Reflections on teaching

[naz]

I've been teaching college-level design students for about 7 years now (5 years, full-time) and I often reflect on many aspects of teaching such as pedagogy, attitudes, paperwork, administration, motivation, and a ton of other things.

Lately, I've been struggling with expectations. There's a huge gap between getting work that meets or exceeds your expectations and work that fails to meet them. And I (like most teachers, I suspect) will experience both in short cycles, and I myself will tend to cycle through highs and lows. I try not to let the lows affect my performance, but it's hard to stay motivated when my students are in the doldrums and I can't figure out why except to think perhaps that my expectations are set too high.

Often, I'll start a project or assignment and get excited by what I expect to get from the students, which is good because it motivates me to do the grunt work to develop that project further and make it really interesting, but when you fail to see the students get as motivated, it's such an incredible downer that it's hard to recover.

The worst part is when the failure of students to meet expectations leads to cynicism. My immediate reaction is to get disappointed and cynical and I know this is a bad, bad thing to communicate to students and I usually realize that right away and recover. They say you should maintain a distance in teaching and not take such disappointment so personally, but hell... I'm really really passionate about it and when I see my students not sharing in it, despite my best efforts, I can't help but take it personally, if even for a few minutes.

Compare that to the phenomenal high that comes when students exceed expectations. For me, that tends to happen simultaneously with the lows, so it's a weird roller coaster that I ride every day. I mean, it's not like I'm depressed about it or anything... I've just been thinking about how tiring it can be. (Admittedly, I've recently been given a lot more responsibility in my department, so it's more likely due to that than anything else.)

Anyway, I've been overly reflective about this lately and usually, I'd post something like this on Facebook, but too many of my colleagues and former students are on my Flist, and I'm not sure I want to share this with them right now. But I'm eager to see what the many teachers on this board have to say about it, even if it's just commiseration. Or anything else regarding teaching... I think the education threads in the last few years have been fairly specific, so I thought it would be nice to have a sort of general reflective thread that all of us can contribute to and hopefully learn from.

[litechick]

Lately I've been thinking about teaching as a personality trait. Some people are natural teachers and some just aren't. This has nothing to do with whether a person teaches professionally.

At my first lighting job there were two main LDs and one was a teacher and one was not. The first one taught me a lot and still teaches me today. The trouble is drawing the line and saying "yes, I get that you would do it this way but it's my show and I am going to do it this other way." The other continues to not teach anyone anything.

My most recent trip to visit my father put a lot of this in perspective for me. He is not a teacher. To his mind, he does his thing and you are supposed to watch and learn through osmosis and that is called common sense.

We went on an excursion to purchase wood. I was eager to learn because I have made some poor decisions with wood choice on my own. I watched him as he silently rejected various boards and while some were obvious, others were not. I finally had to ask what criteria he was using and when I did, he explained but he would never offer an explanation in order to teach me.

My thoughts are not terribly profound but I am concerned that people should be self-aware enough to know if they are not a natural teacher (and avoid the pretense of teaching) and also aware enough to identify it in others so that a non-teacher is not asked to be a teacher.

When I try to teach or lead a crew, some get it and some don't. You treasure the ones who get it and try to be patient with those who don't. My biggest frustration is people who nod as if they understand when they don't. I totally don't mind explaining more fully but I really mind if you say 'sure, no problem' then fuck it up.

The other side of the coin is that people Hate to be told something they already know. Finding the balance between detailed explanation and not pissing someone off is hard to find.

[Game Of Thrones]

A man's scholarship may be perfect, his character admirable, and yet, for want of the power to control subordinates and govern boys, he may be wholly unfit for a schoolmaster.

[dog-days]

I've just wound up my four-year teaching career, after concluding that I'm just too anxious around people to ever be a good teacher, and that it was making my life miserable, and doing little for my students into the bargain.

I know nothing about how to teach design projects. If you were an English language teacher, I'd ask if you were using enough "scaffolding" - stage-by-stage support/examples/templates. Letting them know what's good, what's bad and what your expectations are.

It sounds like you care a lot about your job. Your students are lucky.

