The Most Important Days of the Semester – Part Two

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On October 1, 2017, I posted the first of a two-part blog entry on the importance of the 2-4 days after the first test of the semester.  This initial essay included an email that I sent to my current students immediately after their first test.   My assumption has long been that students are most interested in how to do well in a course as they leave the first test.   The email encouraged them to consider two specific aspects of their post-test assessment. 

First, if they felt they had not done well, I made three suggestions about what might have gone wrong.   It is hard to improve without some identification of the problem.  Students who do not do as well as they had hoped should come up with an honest ending to this sentence prompt, “I did not do well on the first test because . . .”    A vague response does not do anyone any good.  As I said in that previous essay, most students simply do not spend enough time studying.

Second, I tried to get my students to put themselves into one of four categories (confident and ready to build on that positive first step, over confident and relaxed, unhappy but ready to take on the challenge to do better, and terribly discouraged and ready to give up).   Obviously, I am trying to encourage them (whether they did well or poorly) to put on a burst of energy and enthusiasm after the first test.   It is still early in the semester.   I never want any student to feel defeated and hopeless.

The second part of my strategy to help the students make positive changes in their approach to this course comes on the day I return the graded first tests to them.   I walk into class with the papers under my arm.  However, before I hand them back, I make a few specific points about possible improvement.

I did not record my opening remarks this semester but the speech below is my best memory of what I said.   It only took a few minutes but I wanted to encourage them to start looking at the course in a different way.   Remember – my only goal is to guide the students to better learning and that should lead to a better grade.  

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“In just a few minutes, I will return your first test which is roughly 25 percent of your overall grade so you still have plenty of time to improve your average if you want or destroy it even if you did well on this test.   We have a long semester.  This is just the first test.   Whether you improve this grade is squarely up to you.

“I often tell students that learning only occurs at three points.  I refer to this as the learning triangle.  First, learning can occur during class.  We are together 150 minutes per week.  I want us to use each of those minutes wisely to enhance your knowledge of the subject.   To tell you the truth, most students (and I certainly include this class) typically do well during class.  No one falls asleep.   Everyone attempts to answer the questions as I pose them.   People take good notes.  Students can always do better, but I am not upset by the work you have done so far in class.

“The second point on the learning triangle is all the work that students do before they arrive at class.   I assign questions and you have to decide how much time and energy you want to expend to prepare answers to those questions.   Most students, and again I would include this class in this assessment, do fairly mediocre work when it comes to class preparation.  For most, there is simply not enough urgency to push them beyond doing as little as possible before class.   I honestly believe it is hard for any student to excel unless they do excellent work leading up to class – not mediocre work and not good work but genuinely excellent preparation.   Without good preparation, it is hard to pick up the subtle but key points brought out during class discussion.   You can only struggle to keep up with the main points.  Key little nuances are just missed. 

“The third point on the learning triangle is all the work that students do after class.   As I have said before, students invariably leave class with Swiss cheese knowledge.   It looks and feels solid but is totally full of holes.  To do well, you need to spend serious time after class filling in those holes.   For some, those holes are tiny.   For others, the holes are massive.   Either way, the reason I send you problems after class is to help you fill in the holes.   When I give a test, all I am trying to do is discover the size of the holes in your knowledge.  

"Most students are good in class, mediocre before class, and absolutely awful after class.   That’s the way it usually happens.

“Some students are mystified as to why their grades are not higher because “I worked so hard during class.”  However, that is only one of the three points of the learning triangle.  If you don’t get the grade you want on this first test, remember it is my opinion that it was the quality of the work you did before class and the quality of the work you did after class that led to the poor grade.  Work on those two and I think your grade can and will improve radically.  

“I am willing to help you improve your grade if you will come my office.  But, do realize that I will probably not be addressing our 150 minutes together each week.   Typically, that goes well.   If you want to do better, you have to start looking more seriously at the other two points of the learning triangle.

