5th Tips for Teachers Meeting

In our final meeting of the semester, we saw excerpts from two films; The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, and The School of Rock, with its teacher, Mr. S. It seemed that each film exhibited a contrasting teaching style, but did they? This was the subject of much of our discussion. In The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, Miss Brody (Maggie Smith) states at the start of the film, “Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she’s mine for life!” which sounds encouraging if this is interpreted as meaning that there will be sustained learning on the part of the pupils, who hopefully feel very inspired. And later on we see Miss Brody speaking with the school headmistress and Miss Brody tells her, “The word ‘education’ comes from the Latin ‘ex’ meaning out, and ‘duce’ meaning to lead, so it’s a leading out.” But the headmistress, clearly a little distraught at this thought, replies that surely education should be about putting instead, but Miss Brody says that is intrusion. However, the later irony of the film is that intrusion is actually more what Miss Brody is doing, as she really seems to indoctrinate her ‘little girls’ with her views and opinions.

The Mr. S. (Jack Black) teaching model in The School of Rock, on the other hand, appears to be about leading out, as he, a substitute teacher who does not appear initially to know anything about teaching, seems to be able to tell the talents that the students have, from having spied on them in a music class, and could draw them out from this starting point. He assigned parts to all the children in the class for a “class project”, in which they would create a rock band, and those who were not musicians would have other managerial and directing types of roles.

It was suggested by one person present that these two different teaching models – the leading out, and the putting in – might be discipline specific. In other words, subjects such as the Humanities, do well when they draw out from the student what he or she is thinking or already knows. This would be true for Expository Writing. Scientific and mathematical subjects, in contrast, might be more about putting in knowledge and needing to ‘intrude’.

But one participant mentioned how there is an abrupt change in teaching style when moving from a discussion of interesting texts in Expository Writing, in which the students are being drawn out, to the teaching of grammar which is giving of information. Of course this intrusion or lecturing is lessened by asking the students themselves to give grammar presentations, and one person present told of how she asks students to bring in any piece of writing from any source, so as to analyse the grammar usage. This led to more of a discussion of the teaching of grammar, with another participant saying how it would be beneficial to use Smart Classrooms and use more technology for this task. For example, she suggested projecting a passage of a student’s work to the whole class, so that all students could participate in a collaborative effort of peer reviewing the work. In this way, students would be able to differentiate between what the author intended to write and what was actually written.

Some people present did not feel that either Miss Brody or Mr. S. were good teachers, as they felt that both teachers were trying too much to take over the classroom; that each lacked self discipline; and neither was transmitting valid education. Mr. S., for example, did not know the students’ names, but made up names such as “brace face”. And Miss Brody only spoke of her opinionated views, such as telling a pupil that da Vinci was not the best Italian artist, but Giotto was, as he was her favourite. This certainly does seem more like an inputting of opinion, than a leading out model of education. Arguably, it would have been a more leading out approach, for example, if she had allowed students to question why she felt this way, and be open to why other students might have had other views (although, of course, they were only young children). And also Miss Brody brought in a lot about her personal life, such as how her lover, Hugh, was slain on Flanders Field, and we questioned how appropriate it is to bring in this level of personal information into the classroom. We all agreed that it is appropriate to find the right balance in knowing how much personal information to give to our students.

But certainly there were others present who felt that Mr. S. knew exactly how to connect with his students. For example, Lawrence, who was a slightly overweight Asian American who was chosen as the pianist, came up to Mr. S. quietly at lunch and said how he did not think he could do this as he was not cool, and Mr. S. was amazingly supportive, and said that of course he was cool, and that once others heard him play, they would think he was the coolest boy in the school as he would be the bees’ knees, which definitely reassured Lawrence.

And there were others at the meeting, too, who felt that pupils had the potential to learn so much from Miss Brody, as she had so much passion about the subjects, such as art and poetry, about which she spoke. One participant suggested that students can learn hard facts from a book, but that it was tremendous to have a teacher with passion for a subject, as that passion would be contagious, not necessarily only for the particular subject under discussion, but also maybe could show the way to be passionate about other disciplines as well.