When I try to teach or lead a crew, some get it and some don't. You treasure the ones who get it and try to be patient with those who don't. My biggest frustration is people who nod as if they understand when they don't. I totally don't mind explaining more fully but I really mind if you say 'sure, no problem' then fuck it up.

In training, I was taught never to ask "Do you understand?" The students will inevitably nod, even if they think you've just offered to serve their great aunt Natasha for lunch with orange sauce, which can happen in ELT. Instead, we were taught to ask questions to check their understanding. "What does that do?" "Is this good or bad?"

But I often chickened out, especially with more able and vocal classes, wanting to avoid creating a nursery school dynamic. So I'd just ask, "Do you have any questions?"

We were also banned from using the word "explain" and told to use "elicit" instead, which in retrospect was a really dumb thing to do.

[naz]

My most recent trip to visit my father put a lot of this in perspective for me. He is not a teacher. To his mind, he does his thing and you are supposed to watch and learn through osmosis and that is called common sense.

There are areas of knowledge in which this kind of teaching works. Things which don't require a lot of thinking or decision-making (that sounds negative, but it's not), but which rely on simply "knowing" that something is what it should be. Or experience-based learning.

I know nothing about how to teach design projects. If you were an English language teacher, I'd ask if you were using enough "scaffolding" - stage-by-stage support/examples/templates. Letting them know what's good, what's bad and what your expectations are.

It sounds like you care a lot about your job. Your students are lucky.

We're often tempted to use exemplars or show them "how we would do it", but that's generally not a good practice in design education because it promotes mimicry over creativity. If they just do it the way I did it, then they won't necessarily think of a different way to do it that I might have no idea about.

There is some skill-based learning that might benefit from exemplars, e.g., what a clear concise set of CAD working drawings look like. Or, how to use certain software skills. But even then, we try to limit it and let the students figure things out for themselves. Our part comes in the critique... that is, assessing their process and suggesting ways that it might have been done better. Or more meaningfully.

[litechick]

I've just wound up my four-year teaching career, after concluding that I'm just too anxious around people to ever be a good teacher, and that it was making my life miserable, and doing little for my students into the bargain.

Good job, this is exactly the sort of self-awareness I hope for. While I feel that with study you could become a good teacher, I completely respect your decision to cut it off in favor of some other pursuit.

Somewhere out there, some wise person said 'if you can't explain it, you don't know it.' (or something to that effect) Explaining something to others forces you to order your own thoughts, etc. If you don't know why something is wrong, you can't teach what is right.

With regards to architectural design I am completely talking out of my ass but I would be tempted to ask indifferent students why they were present in the class.

Sometimes a student needs to be backed into a corner to see why they want what they think they want. (Not making any sense, should go to bed.)

[Raja]

The worst part is when the failure of students to meet expectations leads to cynicism.

I've definitely seen a lot of this in college, though one of my professors stands out in particular. He was our professor for pharmacology for the better part of about three years before leaving the university. I'm fairly certain that one of the main reasons he left was his students, over about 3-4 years, consistently didn't meet his expectations.

To be fair, it's a subject that is challenging and one which involves plenty of memorization, and because of that, we would come back in the 3rd year and completely forget the stuff we learned earlier on. This made him increasingly sarcastic, cynical and sometimes fairly mean to students in the class, often spending about 15-20 minutes of his class lamenting about the fact that we didn't know certain basic stuff whilst also telling us that he had zero job satisfaction.

It's a shame because I thought he was quite good. I was mostly okay with the way he would make comments regarding our inadequacies, but it didn't sit well with the majority of students . Even though he was a good teacher, towards the end of his tenure most of the people I know couldn't stand him.

As for me, I'm still a student but I enjoy teaching. I've done a bit of it over the past couple of years with junior classes and I hope I can do a bit more in the next couple of years.

[naz]

litechick:

No that makes sense. We question students all the time about whether they're doing what they should be doing. Our profession is tough on people who don't really really really love it. I've faced that scenario a few times where I've asked a student to confront themselves about continuing the course.

[Lily Valley]

Ah Naz, my new term came too close to the old one. We only had a week between Summer and Fall. My crop this summer was especially tiring.

One of the classes I teach is for pre-med students. They don't like math. They don't like physics. They like 'A's'.

