you and had you interested in attending?  Is there anything in particular that led to these characteristics 

(5) What in your life are you particularly passionate about?  How do you see this passion connecting to your major and to your hopes about life after college?

I've had students sign up for 20 minute meetings with me so I can just get to know each of them and what they want to get out of the class.  The motivation for this is that I've returned to the practice of 'ungrading' -- a practice I started 15 years ago but then eliminated, not realizing that there were other folks doing this and really needing the support of others -- and early conversations with students to figure out what they want to get out of the class is a good way to introduce this approach to grading.  While this was the impetus of having these meetings, as I've been looking more and more forward to them, I'm realizing other benefits.

Most importantly, these early conversations (they need to happen within the first two weeks of the semester and, yes, Monday I'm booked from 9-6 with classes and conversation) give me and the students an opportunity to get to know each other (a) individually and (b) out of the classroom.  Regarding (a) there are always students who, because some students are more outgoing than others, I simply don't get to know all that well.  And all the research from psychology & neuroscience tells us that connections are important.  But, crucial to this is (b) -- getting to know each other as people not as student-professor.  Now, of course, they are coming to my office (or talking to me on zoom) and it's for a class so it's not lie we're sitting at a bar striking up a conversation; our roles are well known.  BUT, at the beginning of the semester, expectations haven't been ruined yet.  We don't have the barrier of how things are or are not going in class to get in the way.  We can talk about who they are and what they want with little influence from class since class is still in early days.  I think this will significantly help because I will be forming initial connections with them based on what they want out of the class and who they are independent of class.  My hope is that these circumstances of our initial connections will, if nothing else, help students to really appreciate that I care about them and their success as learners and, really, nothing else.  We'll see.

More to discuss in an upcoming post: changes to syllabus (a letter to students that explains grading instead of a document informing them -- the letter is more hospitable and less defensive in nature).

Next Phase

 So, for the two of you who might have stumbled upon this, a quick note on some new happenings.

I've been pretty frustrated in my work situation for the last year or two and the frustrations are increasing, not decreasing.  

In September, I had a sudden thought that I wanted to do more to help people in their lives as they are living them and realized that the work I do in the classroom is frustrating because I feel confined to a particular way of helping people live their lives.  And it's not a way, I realize now, that's giving me fulfillment.  So, I decided to start exploring what else I might want to do and landed on something adjacent to 'coaching' (and, in fact, it might simply be coaching).  Namely, I want to help people think about their lives moving forward, what they can be doing to give their lives meaning and fulfillment.  To the extent that I can do this in the classroom, my feeling that I also (and primarily?) need to be teaching students, texts, arguments, etc. has gotten in the way and so the meaning and fulfillment piece is always a bonus but what I really want to happen.  

I'm not sure if the coaching will mean, simply, that I change how and what I teach or if it will mean something more.  But it's a move I've got to make.

I just finished a 4 day workshop designed to help participants reflect on their lives and figure out next moves and things that became startlingly clear: (a) things have to change — I'm stagnating where I am; (b) the level of under appreciation that I feel is overwhelming; (c) where I am is simply not the place it was 10 years ago.  Ten years ago it was a place that encouraged the growth of faculty as leaders and treating faculty with a level of respect and equality.  Now the focus is on simply staying afloat and, apparently, treating faculty (and staff) with respect and equality is unnecessary (or an impediment) to that.  (d) I may need to move to a different part of the country.  I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the fact that I should be getting outside, walking, etc. but it feels like such a chore when it's cold.  I so want to live somewhere where I can, regularly, hike and do so without having to psych myself up.  (e) I need to spend more attention to my heart (what I want, who I want to be).

So, if you're a current student of mine, expect a shift in my interactions with you in and outside of the class as I become more intentional on working with students to that which has been my goal all along -- helping you find fulfillment in your lives.

Classroom innovation

 So, here's some thinking about teaching next semester.

First, what's most important to me: I want student to (a) connect to the material; (b) learn about both the content and themselves (regarding the latter -- learn about themselves as learners, that they can work hard and that they are capable of so much that they might not have realized) and (c) become better readers & askers of questions.

Second, I want to somehow loosen students focus on grades — using specification grading I've framed work done in class as akin to work done at work.  We don't get grades at work. It's either good enough or it isn't.  So, they focus less on little things and more on make it 'good enough' — but I'd still like to figure out how to intrinsically motivate them.

Currently, my approach is to assign a fair amount of reading and rely on them to do the work with papers (and other more formative work) designed to get them to do the work.

I'm toying with the idea of giving students a list of possible books and telling them what they can choose to read what they want from that list (and can, if motivated by something on the list, read other things (w/my approval).  I'd put students into groups with others who are reading the same book so that they can work together on making sense of the book (they'd meet during class and I would 'drop in' on these discussions).  

Right now what I'm thinking is that papers would involve 'briefs' of each book (and I'd give them smaller tasks to develop the briefs -- these tasks could be worked on in the groups but the brief would have to be written by the individual).  Then there'd be a final paper that'd focus on taking a position about main question of class.

The briefs would focus them on reading and then the final paper would be the culmination of the semester and what they'd be working on all semester (that is, the final paper topic would be in the background of all the briefs).