“If you twant a higher grade on our second test, you will need a grade higher than ‘mediocre’ on class preparation and a grade higher than ‘awful’ on filling in the holes of your Swiss cheese knowledge after class is over.” 

**

I never like to hand back that first test without telling students in advance “listen, if you like your grade, don’t make any changes in your routine.  If you don’t like your grade, you have time to fix it and here is some advice about where you need to start putting in more time and effort.”   I believe it is unfair (at least on the first test) to give a student a poor grade (and I give plenty of them) without providing some type of framework to help them see where they are coming up short and how to make amends.  

If you can get your students to make necessary adjustments, the first test can be the key step toward turning a mediocre semester into an outstanding semester.

HELP YOUR STUDENTS FOCUS ON THE QUESTIONS

On Friday morning, April 8, 2016, I will be speaking at the Ohio region meeting of the American Accounting Association on the topic of “Perspectives of High-Quality Teaching.”   If you are in the Cleveland area, I hope you will show up.  I would love to meet you and chat about teaching.   Here’s the URL.

http://aaahq.org/meetings/2016/ohio-midyear-meeting

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I am teaching three classes this semester—two Intermediate Accounting II classes and one Financial Accounting class.  I have 78 students.   I realize that some of you teach hundreds but, for me, 78 is a fairly large number.  That provides some challenges when trying to get each student to do outstanding work.

I always give three tests every semester and a final exam.   I believe that gives the students a chance to show me what they have really learned.   After the first two tests, I usually have a good group (50-60 percent) who are doing well and have an excellent chance of getting an A or a B (hopefully).   They are strong and talented students who put in the work consistently for every class.

But I have another group (40-50 percent) who do not seem able to break through.  In some cases, the students are simply not working.   In other cases, accounting does not come easily to them.   We all have different talents.   In truth, though, a vast majority of my students are working relatively hard and seem more than capable of making an A or B.   Well, then, what assistance can I offer this second group of students to help them move from C’s and D’s to A’s and B’s?  

In many ways, isn’t that one of our most important jobs—helping students who are struggling to figure out how to become outstanding?   And, isn’t that where the victories are the most satisfying?   Getting a bright, hard-working student to make an A feels good but I always realize that they could have probably done it without me.  I don’t deserve too much credit.   Getting a student who has a C or a D with only 3-4 weeks left in the semester to make an A or a B seems like teaching at its best.

So, I take it as a personal challenge to get my “under B” group to do better.  First, you have to get them out of a “C” mentality.   After two low test grades, it is easy to become discouraged and start to think of yourself as no better than an average student.   That’s nonsense.   That’s absolute baloney.    Everyone can do better.   I am convinced of that.   I like to remind them that they still have well over half of their grade to be determined.   In my classes, the last regular test and the final exam make up approximately 57 percent of their overall grade.   Although the semester seems to be drawing to a close, they are not even at half time yet as far as their grade is concerned.   They still have plenty of time left to make an A or B but they do need to make some adjustments and they need to make them immediately.  I need to impress on them that they can do better but there is some urgency.  Without urgency, change is tough.

As probably everyone who reads this blog knows, I use the Socratic Method.   My class is filled with questions that the students work to answer.   I am training them (I hope) to learn how to “figure out” answers for themselves.  My giving them answers and information is not nearly as beneficial as them getting the information and figuring out the answers for themselves.

When a student comes by to ask for help here in this last month, I like to ask that person to start writing one test problem after each class.  I want to see one problem that they think I might ask on a test based on the material we covered.   I want them to start focusing on how the material can be turned into questions.   In the book Make It Stick, the authors assert that students often over-estimate what they have learned.   I think that is probably true.   I also think it is true that students focus on answering the questions they have already seen and not on the questions they are going to see. 

