Chapter One
Understanding Yourself as a Teacher When most novice (and not-so-novice) instructors start to plan a course, they focus with varying degrees of excitement and anxiety on the subject matter. But in doing so they are leapfrogging two crucial questions: "Why do you want to teach?" and "What kind of a teacher do you want to be?" These may seem to be an unduly personal detour en route to your syllabus. As thousands of studies have suggested, however, good teachers display five characteristics that depend less on scholarly expertise than on personal skills.
Enthusiasm ranks first on the list. Good teachers care about their subject with zest and passion, and they enjoy communicating it to others.
To communicate effectively, good teachers present their ideas with clarity. Rather than the nuances and sophistication used when conversing with peers, they highlight the central themes in language that nonprofessionals can understand.
To accomplish clarity requires organization.
With sufficient clarity and organization-and also enthusiasm-good teachers lay the groundwork for stimulating their students, arousing their desire to learn.
Finally, good teachers care about their students. They treat students fairly, want them to succeed, give them respect, and offer support. Let me quickly state that I am not prescribing how you should teach. Professors will enact these criteria in all sorts of ways. The activity of teaching embodies one's deeply individualized, even idiosyncratic traits and values. My purpose is to help you realize yours. This chapter seeks to inspire-or at least nudge-you to reflect upon the style, mode of inquiry, and values that you bring to your classroom. With that in mind, consider the following assortment of pedagogical personas.
Fall is Mr. Rothschild's favorite season because each fall he gets to start anew [teaching history at Scarsdale High School, Scarsdale, New York]. Last fall, engaging students in a discussion of the American Revolution, the trim, gray-haired, 54-year-old dashed around the classroom like the high school soccer fullback he once was, waving his arms excitedly at students' ideas and questions, especially their questions.
Wrong answers are fine-no, better than fine. "That's a great wrong answer!" he'll exclaim.
Exclamations are his hallmark. You may have enjoyed dramatic professors like Rothschild: perhaps the one who sang spirituals to your folklore class, or the one who dressed in armor while lecturing on the Crusades. But if you're shy, or if your brand of humor tends toward understated wit, those models will only get in your way.
At the other end of the stylistic spectrum, you may have been awed by an erudite scholar who lectured eloquently for an hour about Hegelian theories of progress, without a glance at either his students or his notes.
There was something about [Berkeley history professor Frederick J.] Teggart's appearance and his manner of entering the lecture room and striding to the rostrum that silenced student conversation instantly. Never once did he have to wait a moment or two, as most of us do, for the chatter to cease and newspapers be put down. Not that he was in any way overbearing. He was simply the essence of academic man in his bearing, with a natural dignity that no one was likely to wish to encroach upon.... He lectured from brief, penciled notes on a single sheet of paper. I learned later, when I was his graduate assistant in the course, that he prepared these during the hour or two before his lecture.... He had remarkable powers of recall while on his feet, and he seemed to have no difficulty whatever in building his spare, telegraphic notes into sentences and paragraphs which, from both style and content, might have been prepared word for word in advance. I once asked him why, in order to save energy, he hadn't spent some early year typing his lectures for reuse. All he said was, "Never type your lectures; you and the students will both be their slaves."
But you may be the kind of teacher who is nourished by the back-and-forth of discussion. In any case, why add to the anxiety of a new course by pretending that you can navigate a complex hour-long presentation by memory? Surely Lewis and Clark would have taken a map with them if there were a map to be had.
In contrast to Professor Teggart, then, contemplate Socrates. In the movie The Paper Chase, John Houseman (as a Harvard Law School professor) enacts a merciless Socratic pedagogy. In real-life classrooms, such teachers often make lifelong impressions upon their students.
I began my teaching career, as many of us do, hoping to imitate my favorite and most exciting college teacher. The master whom I hoped to emulate was an expert in conducting the Socratic dialogue. His classes were experiences in insight, and in terror. We came to class braced and ready to try to answer his questions intelligently, always fearful that we might give a stupid answer.... No one dared attend without having read the texts assigned. He would begin with the simplest of questions: in a class on "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner," for example, he insisted that the important question was the simplest one, "Why did the Mariner kill the bird?" And from leading us to consider that obvious first step, he proceeded to show us Coleridge's depiction of the mysteries of choice, of fault, and of salvation. One of the epiphanal moments of my intellectual life came at the end of that class when, having followed his line of argument throughout, I was left with the ineluctable answer: "He killed the bird because he wanted to."