Downsides to this? (a) I'd have more reading (would need to stay on top of wherever the groups were) and (b) some students might flake.

I'm really intrigued by the notion of prioritizing learning and sparking intrinsic motivation but not sure how to do it.  Am going to be reading Ungrading so that will hopefully give me some ideas.

Years have passed

Well, years have passed.  Pretty much moved on. 

New relationship.  Life is, all things considered, quite good.

Now living in a pandemic. 

Next semester

On a completely different note, next semester....last fall I taught Contemporary Ethical Problems for the first time in 20 years.  It was fine (discussed the standard topics of euthanasia, abortion, animal rights, etc) but it wasn't as good as it could have been.  So, this coming semester, my plan is to use the general broad topic of consumption as the guiding idea.  We'll talk about what we eat which will get at questions of animal rights and agricultural issues, what we wear which will get at questions of labor issues, whether consuming illegal substances can ever be moral, what sorts of ideas should we engage and are there any we should avoid, should the character/behavior of an author/actor influence whether we read/watch their work, whether being defined as a consumer is a good thing (choice!) or bad (manipulative!).  I feel pretty good about this plan but realize I need to now move from a plan to actually finding articles.  I've got the last book chosen (Consumed by Benjamin Barber) but that's it.

Anyway, there you go a non-emotional breakdown/recovery post :-)

Grading — report on a new approach

This semester I tried a new approach to grading.  The official name (or at least one of them) is 'specification grading.'  It's also very close (if not functionally equivalent) to an approach I heard someone speak about years ago.  The gist of it is (a) all assignments are pass/no pass with the criteria for a pass being really explicitly spelled out and (b) end of semester grades are determined by which assignments are passed.  Thus, students know at the beginning of the semester that if they want a C+ in the course they must pass a certain set of assignments, if they want a B+ they know what they must pass for that.

The talk that I heard years ago described this in terms of points and made the connection to video games.  The speaker explained it that the course had different "levels" like a video game and that students can try to pass a level infinite times but that the grade at the end of the semester is what level the student has made it to.  And, he gave students points for passing so it was a collection of points as opposed to mere 'passing' that was relevant.

I set my courses up with freewrites (students just need to spend 30 minutes writing after doing the reading), essays prior to class posted for everyone so they could be used as the focus for class discussion (10 of these were necessary to get an A but lower numbers of these for lower grades), then 3 different papers with each additional paper getting one to an A.  Thus, passing paper #1 gets one to a C, passing #2 to a B and #3 is necessary for an A.  There's also benefit for 'good faith attempts' on essays and 'good faith attempts' on paper #2.  For my lower level class instead of essays, they had to post questions and then also responses to class mates questions.

Anyway, I used this over J-term with success and I think it's been a success this semester but I need to define 'success.'

First, I designed it so that students are largely dragged along to try to pass the next thing since they can see that they "only" need to do x to get the next higher grade.  But, of course, many students don't do this.  So, one of the consequences of this is that some students decided early on that all they wanted/needed was a C and so they did only that work.  In terms of grading, this had been a serious win, students who have no interest in learning more just aren't submitting papers that they'd be doing just because they had to.  So, it's a success in terms of work for me, but it's possibly a lesser success if one thinks that making students go through the motions has any benefit to their learning.

The other benefit is in terms of the pass/no pass approach.  Students like it because it's really clear what they need to do and, my god, grading is so much easier.  I still comment on papers, but figuring out whether something has passed or not is so easy.

Now, the big concern is the number of students who appear to just not care about getting better grades.  So, there are the students who just flake and so nothing — I'm pretty sure they'd do nothing regardless of my system.  But then there are those who just decide to do what they need to pass the course and nothing more.  This was bothering me yesterday as I've, historically, said that students need to do *everything* in order to pass thinking that when they get into the work world, they'll have to do all of their assigned tasks they can't just pick and choose.  But, I think I figured out how to frame it for myself and the students.  Namely, this is them working on commission.  They get to choose what they receive and the effort they are willing to put in.  So, if I think of it as parallel to working on commission, that makes me feel less like this is a win simply for me and grading.

The students who are working hard are apparently enjoying it and it means that they are experiencing far more control in their lives.  If they are fairly certain that they aren't going to pass a paper, they don't need to go through the demoralizing task of confirming that they don't understand.  Or, they can be proactive and come and talk to me before hand instead of faking it (because they have to turn something in) and then responding based on feedback.

So, there you go.

Oh, on the mental health front, apparently waking up each morning wanting to die is not normal and when you tell your psychiatrist this, they add medication.  So, Abilify has been added to help get me out of this dark pit.

Why yes, it has been years

But there's been an election and with that panic attacks and general terror.

So, how to move forward.  First, I need to work to listen and pay attention to the people who understand how things really work.

Presidents don't have all the much power.  Advisors to presidents don't have that much power.  Rhetoric is just that, rhetoric, and while someone can be a despicable person it doesn't mean much of anything regarding what they'll do in office.  Someone with no experience may, in fact, see some opportunities to do things that haven't been taken advantage of because of an unwillingness to burn bridges.  And, despite lacking experience, his party wants his time in office to be a time of success and flourishing because they want to continue to be able to have their agenda be at the forefront.  And since he's a loose cannon (or at least presented himself that way), who knows what sort of negotiating power that gives him.

