What is teaching?
Most of us respond to this simple question with something like – it's the time we spend in our classes, teaching the subject material directly to our students – Shakespeare, calculus, German, research method.
Many of you get irritated at the activities that seem to take you away from that teaching. Irritations like committees, assessment, fall workshop, search committees, diversity surveys. Some of you get cranky about it.
But that classroom-based description needs expansion. Teaching is all the time we spend preparing for classes, writing examinations, grading papers, meeting with students, reading course-related emails, and educating students that studying two hours before a major examination is not really sufficient, and teaching the students directly.
Many of you still get irritated at the activities that seem to take you away from that teaching. Irritations like committees, assessment, fall workshop, search committees, diversity surveys. Some of you get downright cranky about it. These descriptions of teaching are still incomplete. Teaching in all of its fullness involves the expertise, energy, synergy, flexibility, adaptation, and devotion that leads to learning. Teaching is transforming – too big to be contained in the activities that are strictly focused on content and the classroom. So, I asked myself in May and June and July – how do I convince this group of excellent teachers that teaching at Manchester in 2004 is more than them on one end of the log and a student at the other?
I thought about two big questions.
How do I approach my teaching?
How did I learn the ideas that most transformed my life? It was more in my thoughts about this second question that the answers emerged. How did I learn? Let me paint my thoughts into a picture with stories – this will be an impressionist painting, not a Vermeer. In fact, you may decide it's more of a Jackson Pollock speech.
How did I learn? How did you learn?
How, for example, did we learn to figure out what is true? What to believe?
I remember as child, sitting at the wooden table in my grandparents' farm house in the suburbs of Bippus, Indiana.The worn red checked oil cloth covering their table, and the jelly glass of spoons remained on the table all the time, along with the jar of sorghum syrup. My grandfather, a crusty, somewhat harsh farmer with a third-grade education, was in charge of frying eggs for breakfast. On a wood stove no less. (I wasn't raised in the 1880s – just had a parent who was raised in poverty.) Grandpa Young would fry the eggs in a big iron skillet while we waited at the table. His eggs were not the Cheerios that we ate at home. When he slipped the greasy eggs onto our plates, he would shake pepper on them heavily. More pepper. More pepper. And then he would bark, “Pepper. It's good for you.” Even at age 6, I began to think about source credibility. Whom should we believe? Do grown ups always tell the truth? Do they always have their facts straight? What about a person who knows everything, like a grandfather? A president?
And later, when I was competing in extemporaneous speaking in high school forensic competition – Why does Newsweek 's account of an event differ from U.S. News & World Report? Nobody ever told us that the Reader's Digest had a political slant to the right, but we learned it. We learned them a bit from teachers and speech coaches and choir directors, a bit from other students, a bit from reading, a bit from making mistakes. Point is, it didn't all happen in my graduate school class in philosophy of science. Nor did it happen just in Sunday School. Nor did it happen all at once. So now, transformed, we know to ask: how do we know whether there were weapons of mass destruction? Who says so? Why? Does a negative drug analysis mean the bicyclists and runners aren't using drugs to enhance their performance? How do we know? Do positive course evaluations mean our students learned?
Along the way, interacting with interesting people at school, church, in our families, we learned habits of curiosity. I watched my mother study Japanese flower arranging from a library book before I even went to school. We watched our father at a small cardtable in the basement of student housing at Purdue University, doing his statistics homework during his doctoral program. Some of you learned habits of curiosity from your parents' enjoyment of bird-watching, genealogy, classical music. I watched my own children get excited about dinosaurs, Peter and the Wolf, Alice in Wonderland, fishing, astronomy, Dungeons and Dragons, travel.
Somewhere along the journey of my formal and informal learning, we noticed that learning and fun are not mutually exclusive. From Doc Niswander's teaching, I learned that even when they're dead, frogs' nerves can be stimulated enough by an impish, sparkly-eyed professor to make their legs jerk. In fact, I learned this can be done long enough to make students faint. When I turned 50 and got a gift of cooking classes in Tuscany, I got to stir polenta with Marietta, my teacher; listen to cinghale (wild boars) rout through the vineyard; mix panzanella with my hands – all the while learning about Tuscan culture and having the time of my life simultaneously. Dave Hicks' students have great fun when he stir-fries various algae for them to eat and Greg Clark's students gather to watch the Sandhill Cranes' migration overnight stop in Indiana.