I have tried repeatedly to use this as a proper motivator. On the first day I go through the requirements of the course and explain the workload. I also go into great detail about the amount of work needed to achieve 'A-level' mastery. By midterm, half of them are in my office every week. They aren't there for tutoring, they come to complain about test grades or ask for extra-credit. I get really exhausted from telling them, "Hey, how about you just do the work I assigned? How about preparing for class instead of wasting your own time showing up without reading your text?"

The plus side is my labs. I do get to take terrified students who have never done any type of hands on experimentation before and turn them into competent self-starters. That is why I don't throw the towel in.

I replaced the final exam in their lab classes with a final project. Some of them are amazing. Some of them are complete disasters. All of them are great.

I've got my eyes on that prize right now while I wade through the start of term emails explaining why I can't let students into my already over-full classes, why I don't post answer keys to practice tests, why I can't provide them with a set of lecture notes (don't have any that are legible), and why they are in the wrong class (ignore a mathematics pre-requisite at your peril).

And now I have to go to work.

[dog-days]

We were also banned from using the word "explain" and told to use "elicit" instead, which in retrospect was a really dumb thing to do.

Somewhere out there, some wise person said 'if you can't explain it, you don't know it.' (or something to that effect) Explaining something to others forces you to order your own thoughts, etc. If you don't know why something is wrong, you can't teach what is right.

In ELT at least, there are good reasons to emphasize elicitation over explanation. There are some truly terrible awful awful teachers (I once encountered one in German class in Germany, just a substitute, thankfully, and I've heard of others) who will just talk for the whole lesson. "Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah... (sixty minutes later) Got it? Good. Moving on." No exercise, no discussion, no practice, no interaction.

But explanation can work really well when it's concise, simple, and has plenty of examples, and is fine in its place. Which they should have said in my teacher training, but didn't. Probably thought I'd realize it on my own, but I was new to teaching, and very naive, and far too prone to taking their advice as Word of God. Though the set-up of the course to some extent necessitated that kind of attitude, since passing depended on pleasing the course leaders, and pleasing the course leaders depended on treating them like Moses with the stone tablets.

[Prue]

Teacher training always follows certain trends/fashion waves where everything is organised according to the currently most popular didactic theory. That doesn't mean that the currently popular method is suitable for every teacher and every student. Fortunately you can normally find your own style on your own after your training is over. And yes, I do use 'stone-age' methods like simply explaining something, if it's suitable, too. Of course you can't admit that to the colleagues who adhere to the current doctrines 150 % ;).

Nevertheless, you don't need to be a 'natural teacher' in order to succeed in a teaching job. There are certain techniques that do work very often, and are at least worth a try. Unfortunately, many university professors are simply expected to teach well without any formal training. Not sure if that is also the case for college professors. I'd try out a few methods from books, just to find out what works for your students and for you.

A very popular method if you have students with very different backgrounds is to form teams of students with very diverse abilities, and have them solve a task/project together. That way the better students can explain things to the weaker students. And if you go around correcting their work or giving tips, they might be less hesitant to ask something. Often students are afraid to ask anything in front of the class so that they don't get mocked.

And yes, I also avoid the question 'Any questions?' and rather ask them a few questions myself to see if they know what they just read. ;)

[Aemon Stark]

One of the classes I teach is for pre-med students. They don't like math. They don't like physics. They like 'A's'.

I have tried repeatedly to use this as a proper motivator. On the first day I go through the requirements of the course and explain the workload. I also go into great detail about the amount of work needed to achieve 'A-level' mastery. By midterm, half of them are in my office every week. They aren't there for tutoring, they come to complain about test grades or ask for extra-credit. I get really exhausted from telling them, "Hey, how about you just do the work I assigned? How about preparing for class instead of wasting your own time showing up without reading your text?"

That sounds like a nightmare. In undergrad/grad I did a lot of math help centre time, and frequently had students who were self-described "pre-meds" who were doing calculus only out of some sense of obligation. Some of them were really good - some of them really weren't.

Now I do a lot of teaching as a resident for other housestaff and med students. If there's one consistent theme I've experienced it's that off-the-cuff teaching sessions are invariably disorganized and are always much, much better with some preparation. I do find that small group or even one-on-one sessions are best, but I don't imagine those reflect the experiences in other disciplines.