Nazis aren't going to take over even if the President is listening to them because Congress, Supreme Court, the 95%+ of the population who oppose that sort of behavior.

But, the fact of the matter is that I can't really control him (my efforts at mind control on people closer to me have been unsuccessful so I doubt more effort is going to work with him).  So, I have been emailing and calling my representatives.  I'm doubtful that this will have much impact beyond adding to the number of people calling and emailing (and I think quantity probably does have an impact).  And, when my representatives are in town I will show up and ask them questions face to face.

More pressingly is what I'm going to do day to day.  I really do believe that what has happened is a consequence of decades of not listening to people and instead everyone being confident in the truth of their own beliefs.  This isn't to say that those beliefs are mistaken but that if all we do is focus on how correct we are we may miss some important things about other people's experiences.

I think that many people are dissatisfied with their lives.  And that being dissatisfied they want, at minimum, for their dissatisfaction to be acknowledged and for it to be acknowledged that their lives being the way they are, economically, socially, probably isn't their fault.  We've  I'd done a horrible job of listening to this.

Given the dissatisfaction and then adding to this feeling ignored or, even worse, passed over because of a focus on issues of racism, gay rights, trans rights, etc (all of which are important and ought to be addressed) people are going to, understandably I think, be resentful of those who have gotten the attention and those who have been doing the ignoring.

I've long said that I think that everyone wants, fundamentally, to be heard, understood and cared about based on who they really are.  I don't think I've done a good job at playing my part in this.

It seems like everyone has been so intent on proving that they are right that we've stopped even listening to what other folks are saying assuming that we already know what they are doing to say.

so, what am I going to do to make things better?  I need to rethink my courses, a constant, so that they are doing what I want them to be doing.  Of course this means I need to get clear on what I want them to be doing.  I also need to be really intentional about what I'm communicating to others in terms of my willingness to listen to all.  And, of course, I need to not just say that I want to listen to all, I need to reach out and really ask and listen.

I recently purchased a Black Lives Matter sweatshirt because I do believe that Black Lives Matter.  But, I also believe that gay lives matter, trans lives matter, poor lives matter, conservative lives matter, brown lives matter, red lives matter, etc.  I don't like "All Lives Matter" because that seem antagonistic to Black Lives Matter.  But, that aside, now I worry about wearing the sweatshirt.  I know that it will mean that I'm viewed as an ally to many (and I am their ally) but it will also be interpreted by many as meaning that I don't want to listen to them, that their story doesn't matter to me and that I think Black lives mean more than their lives.  Now, of course, in a nice intellectual conversation I could note that this isn't what it means, but how can I get to that conversation if someone sees the sweatshirt and draws all sorts of conclusions?  Why aren't I wearing a sweatshirt that says "Poor Lives Matter"?  or one of the other variations?  So, I'm probably not going to wear the sweatshirt, or if I do, it'll be because I take it somewhere to have a list of x lives matter put on the back of it.  I suppose one take away here is that sweatshirts may be poor conversation starters but they certainly communicate ideologies even if what is communicated isn't what is intended.

I think lots of folks deserve allies.  When I think of the values of the US that I think are important it isn't merely individual rights and freedom, equally important to me is hospitality — welcoming the stranger and doing our best to make them feel at home.  I need to work on being more hospitable to people who might assume that I am not interested in their lives being good lives.  Yes, I'm rambling, but since no one is going to read this, I'm not terribly concerned.

I am going to return here regularly to work out my thoughts about what I need to be doing and what I'm going to do in terms of my everyday behavior and my courses.

White & Class privilege

I saw this video a week or so ago and it's really stuck with me.

In the intervening weeks, the house remodeling happening in my house has hit full throttle (which means moving from agonizing over decisions to actual people coming in and doing things like altering plumbing, installing wiring, sheet-rocking, white walling, etc.) and I've gotten back to walking my dog.  One of the things that I like about myself is that I'm friendly.  And one of the things I like about where I live is that this friendliness isn't viewed suspiciously.  I make it a point to chat a bit with the plumber, the painters, etc.  I enjoy saying good morning to people on daily walks with the dog, stopping to chat with people along our 2.5 mile route.  I enjoy not being in a hurry and having the time to stop and connect with people.

I should note that I do all of this while wearing shorts that are not in anyway stylish and t-shirts.  Not 'women's t-shirts' but regular old t-shirt t-shirts with crew necks.

So, back to the video.  I've been very aware in the last week or so that the reception I expect from people (and the reception I usually get) is that people will be friendly back, they'll welcome the connection and respond by chatting with me.  I began wondering how would these exact overtures be taken (how would I expect them to be taken) if were not white & middle-aged?

I suspect that if I had a heavy accent and/or dark skin and/or some sort of overt religious garb (excepting, possibly, a nun) that I'd be treated really differently (suspicion, most likely or with perfunctory politeness).  Or, at the very least, I'd expect to be treated differently.