What I find fascinating is that, even after having two of my tests, students often write poor questions.   For the most part, they simply take the questions that I ask in class and change a few words or numbers.   I think that is how many of them have been trained in high school.   The teacher says something.   The student writes it down.   The student hands it back on the test.   The student gets an A.   That does not work in my class.   I ask them to take material and do something different with it.   I sometimes think that the reason they are not making an A or B is that they don’t truly understand how they are going to be tested.

When they send me their questions, I often point out “that sounds like what I asked in class.  I’m probably not going to ask that same question again.   What would that prove?   How could I twist the question to make it different and see what you really understand?”   Usually, on a second (or maybe third) attempt, the questions start looking like one of my test questions.   The student starts making a break through—not on the answer side but on the question side.

At that point, when they start to understand the nature of the questions they are going to see, then coming up with legitimate answers becomes a more realistic goal. 

If you are having students who do not seem to be able to “break through” into the A and B range, you might try that.   After every class, ask them to write a question that you might ask on a test.   Then, if they do not do a very good job of that, help them see what more you might be expecting from them.   Get them to focus on the questions before they worry too much about the answers.  

I sent my Financial Accounting students a practice problem this morning.   Sure enough, I took what we had done in class and added something a bit different.   I challenged them to “figure it out.”   And then I tried to make the point more clearly:   “And, as you are getting ready for the third test start asking yourself two questions:  (1) Can I do the standard problem?  (2) How can the problem be extended to make it more challenging?   That's when education gets exciting.”

Maybe focusing on the questions will help your C and D students move up to A’s and B’s here in the last few weeks of the semester.  That’s a victory for everyone.

CAN ANYONE LEARN TO BECOME A GREAT TEACHER?

Prior to today, this blog has had 204 entries.   Over the years, the site has had over 134,500 page views (or roughly 650 views of each of those entries).   As always, thanks to everyone who passes along this link to other teachers who are interested in thinking more deeply about the day to day rewards and challenges of going into a classroom to help students develop and grow as human beings.   Thanks!!!

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A few weeks ago my dean sent me a note containing a simple question:   Can anyone learn to become a great teacher?   Unfortunately, I did not have a great answer and did little more than ramble around in response.   It is a question that I have thought about often during the intervening weeks.   Is it possible for anyone to develop into a great teacher or is that goal only available to a chosen few?

What do you think?  If you have thoughts, I would love to hear them.

Let me start the conversation by asking a different question:   Can anyone learn to become a great coach in pro football?   In the NFL, great football coaches get paid millions.  It is truly an exciting profession.   You would think thousands of potential great candidates would be available.   And, yes, there are a few great coaches.   Both coaches in the Super Bowl this year probably qualify.   Bill Belichick of New England meets the definition as does Pete Carroll of Seattle.   They have been proven winners for a long time.   But there are not many other names that come leaping forward.  It is a big world and pro football is huge.   Yet I can come up with just two names of great coaches.   Several other people certainly qualify as good but the jump from good to great is always hard.   

In truth, it has to be difficult to get 50-60 individuals to play at close to maximum capacity over an entire season.   My guess is that guys like Belichick and Carroll probably spend close to 100 hours per week thinking about nothing other than how to maximize the potential of their teams.   And, even then, as Pete Carroll proved at the end of the Super Bowl, they can still do things that cause people to be critical.

Why are there not more great coaches?   I think it is especially difficult to be great when you are responsible for a whole group of people.   Every time you add another person to the mix, you increase the complexity of the process.   One person working by himself (or herself) can be great.   Bob Dylan, Pablo Picasso, Philip Roth, Maria Callas, Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare.   Yes, in each case, other people were involved with these folks but when things got truly serious they had to stretch themselves in order to succeed.   They didn’t have to stretch 55 other people.   Would Bob Dylan or Pablo Picasso have been great if they had been organizing and leading a large group of singers or artists?

Being a great football coach is tough.  But, is it easier to be a great teacher or a great football coach?

