In 1991 after 20 years in the classroom, as many of you know, I decided to change my style of teaching. Until then, I had been a relatively traditional teacher. I lectured about 80-90 percent of the class session and would pause where appropriate and ask questions to re-energize the students and get them engaged for a few seconds. Ten percent of the students were always dying to try to answer every question (right or wrong) and the other 90 percent were delighted to let them.
My teaching evaluations were good. I won awards. However, the level of this teaching seemed superficial to me. The students were being trained to be good note takers and tended to rely on me to do all the serious thinking. They expected me to explain everything in minute detail. They just seemed too passive to me. They seemed to be obsessed with memorizing every word I spoke and would only get really interested in learning right before each new test.
I wanted something different. I wanted to make a change. Unfortunately, I was not sure where to start and I really struggled. Some times that is the toughest part of making a change.
I finally decided to set some goals for my classes that I wanted to achieve. I called these, “Goals That Would Make Me Happy.” These became my goals in 1991 and they have remained my goals ever since. In fact, they were my goals in class this very day. Only after I had decided on my goals could I make logical attempts at achieving them.
1 – I would try my best every day to do no more than half of the talking. The easiest thing a teacher can do in class is talk. I am convinced that most teachers simply talk too much. Walk down the hall of any classroom building and stop at each door and see who is talking. 95 percent of the time, it will be the teacher. If you truly want to engage the students, you have to get them to do half of the talking or they will fall back on taking notes. Trust me – achieving this goal takes an awfully lot of work.
2 – I would try my best to have every student talk once or twice every day. When students walk into every class of mine, I want them to know for sure that they will be required to be part of the conversation. There are no exceptions. I want the best student and the worst student to talk an equal amount each day. I am lucky that I usually have no more than 28 students so I am able to make sure everyone talks in class every day. You have to adjust your goals to fit your situation. Think creatively.
3 – I would try my best to make sure that when the students talked each day they were prepared to add legitimately to the conversation. I have had students who could talk at length about nothing. That provides no benefit to anyone. I didn’t want to ask them, “How’s the weather?” questions that would allow them to talk without saying something that was well thought out. I want each student to be ready to talk like a prepared college student and add true valid to the conversation.
4 – I would try my best never to “teach” my students anything that they could memorize. I wanted learning to be at a deeper level. Memorization is not learning. This is college. I wanted them to develop their critical thinking skills and I am not sure memorization has any place in that objective.
5 – I would try to make the class as interesting as possible. I have always wanted classroom learning to be an enjoyable activity. I watched a little of the Olympic figure skating this past week where the 15-year old child was put under such intense pressure. As I watched, I reminded myself that many of my students are only 3 years older than she is. Life has pressure. Everyone understands that. However, we as teachers should try to keep that pressure from being unreasonable. We are here to help students, not crush them.
Okay, where a teacher might go from here will depend on the teacher. There is no pure path. There are many ways to address class goals. I am not trying to advocate for any particular way to teach. Nevertheless, to me, once you establish very specific goals, only then can you consider what might allow you to achieve them.
In 1991, I found that, until I had established these goals, I kept wandering back rather randomly to lecturing for most of the class period. I kept coming back to the point where I was talking too much and the students were copying down too much so they could memorize all of my words. I had to have some goals to guide me beyond my traditional method of teaching.
What are your goals? Start there.