Yes, I am very slow.  But, in my defense, this is all stuff that I've known intellectually.  If someone were to have pointed all this out, I'd have agreed and though it obvious.  But, in this last week, I've felt it.  I've realized that these everyday interactions (which I really enjoy) go smoothly and in a way that I find enjoyable largely because I am white (I imagine that a person of color would have an easier time if they were of a certain economic/social class than if they weren't, but I'm pretty sure that I'm always going to have the clearest path of social ease — so clear and so omnipresent in my life that I never notice it.  This is not something I'd fully appreciated before.or, rather, that I'd fully felt before.

Liberal Arts & Jobs

Higher education as it currently exists is a strange beast.

Students come to us wanting jobs (a completely reasonable desire).  They think that the best way to get jobs is to be trained for a particular job (a reasonable, though I'd argue, false belief).  Those of us in the humanities argue that our classes are 'practical' because they teach students the very skills that employers want (and citizens, future parents, etc. need) — how to ask questions, how to think critically, how to listen to others well, etc.  But, students, shockingly, aren't convinced.

So, here's my plan: Provide for students a serious, rigorous liberal arts education — with equal emphasis on all aspects of liberal arts: science, social sciences, humanities & arts.  I am absolutely unapologetic about that.  BUT, add to this, from the moment the students step onto campus serious, on-going conversations about how careers, what there is, how to get them, how to succeed.

I'd say everyone should in addition to the rigorous liberal arts education students should get the equivalent of a minor in a professional degree (business, journalism, etc.).  I'd also say that the emphasis on majors should be vastly downgraded.  If there are majors, there should be limit on the number of credit hours that can be required in a major.  And, students can only major in one field.

This way students get the rich intellectual foundation that they need but also get a skills based 'package' to leave with.  Supplement this with constant conversations and support for getting jobs (including but not limited to internships).

There we go.

Next problem?

I ♥ Daniel Kahneman

I'm reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and wishing I could just memorize everything that's in it.  It's so good and has the potential to really change how I do many things (particularly, obviously, teaching).

I don't have the time to read and reread it nor do I have a good excuse to teach it.  How am I going to remember all the things in it that I need to be remembering?

On-line Class

Well, I'm moving into the last week of my 6 week on-line class and since I have absolutely nothing besides face-to-face classes to compare it to, I think it's not gone horribly.

It's ended up being a writing intensive class (students have at least one assignment a day) and I've structured it using an idea that a good friend had (& is going to write about) — using Bloom's taxonomy.  The early writing assignments were for the students to summarize the conclusions of the texts (I gave them excerpts that had conclusions fairly easily identifiable) and provide textual evidence to support their summaries.

After they did this for each of the texts we're covering, we moved in the next week to actually apply the conclusions to specific cases.  And, now this last week, they've spent time identifying and summarizing in their own words the arguments in support of the conclusions they identified earlier.

Now, I think that what I've developed is a good learning experience if the students are diligent (I have a few who are and the work they are doing suggests that they are learning) but I think that a major downfall of this course is that it's only 6 weeks.  This is a huge amount to do in only 6 weeks.  The students who are doing well are, by their reports, dedicating at least 3 hours a day to the class.  This makes sense.  I usually teach this class as a 15 week class meeting 3 times a week.  If we use the 3 hours outside of class for every hour in class, that's 175 hours spent on the class (45 hours in class and then 135 hours outside).  In a 6 week class there's only 42 days to work with.  That means over 4 hours a day would have to be spent on the class.

A life devoid of creativity & emotions?

This just makes me sad.  Well, I suppose since the person writing it says she'd make the same choices all over again this is something she's okay with, but I can't imagine that this is something I'd be willing to do.

Nor can I imagine encouraging anyone to pursue a life like this.  In fact, I think if success in a field depends on living a life like this, someone needs to stir up that field a bit.


Once again, I feel incredibly lucky to have the job I do.

Future of Higher Education

My tendency when trying to solve a problem is to find a similar problem elsewhere that has already been solved or to find a situation where someone has managed to avoid the problem and figure out how it's been managed.  Efficiency or laziness?  Honestly, it's laziness.  Why not just learn from what's already happened instead of doing all that exhausting heavy lifting myself?

I've been reading a good deal about education and am participating in a summer project focused on thinking about the future of higher education.  I have many times related education to both the ministry and health professions and I think that, again, looking to these areas we can learn a good deal.

In particular, I think higher education and organized religion share a good deal.  We both believe that what we are providing is self-evidently good for the people who we serve.  At the same time, we've never really had to 'sell' ourselves.  Participation in religious institutions is something people were simply raised to do and so did.  Aspirations to go to college to become educated and think about big ideas is something we, in higher education, count on continuing.  But, our assumption that people would always want what we are providing means we have never really made the case for what we are doing.

And, now people are choosing to go to churches where they get what they want (big churches, few responsibilities, spending time with the people they want to spend time with, entertainment and little challenge to already existing beliefs) and my pastor friends bemoan this.  Likewise as people begin to choose the college education they want, they are probably not going to choose what we think they need and what I really do think is, ultimately good for everyone.

I'd say that journalism is undergoing the same sorts of problems.  Democracy depends upon a thriving journalistic community and a population that is engaged with this community.  But, now people read only what they want to read and are able to fairly easily ignore what they want to ignore.  We spend more time confirming what we already believe to be true and less time becoming aware that things aren't what we thought they were.