In some ways, it is easier to be a great football coach for one reason.   The teams keep score and everyone can agree on the winner.    The goal is simple and obvious.   And, there is only one goal.    No one seems to know exactly what the goal of a college teacher is.  More frustrating, no one seems to know how to measure whether a specific goal has been achieved.   Greatness is a very vague goal in teaching which is probably why few teachers seem to have great education as a primary goal when they enter the classroom each day.   Most coaches burn deeply to be great.   How many teachers have you met who really wanted to be great?

So, are there really any great teachers?   Maybe it is just a fantasy. 

I think a lot of teachers do a good (maybe great) job with the very best students.   That is an important role in college but, at some point, teaching brilliant students who are highly motivated provides a different type of challenge.  

I think a lot of people do a good (maybe great) job of teaching facts and figures.   Many people grew up in a system where memorization skills were highly valued and that priority flows through into their own teaching style.   Personally, in an era of Google and other Internet resources, I think education needs to be more than that.   But that is just my opinion.

I think a lot of people do a good (maybe great) job of entertaining students.   Such teachers are full of interesting and relevant stories.   That is fun and can be very informative but the emphasis is entirely on the story teller.   The student is merely a passive recipient of knowledge.  

I don’t really know if everyone can become a great teacher.   But I do believe that I know how some people might achieve that goal.

First, I think the teacher has to have clear cut objectives and those objectives have to be challenging.   If all Bill Belichick wanted to do was win the first game of the season, he would never become a great coach.   My guess is that he is a great coach because his one goal is to win the Super Bowl each year and everything he does is designed to achieve that goal.  

I have 77 students.   I want to push all 77 to go beyond what they thought they could do.   And, I want to do that every single day for the entire semester.  I am not out to teach 10 or 20 or 30.   I want to teach them all.   I want them all to learn how to work harder and think deeper.   I want to challenge each person to become better in some fundamental way over the course of the semester.   I know it sounds a bit odd but I want each student to be smarter at the end of the semester.  

Second, every action for the entire semester has to point toward your goal.   When Bill Belichick practices his team, my guess is that every minute is set up to push the team towards the championship.   I am in class with my students 150 minutes each week and every action is designed to help all 77 of them learn to work harder and think deeply.  

Third, students are rewarded for their work by grades and testing.   You cannot challenge people to leap tall buildings in a single bound and then give everyone an A whether they manage to make it or not.   If I want my students to work hard and think deeply, I have to test them in that way.   I cannot claim to teach the development of critical thinking skills and then test my students on memorization.   That simply will not work.  

Fourth, you cannot challenge students to be great and then not be available to help them when they need it.   It is not fair to go into class and tell students that you expect great things from them and then walk away and let them thrash around on their own.   You are the teacher; they are the students.   You have to hold office hours where you show students how to achieve what you want for them.   You have to answer emails that seek assistance.   My guess is that Bill Belichick and his assistants show players over and over exactly what they want from them.   They guide as well as push them.   You cannot challenge students if you are not willing to be there to help them grow into that role.

Fifth, I think you have to realize that most college students have already picked up bad habits before they arrive in your class.   That is not necessarily their fault.   They have been in the school systems for 13-16 years.    They honestly believe that an education means memorization and that cramming the night before each test is a good strategy.   Those techniques have always worked for them in the past.   In some ways, you almost have to break those habits before you can build new and improved ones.  I teach 20 year old students who have been in school since they were five.   For the most part, they are extremely well trained in a particular type of education.   “Highlighting” the textbook is one of their strongest skills (because all you need do is move a magic marker).   If you want students to think more deeply, you have to realize that this is likely a new request for them.   They probably cannot even comprehend what you want.   You will need patience and perseverance.   You will need to show them over and over.