I also learned about limits and deadlines. From Dr. Doris Garey, I learned that the Shakespeare questions were due when they were due, even if a student – hypothetical of course – had read the wrong play. From her identification questions – in which she would list 15 to 20 brief excerpts from plays and ask students to identify the play, the speaker, the act, and the context – I learned that it is possible to ask students to crawl way out on an intellectual limb and then saw it off behind themselves.
We all learned to think things through, not just to repeat the obvious. The feedback we received on our papers helped with this lesson When I wrote what I thought were brilliant research analyses for Donn Parson, a prof at Kansas, he wrote “So what?” in the margins beside my insights. He was right. I needed to ask myself “so what?” What does this mean? What are the implications?
Many people taught us to write clearly, and I'm still learning. From one of my dissertation committee members, social psychology Hobb Crockett, I learned to write more clearly. I think of his advice “terse! Terse!” as I speak these words today. I regularly ask Dave McFadden, Dave Switzer, our daughter, Kimberly Votaw, Lila Hammer, and others of you to give me feedback on manuscripts. You help me think things through and convey them clearly and concisely.
How did we learn these things?
• From watching Paul Keller get so excited about teaching that it seemed he was discovering it for the first time himself
• From completing the requirements of a curriculum that faculty had designed with such principled integrity • From watching Doc Niswander, Janina Traxler, and Mark Huntington have fun and be firm at the same time
• From listening to Convo speakers who seemed excruciatingly boring at the time we were required to attend (because the people who designed the curriculum knew this was important for learning)
• From watching Dr. Garey toddle home to her apartment across the street where she graded our questions, smoked cigarettes, and thought lofty thoughts
• From watching Dagny Boebel, Leonard Williams, Steve Naragon, Mary Lahman, and others give serious scholarship a high priority
We learned from what our teachers discussed in the classroom, how they interacted with us, what they expected of us, and mostly, from how much they loved what they taught. Students learned from how the curriculum and the courses were designed. Students learned from the academic advising advice they received – advice like, “I know you think you aren't smart enough to take a class with Dr. Planer, but you are.” Students learn from the ways we invite them to baby-sit for our children. From the promptness with which we respond to their questions and return their exams and papers. They learn from our availability to them.
Where do these time-consuming activities that don't feel like the essentials of our teaching fit?
Four years ago, my colleagues in communication studies proudly invited me to serve as a judge for their senior presentations about internships. The seniors who had completed internships in the previous year, were required to develop 20-minute presentations in which they described what they had done & learned and then to relate it to various communication theories. Students were obviously nervous. Faculty were beaming ... at least until two of the students' applications of the theories were not just weak, but downright inaccurate. Students were relieved that they were done. Faculty, however, all looked sick. What great timing to invite the dean to the presentations.
Faculty immediately discussed what had gone wrong. How had the students not internalized their knowledge of these theories, some of which had been taught more than once? The resolution was a redesign of the strategically placed courses so that theoretical material was taught at more frequent intervals. The internship preparation, in addition, required explicit attention to linking theory with practice. What's the importance of what they did – taking so much time away from teaching? Their students learn more now than they did four years ago. They remember it more clearly and apply it more accurately.
That department faced a challenge with courage and a plan. Much of the important work we do affects student learning.
• Meeting with prospective students who will be tremendous additions to the choir or to the student research project if they decide to come to MC
• Being active on committees as they work to support the needs of students of color, or schedule athletic events to optimize student learning, or require a rewrite of a course description so that it is clearer to students, or review a student's application for readmission, or plan events to affirm the spiritual growth of such a wide variety of persons
• Working on our own professional reading and writing. It's hard when there are so many competing demands, but we need to remember that it's hard for our students too
• Embracing opportunities like the summer Plowshares seminars – this year's took 15 of you to Cuba !
• Living lives of active generosity, some of which your students will notice and here about. Actions like helping Christer Watson and Katie move into their new home. Or donating dishes, towels, and a table to an athletic intern who had nothing. Or helping your students prepare good questions for the press conference with U.S. Representative Burton last spring.
Our actions help students learn. This is how we help our students develop the “conviction” part of the mission that we quote so often. This is how (at least in part) we help them learn to respect the infinite worth of each person and to accept the demands of responsible citizenship.
Some of you have heard the story of my mother's instruction to my sisters and me about judging other people, but I will tell it again. When I was in late elementary school, mother was driving her daughters back to our home in Plymouth, Indiana from an afternoon swim at a nearby lake. One of my sisters pointed to migrant workers who were picking tomatoes. She said something (which I have completely repressed) about how migrants were dirty people. Big mistake. While my father had a gentle spirit, my mother had a wider range. After an initial blast of instruction in the car, we all received a spirited corrective lecture when we got home. Moreover, we spent the entire next day picking tomatoes alongside the migrants. I had a take-no-prisoners kind of mother when it came to issues of cultural respect. Her intensity about this taught me as much as her words.