Journalism, religion and education are also in the same situation insofar as much of what we have provided in the past is available for free (well, it isn't what we really have been providing but it's what people have thought we've been providing) and so now we are increasingly unable to fund our own versions of what it is we do (since there is less of a market for it).

One thing churches did do, lo many years ago, was make a distinction between monks and priests.  Having these be two different jobs has always made sense to me.  It's the monks who were the scholars and the priests who communicated the relevant learning to the laypeople.  It's long been a mystery to me why, in the academy, we expect faculty to be monks and priests.

Now, turning to religion (or journalism) doesn't actually provide solutions, but it does make clear that what's happening in higher education isn't unique to higher education.  We are at the mercy of the same forces that other important institutions are.  Which means we need to be looking at the conversations in these fields to see what we can come up with together as a strategy for where to move and how to best retain our core values without shrinking into the vanishing point.

Faculty Salaries

I'm reading this article "Visioning 2035: The Future of the Higher Education Sector in the UK" and it just occurred to me why faculty don't get paid more.

The work that faculty say would justify us getting paid more money (that which takes most of our time — teaching) is not the same work that drives hiring.  In general, teaching is important but I doubt that a great teacher with no publications would ever be hired given a market where there are so many unemployed PhDs available to drive salaries down.

If we really hired people based on their proficiency for teaching, I suspect this would radically alter what university campuses looked like (and it'd eliminate or at least change the concept of tenure) and that'd be the only way to really get to higher salaries.

And, to be clear, I'm not complaining about my salary.  Yes, I'd love more money (would anyone not?) but I get paid well to do something I love in a way that I generally love.  There are people who have way less satisfying jobs who get paid less than I do and they should be the ones who get paid more.

Transforming Spaces

I would love to have a very cool (as in 'hip') house.  The problem is that I am not terribly good at seeing what a space can be.  All I see is what's already there.  Seriously, I can barely imagine different furniture. And, yet, I would love to get a space and then make it my own (which, obviously, would be very cool).

And then I come across this.  Many houses I've looked at are much nicer than what these folks started with and I dismiss them.  I've got to figure out a way to cultivate this sort of vision because what these folks did with this space is, objectively, awesome.

Assigning the listening/viewing of on-line lectures

I'm teaching an on-line course this summer.  I volunteered to do it with the idea that this will get me thinking about teaching in a way that I haven't.  I figure, also, that if I can figure out how to teach well on-line, then this ought to make me a better teacher in a face-to-face setting.

And, in fact, it is making me think more about my teaching.  I'm really having to focus in on what I want to accomplish in the course and how I'm going to do it.  Hopefully, much of what I end up doing for this on-line course will be useable for my traditional face-to-face course.

At this very moment I'm wondering about the wisdom of pointing students to on-line lectures on the theorists will be discussing.  I've also thought about doing this for classes that aren't on-line.

How is this different (is this different) from assigning reading?  I mean, obviously, it's different but is it different bad or different potentially helpful?

In the minds of students

Last night I had dinner with two graduating majors and learned a good deal about what students apparently think about me.  I have no reason to think they were lying and they did go out of their way to say that they don't think these things, but that students who don't know me as well do.

I'll jump to the end: students are way more suspicious than I thought.

Well, damn, it's been a really long time since I've written anything here.  Not for lack of things to say.  But, more, a lack of, well, writing anything here in a long time.

Instead of trying to catch up, I'll just start with where I am and, if anything relevant happened in the last 5 months, it'll come up and I'll catch up.

On the teaching front, I've agreed to teach an on-line class this summer.  My thinking is that on-line teaching is here to stay but that it's unlikely to be here in this form (I'm thinking of the first cell (that is, 'mobile') phones that were super clunky but have transformed to what we now have) and I'm interested in possibly being ahead of the curve here.  Also, I think this is probably a pretty good way to get myself thinking about teaching — since I won't be able to fall back on habits, having not cultivated any in this area yet.  And, lastly, if I'm going to move into teaching & learning stuff, I probably should be able to help folks with teaching in all its incarnations.

Teaching struggles

Well, we're now at the end of a semester and, as usual, I feel like I've done a less that great job in all of my classes.  I wonder if I'm in the minority by spending the last 3 weeks or so of classes berating myself for all the things I didn't do, should have done or did poorly.

In an attempt to not merely berate myself, I am also trying to figure out ways to improve things.  And I think I have a moderately good handle, at least, on what the problems are.  Yes, it's taken me this long to become just moderately comfortable with having identified the problems that have to be solved.

Philosopher? What's that?

Since I ought to be commenting on papers and journals, now is the obvious time to write something for this blog.

I've been fairly busy of late (with "of late" being the last 6 months to year).  I've been fortunate enough to be viewed as having something worth saying (or being good at saying stuff) and so have been a speaker at a steady stream of conferences.  I thought I'd posted about this before, but as I look through my posts, I seem to have not.

Oh, what's the 'this' I thought I'd posted about but didn't?

Well, let me share.

Detoxing

I wish I could say it's an experiment but it's more of a survival tactic.  I'm going cold turkey from Facebook.