To be sure, the Socratic method isn't necessarily intimidating. Socrates himself is gentle and patient in the Dialogues. Nor does the method have to direct students step by step. What do you think about this approach by a renowned teacher in the field of music?
Someone-I think the cellist Bernard Greenhouse-has left a picture of Pablo Casals teaching. Knees to knees with the young cellist, Casals plays a phrase from the Bach unaccompanied suites, and then pauses while the student plays it. "No," Casals says, and plays it again. The student plays it again. "No," Casals says, this time perhaps with a comment or a joke, and plays it again. And so on for the whole lesson.
Your style and your mode of inquiry have implications for human values. There are different kinds of values, of course-intellectual, political, moral-but to some extent they all come into play in the classroom. One teacher may model dispassionate "objectivity." Another may want students to appreciate the beauty and power of the subject matter. A third may try to shake up students' complacency, challenging their conventional wisdom and, in turn, urging them to challenge his or hers. A fourth may hope to make students "feminist" or "conservative." Which one of these goals, or which combination, do you find most in keeping with your values?
Likewise, think about how you want students to deal with one another. If you set ground rules that reward supportive and cooperative interactions, you foster one type of classroom culture. Ground rules that reward competitive and individualistic behavior encourage a different type of culture.
Some excellent teachers lecture, some interrogate, and others coach. Some are fierce, others gentle. Some teach history (or economics or literature, etc.); some teach students; and most do both in varying proportions. Everyone incorporates certain values.
Which type of teacher are you? As a means of explicating your style, mode of inquiry, and values, complete the following five prompts. If metaphors or scenarios spring to mind, use them as a means toward (or instead of) abstract answers.
* I bring to teaching a belief that ________. * In the classroom I see myself as ________. * I believe students are ________.
* I seek to foster in students _______.
* I think learning is ________.
Needless to say-but I'll say it anyhow-your answers are preliminary. As you test them upon actual students in actual classrooms day after day, semester after semester, you'll know a lot more about how and why you choose to teach. You will refine or even discard the model you set out with, just as Jackson Pollock eventually stopped imitating his mentors and painted like Pollock. Such was the case for Mary Burgan, whom I quoted earlier as a would-be Socratic teacher. "Slowly ... I reached some painful conclusions," she realized. "I was not temperamentally cut out to be a Socratic questioner." Her mentor could happily lead students toward the right answer (like Casals's "no, no"), but "I was a coward. I could never bring myself to tell a student that he or she was wrong."
You may be wondering, then: Why go to the trouble of defining a philosophy prematurely, before acquiring real-life evidence? But the question rests on a false assumption. Not even the greenest beginner proceeds via pure induction. Whether consciously or unconsciously, each of us works with some notions of what we think is good (and bad) pedagogy. So the more that you can put those notions out in front of yourself, the more likely you will design a course that fits you rather than a teacher you admire.
This process of self-reflection will also benefit your students. As participants in the teaching/learning relationship, they will busily interpret every clue as to who you are, how you work, and what you expect of them. The more clearly you spell out that information-defining yourself as a teacher-the more effectively they can work with you.
Here is how a seasoned professor has defined his teaching philosophy-in effect, his answers to the five prompts I listed earlier. I hope it gives you a sounding board for thinking about your own pedagogy.
In teaching, I seek to impart a desire among students to learn more about the subject I am offering; to press them to question established canons, their own beliefs, and popular representations of Russia; and to design strategies that help students appreciate the power and benefits of thinking historically. I strive to reach my goals by creating a classroom environment that is nurturing and invites students to take risks but at times may make them a bit uncomfortable by expecting them to be prepared. In embracing a holistic approach to learning, I also want my students to take away from courses skills that will help them in other classes and in life-reading critically, writing lucidly, and identifying an author's argument, use of evidence, biases, and/or silences. I push them to value different kinds of historical evidence and texts; to articulate reasoned arguments of their own; and to use the Internet.... I premise my pedagogical strategies on the assumption that students need to feel that they can succeed in my courses and understand what they will be responsible for. I strive to be passionate and well-organized about my teaching. In conclusion, I want to make two quick and crucial points. First, no teacher closes this chapter once and for all. Personal identity is a process, not a formula. As one inhabits new stages of life and new roles, one's sense of self evolves. However you define yourself as a teacher now, you will redefine it in the course of years and courses to come.
Second, just as teaching is relational, so is identity. You have to be true to yourself, but you also have to take into account who your students are. That subject deserves a chapter of its own.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Joy of Teaching by Peter Filene Copyright © 2005 by Peter Filene. Excerpted by permission.
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