Is anyone else doing any "experiential learning"? I'm involved in a lot of simulation - high-fidelity and otherwise - and it's become a very hot area in medical education anyway.

[Prue]

I do find that small group or even one-on-one sessions are best, but I don't imagine those reflect the experiences in other disciplines.

Is anyone else doing any "experiential learning"? I'm involved in a lot of simulation - high-fidelity and otherwise - and it's become a very hot area in medical education anyway.

Of course small groups are always easier to teach, and they are better for the students, too. It's unfortunately also often too expensive to have small classes, so that's a luxury.

What do you mean by experimental learning? Giving them projects where they can try out things on their own? That's indeed a popular method.

[Sophelia]

Teaching really is hard.

I've been teaching (university-level) for 22 years now. I disagree with the 'you are a natural or you are not' dichotomy litechick identified, while also kind of also subscribing to it. I came into teaching by accident and have never felt I was 'a natural' in the sense that I don't have that easy extravert bond with students where I can fill the silence, be chummy, get a discussion going, or remember their names. However I have improved immensely and get good ratings on my teaching from students, where I have seen colleagues who have not changed over time. I was terrible when I started. However I really care very much about teaching and put in a lot of work to rewrite sessions which don't work (I agree with litechick that being reflective is essential - and this means being able to take on board criticism from students). I do care a lot about the students (even if I can't tell them apart!) which has allowed me to compensate for my lack of natural gifts. I still find it very much trial and error: I often don't predict accurately whether students will take to a particular session or not until I try it (and sometimes what works with one cohort or class doesn't work with another). However the following are current beliefs of mine:

(1) be authentic. Don't follow the trends or copy colleagues: work out what you feel happy and comfortable and enthusiastic about, and be yourself.

(2) [interestingly can be in conflict with (1)] Don't assume that because *you* find something really exciting and interesting, that students will feel the same. Listen to what turns them on, and find activities which fit them. For example, listen to their career aspirations, the TV programmes they watch, and use examples relating to those. Make the abstract concrete by grounding it in applied scenarios they can imagine placing themselves into (not necessarily the same as those *you* would like to be placed in).

(3) students pay attention to what they will be assessed on above all else. Stop fighting this. Think of assessment as your message to the students about what you value most. So make sure the assessment actually really is showcasing what you value most in the students. Design the classes to serve the assessment.

(4) Try to find a balance where students have choice and feel in control, while not giving them so much freedom they don't have a clear idea of the goal. I think most people need some scaffolding and structure, examples of things other people have done, to have an idea of the possibilities which they cannot imagine alone because they are new to the area. This is contrary to what Naz says, so I'm not sure if that differs from one field to another, or if there is mileage to dicsussing this more. I was actually thinking about this yesterday in regard to scientific creativity, but thought it must be similar in artistic creativity, remembering that many great artists tried several styles (e.g. Picasso), travelling to different countries and falling in with different movements. Personally I find that being exposed to (and trying out) a variety of examples of different styles stimulates my creativity, as otherwise I become hidebound in my own way of doing things, without daring to think differently (being stretched outside one's own comfort zone is a good exercise). Interdisciplinary learning also helps in finding unusual connections.

(5) Teaching isn't about you, it's about them. As dog-days' anecdote illustrates, a good class is one where the students are doing most of the thinking/work/talking, not the teacher. It's not so much about 'engaging students' but about facilitating students to engage themselves. Even giving a fascinating talk is not good enough, if students don't go anywhere with it, but just remember what a great time they had. Personally I consider myself most successful when students are attending to the material by themselves, not to me.

I have been faced with unmotivated students often enough (and am just about to return to teaching more statistics, so this will be my fate again) and there are only two ways to change that: switch to teaching something else which students are already intrinsically motivated by, or radical change to the course/assessment. For many years I taught a course which staff had come to accept would never interest more than a minority of students. I changed the assessment from an essay to an applied scenario involving fictional characters in trouble, and now the majority find the course interesting, even though the core content is unchanged. That startled me and has spurred me to consider that student motivation may be more under my control than I thought, and that the key is not necessarily in the delivery of classes but in the assessment. Like Lily I abandoned exams some time ago and am seeking better alternatives which will motivate by interest rather than fear.