Every night as I get ready to go to sleep, I reflect upon the day and how much time I've wasted on FB and resolve to stay off of FB the next day, delete games that suck time, lock myself out.  And then each morning, I'm back online wasting hours of my day.  So, last night, when I made my nightly resolution that would not be followed through the next morning, I retrieved my computer, went in and changed my FB password to something too long and complex to remember (I used ISBN numbers of one of the books laying around — I don't remember which), used a random word generator to toss in two word and then randomly chose a word out of a book.  Too late I realized that I could have used a password generator that comes up with basically impossible to remember passwords.  

Fun times

I realized, as I was closing in on the last day of discussing Gorgias in my Ethics class, that students were not quite as excited about this text as I am.  Okay, that's an understatement.  I suspected that they were lost and dazed and realized that this is not an ideal spot for students to be.

So, I decided to go with the following in class.  I told them that some students leave this text with one overarching question <dramatic pause> "Who cares?" or, put in slightly more sophisticated form, "Why should I care about Gorgias?"  I then appointed one person to count the number of people in the class who were in this position while I stepped out of the room.  In my first class only 5 people admitted to being in this position while in my 2nd class 21 people admitted to it.  The first class was, as far as I'm concerned, lying.  But the 2nd class, 21?  Sheesh.

Anyway, I then asked them to come with all the reasons someone might give for believing that they should not care about this text.  After they did this (and I put all the reasons on the board), I asked them to now advocate on behalf of Socrates/Plato and respond to these reasons.  I told them that some of the reasons while factually correct might not be good reasons for not caring and that others if they were factually correct probably would be good reasons and so the task with these was to figure out if the claims were factually correct.

So, so close and yet.....

Well, I'm sending off an article today that I started about two years ago (in the intervening time other articles have been revised and resubmitted, presentations have been given, classes have been taught, so it isn't only that I'm a slacker).

Turns out that I may have missed being cutting edge by just a few moments. In the last 2 years there have been just shy of 4500 publications on this topic whereas prior to that, well, I was pretty much up to speed in the area.

Instead of reading this additional stack of 4500 I'm going to send it off, hope that the core of my argument warrants an R&R and then I'll read whatever reviewers might be inclined to suggest I read.

If only I'd gotten it out two years ago. if only.

I'll bet there's something to learn here. But, I'm not entirely certain what it is.

A good book (movie coming soon)

I just finished reading We Need to Talk about Kevin and I gotta say it's a really interesting read. Not a 'feel good' book by any means but a thought provoking book. Apparently it's been turned into a movie that's gotten good reviews from the Cannes Film Festival. I say read it before it comes out.

It's about woman's reflections on herself and her relationships with her family after her son has killed members of his high school. I like it because it authentically captures the ambiguity of life and the lack of clear answers without just leaving the reader with a nihilistic conclusion.

It's biology's fault

So, in an effort (a clearly failing effort) to actually get some work done, I've made use of a program that prevents me from getting onto facebook. Now, I've used programs like this in the past that give one the ability to lock oneself out of facebook, but they've had the fatal flaw of making it possible, with just a few clicks, to easily gain access again. Clearly the people who find those programs helpful either have vastly more will-power than I do or they are just not all that bright.

Anyway, this new program is such that once you've set the timer (which unfortunately maxes out at 24 hours) you can't access the pages you've 'blacklisted' and you get do anything (aside from get onto a new computer) that will give you access. You can delete the program from your computer and you'll still be locked out. I suppose if I knew more about computer code I could undo it, but here's where my general laziness kicks in and my willpower is subsumed by my unwillingness to exert the effort. Yes, any success I've had is due to a strange and lucky confluence of my flaws.

Risk vs. Regret Aversion

As I'm working on revising an article, I'm referencing risk aversion which, because one needs to cite every claim one ever makes regardless of how self-evident one thinks the claim is, led me to look for articles and I came across an interesting distinction (and how I love a good distinction!). The suggestion made was that while some people are risk averse others are regret averse and that the latter can appear to be the former.

I'm fascinated by this because, well, here's my Rawlsian decision making method: given a particular decision one is struggling with, assume that no matter what decision you make it's going to not turn out well, which decision would you rather make in the event that it won't turn out well?

I've always thought this was a test regarding risk and one that works for me because I'm risk averse. But, now I'm wondering if this is about regret — which outcome would you prefer even if it turns out badly? Even as I type this, though, I don't think that the test, itself, differentiates. I think that depending on the reasons one gives this could be a test of risk or regret.

And this gets me to the next thought which is whether there really is a distinction or is it just that 'regret aversion' is more accurate than 'risk aversion.' That is, do people really avoid risk qua risk?

Well, here it is more than midway through June. Summer is flying by.

I have many thoughts about many things (surprised?) but will limit myself to just one (possibly more will sneak their way in).

I watched the Tonys last week and I'm reading Tina Fey's Bossypants and decided that I want to be friends with Neil Patrick Harris and Tina Fey (and Gwyneth Paltrow, Jane Lynch and, I'm sure, many more). I've also returned from a conference where I met some interesting people and I continue to want to be friends with Parker Palmer & Diana Chapman Walsh (and Sharon Daloz-Parks, Arthur Chickering, and bunch of folks I can't think of).