I began to understand several important lessons.
- Things are complicated.
- Teaching is more than the classroom.
- We teach by our example as well as our words.
- We teach by our words, even when they're not talking about the subject we're teaching.
- We need to model what we expect of our students, including writing for review.
- We need to be patient.
- We need to have high expectations.
- We need to be willing to do what we expect our students to do.
- We need to be open-minded about how assessment and honest reflection can improve learning.
- We need always to try to figure out who our students are – and they are not us.
- We need to treat others respectfully if we want our students to do that.
- We need to think about the big issues – how do we know? What is good? What is just? – in order to understand how they bubble up in the decisions we make each day.
- We need to focus on our students learning.
This takes a lot of courage because teaching in its fullness is a broader responsibility than standing before a class and explaining a mathematical proof or giving the historical context for a new law. It takes courage because we lose some control of the direction of the conversation (or class). It takes courage because we may need to become more curious learners again ourselves. And like Jim Chinworth said yesterday, we may have “settled in.”
Michael Useem, who writes about some of the most courageous acts of leadership in recent history, believes that we aren't just born brave or not. He thinks we can prepare to be more courageous. Since teaching is an act of courage, let's hear Useem's advice:
“The textbook example of courage is when Eugene Kranz said, ‘Failures is not an option' when bringing home Apollo 13. He was confident because he had enough experience. He knew the staffing in Houston; he knew all the moving parts. By looking at his resources and relying on his prior mission directorships, he would draw the concrete assessment that the mission would successfully return to Earth.”
Useem goes on: “The number one way to prepare for future tough moments is to do what the military calls an ‘after-action review.' Do it routinely, not only in your own department but for you personally. [Useem says] I've spoken with entrepreneurs who routinely sit down at the end of each week and look at the decisions they've made. It's almost meditative. They get rid of all the other distractions and review what they did, what they might have done differently, and what lessons came out of that, for future reference."
“The second thing to do is put yourself in situations that get you out of your comfort zone ... The more you can force yourself to do things 30 percent different from what you've already done, again and again, the better you'll be prepared to stretch under huge duress.” (Useem) Incidentally, all of you who are new here have already met and surpassed your 30 percent! These are challenging thoughts from Michael Useem, but I encourage each of us to take them seriously. We have nearly 300 new students arriving here on Sunday morning. They are just four years out of eighth grade. They watch too much television. They aren't disciplined readers. They have trouble with deferred gratification. But they chose Manchester. They chose us. We need to help them learn.
As a faculty, we need to trust one another's motives and competence. Trust one another. We need to talk about our differences and ideas respectfully because avoiding conflict is a disservice to our students. Their transformation is more important than our comfort. We need to radiate our commitment to the Mission and hold one another accountable to support that mission. If our colleagues are complaining rather than trying to solve a problem, we need to confront them to become a part of the resolution of the problem. If we trust, discuss ideas passionately, remain committed to the Mission, and hold one another accountable, the result will be exactly what we want: students whose lives are transformed by their time here.
So, let me remind us all why we're here. What we want our students to learn. Why we're in this place on this day. When I'm done, I invite you to come up and sign to indicate that we are in this together.
Manchester College is an independent, co-educational college in the liberal arts tradition, affiliated with the Church of the Brethren. It is committed to being a community of faith and learning. Manchester affirms the relevance of values to the search for knowledge and has a dual commitment to intellectual integrity and Christian faith, believing that sound scholarship and learning can strengthen both.
The College welcomes students of diverse interests and ages, as well as those of different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds. Within the constraints of financial responsibility, the educational program combines liberal education, career preparation, and education for service, while fostering a desire to improve the quality of life. Manchester College seeks to graduate people who possess ability and conviction, and who understand truth as it is perceived from scientific, moral, philosophical, and historical perspectives.
Within a long tradition of concern for peace and justice, Manchester College intends to develop an international consciousness, a respect for ethnic and cultural pluralism, and an appreciation for the infinite worth of every person. A central goal of the College community is to create an environment which nurtures a sense of self-identity, a strong personal faith, a dedication to the service of others, and an acceptance of the demands of responsible citizenship.
Please join me this year for this life-transforming commitment to our students.
Michael Useem (September, 2004). “Can you prepare to be courageous?" Fast Company, p. 98.
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