Sixth, don’t get wrapped up in the reward system for teaching.    The complaints I hear from teachers are “no one around here cares about teaching,” “there is no reward or recognition for excellent teaching,” and “the administration only listens to the complainers.”   You should strive to be a great teacher (a) because you want to be a great teacher and (b) because your students deserve a great teacher.   If you must be rewarded or recognized in order to put in the effort, you probably will never get there.   Years later some students might realize how wonderful you were—how much you meant to them and their lives.   Other than that, you will probably never be properly recognized.   Do the work because it is important to you.   Don’t expect anyone else to notice.  

Can anyone become a great teacher?

Here is my real answer.   There are a few days when I think I am a great teacher.   There are other days when I am pretty awful.   No one is great every day.   The secret is to work to get better.   The real question should be:   Can anyone get better as a teacher?   And, I think the answer to that question is a resounding YES.   Forget about being great.   Work on becoming a better teacher.

SIX QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT AS YOU START A NEW YEAR

This will be my 201^st entry on this blog.  That is roughly 190 more than I expected to write when I first began.   Over the years, the blog has had 130,000 page views and was recently named one of the top 50 blogs in accounting for 2014.   (http://www.accounting-degree.org/50-best-accounting-blogs-of-2014/)    Unfortunately, it was the only blog on the list that dealt with education.   I would honestly love to be reading 50 different blogs about teaching and learning.    At that point, I think college education could really begin to improve.   So, start a blog.   Share your opinions.   Share your questions.   Share your doubts.   Share your frustrations.   We need more of that.   You will never be able to estimate how much the blogging process can improve your own teaching until you start typing and posting.

As always, I want to pass along my great appreciation to everyone who forwards messages to colleagues about my various thoughts and ideas on this blog.   Any success here is dependent entirely on the many kind people who read these essays and discuss them around their own faculty coffee rooms. 

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Some years ago when I first began to write about teaching, I received an email from a stranger in England.   That email has long since been lost but it said something like “You don’t know me but I have read several of your essays on teaching and believe you will appreciate the attached quote.”    How very correct he was.   Sadly, I don’t know who sent the email or even the origin of the quote.   But, I cannot possibly describe how much the following words have influenced me over the intervening years.  

   "Teaching does not come from years of doing it.  It actually comes from thinking about it." 

As I get older, I am ever more convinced that we teachers don’t invest sufficient time thinking deeply enough about our classes, our students, and the learning process.   It is easy to get stuck on autopilot.    Every year is like the last one.   We understand when certain aspects of the experience are not going well but we avoid delving into those problems with the thought necessary to arrive at creative and effective improvements.   More and deeper thinking might just be the cure.

As we move toward the beginning of another year and the opening of a new semester, I want to urge all of us (you and me both) to spend some hours over the winter break just thinking about teaching.   Focused meditation can help us consider how we can make 2015 the greatest year of our teaching careers.

That is a reasonable and upbeat goal:  2015 the greatest year of our teaching careers.   Can we do the thinking that is necessary to make that goal a reality?   When I give presentations to educators and make such a bold suggestion, I often get a frustrated query in response:   “What am I supposed to think about?”

That is not a dumb question.   In fact, it might well be the real key – what should we think about?   “Go out and do some thinking” is so vague that it provides little helpful advice.   To help direct this thinking, I want to throw out 6 specific questions that you might ponder over the winter break.   Just some questions to bat around inside your head.  You are not looking for a right answer in general but rather the answer that makes the most sense for you.

Maybe most importantly, you are not trying to justify what you are currently doing but rather trying to figure out how your current practice might be improved ever so slightly.

(1) – How do you want your students to be different on the last day of class from what they are at the beginning of the semester?   Surely, there has to be some anticipated growth in each student or the class simply has no purpose.  For you, what should that change be?   Try to avoid giving a vague response.   To help faculty determine their goals, I like to ask the “fly-on-the-wall-question:”   If you were a fly sitting on the back wall of the classroom on the last day of the semester, what would you want your students to say about your class as they exit?   That will tell you a lot about the change that you want to see in your students as a result of your class.   Be careful how you answer this question because it should then become the guiding point for how you structure every aspect of your teaching.  If you want your students to learn to distinguish the music of Mozart from that of Bach by the end of the semester, then you build your class to create that outcome.   So, what outcomes are you seeking?   How should your students be different at the end of the semester as a result of your class?   If you want to become a master teacher, be bold when you set your goals.   If you have never considered this, I think you have missed one of the great questions in teaching.