Prue's post (which I very much agree with) reminds me of problem-based learning or inquiry-based learning - which every teacher should read about even if they don't try it for themselves (I haven't gone that far yet but admire those who do).

Those are my current reflections. Just about to start a Masters in Education, so I might well have completely different beliefs this time next year...

[Prue]

Very good points. You can't expect all students to be enthusiastic about a subject just because you are. Of course, it helps if you convey that you like the subject you teach, and if students like you. Normally, that's a great motivation especially for younger students, though. Small children are often motivated mainly because they want to please the teacher they like.

For older students, I agree that it often becomes more important to find tasks that motivate them and arouse their interest. Like Sophelia, I especially like to write funny cases/scenarios about fictional characters in trouble. As I teach Law, it's always best if the problems are something the students can relate to, and/or if they are based on RL cases. It helps to keep your eyes open for interesting cases in newspapers/magazines.

For teaching design, it might be motivating to collect 'bad' examples of design gone 'wrong', and analyse with the students what could have been done to avoid that mistake. Or if there is an underlying rule that should better be obeyed, e.g. that most people find it pleasing if designs follow the 'golden cut'. Or what effect is created by going against such expectations. Etc. And then you could set them a task to first design something while following a certain set of rules, and then going deliberately against a lot of them. Somewhere in-between might be the design that is creative and yet 'doable'. Something that might become the students' personal style.

[TerraPrime]

There is the mechanism of teaching, and then there is the spirit of teaching.

The former can be learned, honed, refined, and improved.

The latter is less amenable to direct interference. I think there are ways we can nourish and sustain our spirit of teaching, but by and large it is not an easy factor to manipulate.

And while I think we can nourish our spirit of teaching with good outcomes of our teaching, i.e., more efficient mechanisms of teaching, the two aren't exactly in a 1:1 correspondence. I get the feeling that Naz was commenting more on the latter, in the OP.

Along that line, my own experience so far (3 years of TA, 6 years full time teaching, over 10 years of mentoring) is that I find the setbacks the easiest to absorb when I hold my own ego in check. It's the difference between "this student is not putting in an effort because *I* am an ineffective teacher" and "this student is not putting in an effort because this is not their priority."

Obviously, this doesn't excuse poor teaching in terms of disorganized course, bad assignments, etc. It is for sure that a badly-tought class can turn off a student's interest. But at the same time, a well-taught class is no guarantee that the students will be inspired.

At any rate, here are some things that I have found to be useful to sustain my spirit of teaching:

- find colleagues who share my outlook in teaching and form a support group for venting and for constructive criticism on moving forward

- improve my techniques of teaching so I can be more certain that the lack of engagement from a particular student is less about my skills in teaching than it is about other factors that I cannot control

- read books that help shed light on the issues

- talk to the students not about the class but about their lives in general

[Isis]

I found that taking up voluntary A level tutoring (with very little actual training) has taught me to learn some tricks that work very well in teaching, e.g. how to make the student do almost all of the thinking and talking.

Nevertheless, you don't need to be a 'natural teacher' in order to succeed in a teaching job. There are certain techniques that do work very often, and are at least worth a try. Unfortunately, many university professors are simply expected to teach well without any formal training. Not sure if that is also the case for college professors. I'd try out a few methods from books, just to find out what works for your students and for you.

It certainly used to be the case that in the UK academics at undergrad/postgrad were just expected to know how to teach (with zero training) just because they have a PhD and are experts in their field. Some are great, some suck... but almost always it is expected of them to do a certain amount of teaching if they are hard-funded.

Here (a post-grad school) we have now compulsory training in education and learning for people joining the academic pathway. As Sophie said, people can improve if they try. The people who were naturals get a little better. The people who were not much good get LOADS better. But you can't force anyone to actually like teaching - although you can force them to do it as part of their role. :)

(3) students pay attention to what they will be assessed on above all else. Stop fighting this. Think of assessment as your message to the students about what you value most. So make sure the assessment actually really is showcasing what you value most in the students. Design the classes to serve the assessment.