Reasonably, you may be wondering why I share this information. Because as I was cataloging the list of people I want to be friends with I realized that (a) most people I meet also want to be friends with these folks and (b) these folks probably aren't all that different from other people except that they are well-known. This led me to: conservatively, I'd guess that 25% of the people I meet are, probably, fairly fabulous people (more generously, 75%) but that I don't get to know them the way that fame and books let me believe I get to know these other folks.

I'm thinking there's probably a conclusion to reach from this.

Cutting Edge, Way Behind the Times or Really Not So Bright

Here's a question for anyone out there inclined to answer: how does one know if an idea is worth pursuing (as in spending the time writing down and sending off to a journal)? I have ideas, and I find at least some of them interesting, but I have no sense, at all, if the ideas are worth sharing or ought to be hidden because they'd reveal my basic cluelessness. The problem is that I have no idea for how to go about figuring out the answer to this. I've tried doing journal searches but my fear is that my not finding something is due either to my idea being so painfully obvious that no one has written on it since the 16th century (and JSTOR doesn't go back that far) or, what I think is more likely, I'm using search terms that just aren't helping me find the relevant articles. I suspect that there's this entire conversation or branch of philosophy that holds just about all the views I do and they've got a nice articulation of my 'novel' ideas but I just can't figure out the correct search term to find this little community of right thinking people.

I suppose I could take the time to write things out, send it off somewhere, get rejected and told that what I'm doing is not new because.....and then I'll be told what relevant loop I've not been a part of. But that seems like a fair amount of work to just be pointed in the right direction.

Not everyone is like me

Yes, an obvious truth but one that I've been spending a good deal of time discussing with my students. I think that as humans we have a tendency to assume that other people basically have the same 'take' on things as we do (while simultaneously believing that no one really understands us; but I think that the 'I am alone in the world' stance is one that hits most of us rarely and that most of the time we think most people generally see the world the way we do). There's lots of evidence anecdotal and otherwise to suggest that we think that most people (particularly those who we like) share most of our views even if we have no evidence beyond liking them that they have the same views. My suspicion is that at least part of this is due to the fact that if we view our view of the world to be the correct one — or else we'd have another one — and we figure that if we like someone they are unlikely to be the sort of person who is wildly irrational.

Anyway, onto how I've bumped into this in my own life. I recently went to a roundtable discussion that was about certain aspects of teaching and, well, due to the particular title it ended up that the folks who were there were not the usual cadre of folks but instead people who I vaguely know and have no reason to think I don't like, but who I really have never had a conversation with.

after talking it out....

.....I've figured out my (white) relationship to (black) history.

Looking at Royce who talks about community being defined by a shared historical moment crucial to self-identity and a shared goal for the future, I was trying to figure out to what extent DuBois was telling me something about my community. After talking about it with some folks (and, I kinda suspect, looking a bit clueless), I realize that I was missing a key aspect of Royce.

Having a shared historical moment doesn't mean that we all have the same relationship to that moment. Thus, the experience of Black folk that DuBois is talking about is a part of my history but I have a different relationship to that experience than, say, Black folks do.

So, perhaps I am a bit clueless for it having taken so long to get to this, but, in my defense, it was that I was working with less than ideal reading of Royce.

Talking Race

I am firmly committed to the belief that we (particularly we white folks) need to be talking about race. And, I am firmly committed to teachers taking a leading role on this. However, it scares me. Mostly because I know I'm not 'trained' to do this and that I'm potentially opening up a can of messiness. Of course, the fact that the messiness is there and just not talked about is all the more reason to get things out and into conversation, but still....

Anyway, my class is reading and discussing W.E.B. duBois The Souls of Black Folk and I think things are going well (though it does make me want to teach an entire class on the Harlem Renaissance which I'm pretty much sure I can't squeeze into my course rotation).

Discussing duBois on the heels of discussing Royce is interesting. (1) It'd be really surprising if duBois hadn't studied with Royce and (2) Royce has really interesting things to say about interpretation (one person working to help a second person to understand a third person) which is what duBois is doing in this piece (duBois is explicitly making white folks his audience) and (3) Royce has really interesting things to say about community.

It's this last one that's led me to some interesting 'places.' To what extent is the history of Black Folk my history? As I thought about this and talked it out a bit, I've come to the realization that I, too, have a divided soul as I try to understand myself as both American and white.

Here's what got me thinking.....despite my ancestors not being anywhere near this continent during the Revolutionary War, I view this part of history as part of my history. I understand myself to be American (in the United States, Norte Americana, sense of the word). Without thinking I use the pronoun 'we' to discuss US history. That is, until 'we' morphs into 'white folks' as in 'we drove the American Indians from their land.'

Is, say, jazz legitimately a part of my history? Gospel music? The pain of reconstruction South? DuBois notes that Black folk have particular and important things to contribute to America's sense of who we are, but how do I (or can I) claim it as part of my history?

I really want my history, as someone who is a US citizen, to be inclusive of all. I don't think that US history is the history of white folks. But, it also seems naive, arrogant, weird, downright wrong (pick any or all of these) for me to include the non-white experience in the US as my history (yet, weirdly, it doesn't seem weird for me to include the male experience as part of my history -- do two weirds cancel each other out?).