(2) – How do you communicate with your students?   Most of us only meet with our students two or three times per week in a hectic classroom setting.    Those classes are often 4 or 5 days apart.   If you want to influence students, there has to be some method of conversing with students in a more efficient and timely manner.  How effective would any business be if the employer could only converse with employees for a few minutes 2 or 3 times each week?   In my classes, I use a lot of email.   I start sending emails about 6 weeks before the semester begins and do so on almost a daily basis once the semester gets going.   I ask questions, I direct students to interesting newspaper articles, I create puzzles for them to solve, I talk about what we covered in class, I give them review hints.   I tell the students that I will only send what I consider to be important emails but I do expect them to be read.   I cannot guarantee that they read every word but, at least, I have a way to provide direction and motivation on a daily basis instead of only 150 minutes each week.

(3) – How do you get your students to prepare for class?   I have always argued that the secret to an effective classroom environment is student preparation.   If students are prepared, they can participate in a meaningful way.   There is no limit to what can be accomplished in class.   If students are not prepared, all they can really do is take notes that they subsequently memorize.   They are just observers.   They cannot participate.   The quickest (although not easiest) way to improve your class is to convince your students of the wisdom of walking into class prepared.   Most students (and, by that, I mean virtually all students) go through a middle school and high school system that puts little or no emphasis on class preparation.   Therefore, in college, you face a group of students who have little idea as to why they should prepare for each class and how to go about doing that.   I guarantee that if you can increase student preparation in your classes, you will be amazed by the improvement in the learning process.

(4) – How do you test to avoid memorization and, instead, emphasize the development of critical thinking?   Often, in this blog, I have stated that students will learn based on how they are tested.   If you want to develop critical thinking skills, you have to convince the students that such skills are necessary for success on their tests.   As most of you probably know, I am not a big fan of student evaluations.   However, the one question that I look at religiously is number 8 (at the University of Richmond) which is something like:    Compared to other college-level courses you have taken, how well did this course call upon your ability to think critically and analytically?   I would bet that the results of that question are highly influenced by how well my tests emphasize critical thinking skills.   Over the past decade, I have worked more diligently on my testing than on any other part of my teaching.

(5) – What do you do after class to help students solidify the knowledge that they have obtained in class?   I am always amazed by how quickly understanding leaks out of the minds of my students.   I am currently reading an excellent book titled Make It Stick – The Science of Successful Learning (by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel).   One of the earliest things I marked in this book was the line:   “One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.”   How can you help students do that self-quizzing so that they can jumpstart the amount they know and understand?   How can you help them build on what they learn in class rather than have it leak out of their minds?   How much direction and assistance do you give students after they leave your classroom?

(6) – How do you convince your students that they are capable of learning the material in your class and that this knowledge is worth the effort?   In life, attitude is everything.  If your students are convinced that they are stupid or if they believe the material has no positive value for their lives, a quality educational experience is going to be impossible to achieve.   Conversely, if you can instill a high level of confidence, every student can become a star.   It would be wonderful if all students walked into our classes with a deep curiosity and an openness for learning and a huge belief in themselves.   That works great in theory but not in practice.   Many students appear on the first day fully expecting to feel stupid and bored.   That cycle needs to be broken if the class is going to be a success for every student on the roll.

Six questions and no real answers.   But they are well worth considering before you walk back into the classroom in January.   Can you come up with a new and improved answer for one or more of these over the next few weeks?   Remember that teaching should always be about “experimentation” and “evolution.”

Do that and I am convinced that 2015 really can be the greatest year of your teaching career.

 

Happy holidays!!!