I think this is a really, REALLY important point from Sophie. You will get some students who are super enthusiastic about the entire syllabus but most, if not all of them will be focused primarily on what they need to do to pass. It is costing them time and money to be there after all. You have to work with that rather than against it.

[Aemon Stark]

Of course small groups are always easier to teach, and they are better for the students, too. It's unfortunately also often too expensive to have small classes, so that's a luxury.

What do you mean by experimental learning? Giving them projects where they can try out things on their own? That's indeed a popular method.

It's basically a fancy way of saying "learning from experience" or "making meaning from direct experience". I'm not sure how it really works when the subjects are fractions and gym (to paraphrase Seymour Skinner), but it's been the mainstay of postgraduate medical education for a hundred years. It's interesting that in undergraduate med education there's been an increasing emphasis on early clinical experience - often through simulation - and a corresponding de-emphasis of more traditional basic sciences. I do think there's a big advantage for *some* types of experiences, where there is a need to learn how to work in a professional setting, but I kinda bemoan this trend as there isn't necessarily a substitute for learning anatomy and physiology from the get-go.

[Isis]

That trend first appeared in the UK along with fast-track medical degrees (about 10 years ago)... when they decided that it would be great to get people who had begun working in other non-med professions, i.e. art or economics or literature or whatever to train as MDs. With those fast-track degrees there were clinical elements from the first year, teaching students how to take medical histories and do a hearing exam, for instance. Then this trend moved into standard medical teaching too. I know a pharm undergrad who started doing work with patients in their first year too.

I think it's good to do it this way - so long as the theory is taught as well at the same stage.

[naz]

Thanks for all the wisdom, everyone. Especially Soph, Isis, and TP (all of whom I was sincerely hoping would contribute to this thread). I think the advice and opinions are good, even if some of them don't necessarily jive with design education. And most of it I'm not only aware of, but actively trying to implement.

There's just a big difference between planning and implementing. That is, I know that I should be doing or thinking all of these things, but it's hard to keep a check on my expectations and generally, on letting my emotions about the subject matter get the better of me. (Again, I don't yell at my students or anything like that... I just get disappointed from time to time.) I'm wary of disassociating too much because if I did that, I would become like the majority of teachers in this country who just show up for a paycheck, give a PPT lecture, and leave. I think my greatest strength as a teacher (I'm being honest in my self-assessment here) is my willingness to engage with the students about their academic and non-academic issues and spend the time to work their problems out with them. Yeah, counseling, but in design, this is also the best way to work out creative problems... to talk them through.

I think Sophie's point that "teaching isn't about you, it's them" is a great one, and the hardest to put into practice. I honestly don't go into it thinking it's about me, but I do get to that point where I feel I need these students do what we expect of them because the profession and industry needs it desperately. I also try to infuse social consciousness and professional responsibility into my academics and when I see the students not picking up on that, I get troubled by the type of person we are releasing out "into the wild" so to speak.

I get it though... I know you can't change every student. I've come to accept that there is a balanced ratio in most of my classes - there's a third who are eager to learn and meet/exceed expectations, there's a third that will do so if you push them, and there's a third that don't give a shit no matter what you do. It's not that I've stopped caring altogether about the bottom third (that would be a big mistake), but certainly try to mitigate my disappointments by feeding on the success of the first two-thirds. Especially the middle group. It's definitely delightful to see the top third achieve things at a high level and come up with great ideas, but to see the middle third change in front of your eyes with a little prodding and pushing is really rewarding. They won't always get it and may not "produce" as good as the first third, but they're on their way and eventually, if they keep it up, they might get there.

Anyway, please keep it going. I feel this thread could do a lot towards helping all of us improve.

eta: I think this last point is also important. The kind of teaching I do... I don't expect results immediately. They get an inkling of what the deal is, and it pushes them in the right direction, and I know that if it's sunk in, it will affect them much later on. I keep in touch with many of my former students who are now in the profession. They didn't always get what I was saying when I had classes with them, but I see it now when they're working in practice. The kind of awareness and critical thinking and openness to new ideas that I try to get them to understand as 1st or 2nd year students doesn't completely manifest until they're in the working environment or in grad school. Seeing that makes me worry a little less.