Mr. S. was passionate, too, and what was impressive was how Zack, a shy student chosen to be lead guitar, had written a song of his own in which he recognized how exciting learning had now become under the questionable but certainly passionate tutelage of Mr. S. His song had lyrics which spoke of how all he used to care about in “the old days” was getting straight A’s, and how, in those old days, all he had to do was “memorise lies.” Now, though, learning seemed more meaningful, as it was exciting and seemed relevant and tapped into his and others’ talent.

There was plenty more that we would have liked to talk about, but unfortunately we ran out of time, as some of us had to go and teach!

Meeting 4: "Evaluating Your Own Teaching", by L.Dee Fink

Our next reading was "Evaluating Your Own Teaching", by L. Dee Fink, which can be found at
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/evaluate.htm

What follows is a brief review of our discussion. We started by talking about the mid-semester reflections, and whether or not they should be done anonymously. Some of us found that in answer to what were the preferred classroom activities, many students said they liked discussion and an indication of pertinent quotations the best. We wondered whether, and to what extent, this was because students like to be told what to think.

We then moved to the subject of teachers being filmed. Some of us had been in different institutions where we were filmed whilst teaching, and had mostly negative comments about how we came across, such as not liking the sound of our voice, or not sufficiently moving around but being rooted to one spot, or of resolutely staying behind the desk. This brought us on to the important topic of increased self awareness, such as realizing the need to move around more, or come in front of the desk to be more part of the group, or to vary one’s tone of voice, or to not speak so fast. We even mentioned one example of a teacher who had been recorded for an hour’s presentation, and when the “you knows” were edited out of it, the actual content of the talk lasted only 25 minutes instead! We questioned, though, whether the presence of the camera might change the dynamics of the class, and whether even peer observation might also change this dynamic.

We asked the interesting question as to whether teaching is performance. Jane Gallop had written a controversial piece about how actors could substitute for teachers, but we agreed that even though this may be true for a lecture, it would not hold for a smaller interactive class, such as we teach here. It was suggested, though, that students look for performance, and one of the participants even remarked on how he juggles three balls in the air when he wants to get across the concept (and maybe the difficulty) of connecting three textual readings.

Linked to teaching as performance is the question of the use of humour, and it was agreed that students often like you if you are funny, and also it relaxes the atmosphere. But, it was remarked that humour can backfire, as it can imply great relaxation, and then when the teacher shows rigour in grading, that this can come as a shock. It was suggested that what potentially works well is to have variety in our classes, not only in blending humour with seriousness, but also in varying classroom activities.

We also talked about nervousness in teaching, and how this can come about if not well prepared. But it was suggested that nervousness can be positive, as it can mean that the teacher has a lot of energy and can be dynamic, rather than trying to suppress and deflate the energy. Some mention was made of music students who had frightening auditions under stressful circumstances such as dropping books, coughing, rustling papers and moving around, and those students who did not suppress their nerves, but continued to play their instruments energetically and with devotion, were the ones who did best. It was likewise suggested that often the teacher who does best does not over-prepare, but is ready to best accommodate any unexpected events or changes in direction.

From here we moved to the topic of student presentations, especially in the research writing classes, and one teacher remarked how students tend to privilege performance over content, as he gave the example of how one student gave a slick performance of little content, and another had much more substance but little of performance merit, and the students preferred the presentation of the first student. But in terms of whether students are nervous about presenting, it was thought that the best thing to tell them would be that they are now experts on a research topic that they have been working on exclusively.

Returning to the question of evaluating our teaching, as opposed to student presentations, we discussed the possibilities of gaining feedback from our students. We decided that the best way to request feedback would be to put it in a positive framework, asking open-ended questions such as “How effective was…?”, or asking for suggestions for change. This would hopefully lead to constructive comments, which could provide useful insight, and even give grounds for changing certain learning activities or emphasizing others, based on the needs and dynamic of the student group.