So, is jazz a part of my heritage as a white US citizen? Do I have to identify with only the winners in the history of my country when I have been a very clear beneficiary of them winning?

Discuss.

Emotional Whiplash of Teaching

Part of my break was spent reading Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach which is a book that just makes me happy. Primarily it makes be happy because Palmer gets at some interesting aspects about teaching — namely the extent to which teachers teach who we are — while admitting that he sometimes feels like an utter failure as a teacher. His words leave me feeling less alone and wanting to be a better person. [as a sidenote, a while back I asked two folks I greatly respect if they ever had days when their classes just crashed — a not so subtle plea for sympathy and commisseration — and both responded with 'no'. Talk about a self-care strategy that completely backfired]

Yesterday, the Monday after break ended up giving me instances of feeling like a pretty good teacher and instances of feeling like I probably should have dedicated my career to something like data entry. Of course, the fact that I teach 4 classes on Monday's is part of it. Due to a series of events, my initial (and quite beautiful schedule) was destroyed and replaced with what is, at best, a less than ideal schedule.

I left my first two classes feeling pretty good about things. Students seem to leave class having learned something and not disliking me or the material. The second two classes kinda tanked. Part of the problem, I think, is that the second two classes are upper level classes and I find upper level classes so much more difficult to get going than the lower level classes. In particular, with these two classes yesterday we were discussing material that I find absolutely interesting, fascinating, world-altering.

Unfortunately, classes spent on this sort of material rarely goes well and I think it's because I go into the class assuming that everyone's going to have found it as fascinating as I first did and conversation will just take off of its own accord. And, well, frequently the unimaginable happens and the students don't find the reading nearly as amazing as I did and I spend much of class time just being puzzled at the difference between my response and theirs. And, class doesn't going well. Not a huge surprise.

So, I really need to start spending more time thinking through very specific tacks to take to get students engaged even when I think that their engagement is pretty much guaranteed by the intrinsic fabulousness of the article.

AND, I need to start working on helping students to develop the skills to really look for what's cool and interesting in the reading and meet the text part way. Why is it that I can read just about anything and find something interesting in it to connect to something else and help me better understand things that aren't in the reading, but my students can't? What is it that I'm doing without even thinking about it that I need to be making explicit to my students so I can walk them through the process?

spoiled

I have clearly gotten spoiled.

For the last year or so, I've been fortunate enough to have been able to go to a conference on teaching and learning every couple months (this is what happens when you blanket the teaching and learning conferences with proposals and a huge number of the are unexpectedly accepted). Each time I go to one, I am reminded that (a) I'm not alone in my interests and passion; (b) I have much to learn and many ways to continue to grow and (c) I need to take the time to put into practice what I know since it is so easy to get lazy and fall back on what's been 'good enough' in the past.

I am, unfortunately, now in the position of not going to another conference until the beginning of June. June!

I have come to so enjoy the experience of these meetings, getting to know and spend concentrated time with folks that I'm really missing it.

Luckily, I have started a couple reading groups on campus focused on teaching so that should hold me until June, but it's gonna be really difficult.

The Entire student

I just read a journal entry from one of my students, a very bright, very engaged, very motivated student. He commented that he is going through a bit of a crisis triggered by Hume. Hume notes, accurately I think, that reason is and ought to be a slave to the passions (contra a handful of philosophers, say, Stoics, who'd say that we need to use reason to control our passions). This student notes that he's spent his entire life trying to 'fine tune' his rationality and has realized that he is no happier because of it. He can appreciate the intelligence and care gone into arguments, but he misses and wants wisdom, not truth (and, yes, I want to hug him for this). So, instead of doing the reading for class, he find himself reading material from Buddhism, Thomas Merton, etc.

I have long believed that college education (in the classroom at least) treats students only as minds and not as whole people (thank you Dewey for making the point that students are, in fact, people and we need to treat them as such). Students, and all people, crave meaning in life and if they can't find it in the classroom, they are (a) going to look for it elsewhere (see the success of 'non-denominational' fundamentalist churches as one place where they find it -- these churches explicitly target young college students) and (b) think of college as only a place to learn college related skills and not things that are important to life.

So, how do we, in the classroom, work to remedy this? We appear to be contributing to the schism between intellectualism and real life instead of working to undermine it.

More on grading...

Oh, it's been a long time. Not that there's nothing to write about, just haven't been writing.

The issue of grading continues to occupy me for all sorts of reasons. There's the Dweck stuff that provides evidence of what we grade shapes what attitude students take (duh). If we grade products, students focus on performance and looking good; if we grade effort, students focus on learning.

There's also the publication of research alleging that students learn virtually nothing in the area of critical thinking skills in the first two years of college. This research was put together by looking at CLA exam data. The CLA (College Learning Assessment, I think) is an exam where students are given a bunch of documents and a task — along the lines of 'write a report for your boss making a recommendation for dealing with this problem.' None of the documents is perfect or without the possibility of error, bias, etc. Some of the documents are completely irrelevant to the task at hand and there's basically no way to arrive at certainty regarding the problem. All this is to say that it's working to closely mirror a real life situation. Not surprisingly, students who have learned how to take multiple choice exams well and who have been given assignments that tell them exactly what to do, well, these students don't do all that well.