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Show , Spring 2005 page 1 7 tell me when the test is. What if it's during my trip to Florida? Sarah: I got out of bed for that? Eric: Were there any pre-reqs for this class? I wish I knew someone here, so that I could ask a few questions. Lindsay: Looks like I'll be able to sit back and ride through this one. Maybe I can do my math homework during this class. If we take this qualitative information, here's what we can deduce that the students learned. 1) The teacher has boring lectures and doesn't care much for student opinion. 2) The instructor doesn't mind if the students leave feeling clueless about the course. 3) The instructor doesn't care if he wastes the students' time. 4) The students will have to forge their own learning communities, since the instructor doesn't care if they get to know each other or not. 5) Active participation is not important neither is listening. All too often these attitudes don't change and the resultant behavior still exists as I watch the students during midterm observations (see sidebar for recommendations on how to resolve these issues). As much as I love to see neat little checklists on how to do everything right, I've noticed as I've taught and observed other teachers that what works for one individual will not necessarily work for another. Although I understood this on some level, I didn't really get it until I moved away for a year to teach in Morocco. One day, as I was chatting with colleagues about ideas I could use to get my rambunctious students to calm down and stop talking, one of the older, male Moroccans looked at me in amazement and said, "You need to get them to calm down? If I could get them to make a peep in my class, I'd be happy." I looked at him with an equal amount of amazement, and then it hit me. There he was with his graying hair and his beard that showed he had made his pilgrimage to Mecca. Of course the students wouldn't say anything in his class. They respected him too much. I, on the other hand, was a young, short, liberal, Caucasian female coming from a society known for loose morals and questionable practices. Why should they feel like I had any authority over them? Although the University of Utah classroom probably doesn't have the same cultural norms as the typical Moroccan classroom, the same notion exists that students, based on their own values, will likely judge an instructor first and foremost by things that won't change, such as gender, age, and ethnic background. They also will judge us based on our physical appearance, voice projection, confidence level in front of crowds, body language, and innumerable other factors. All of this before we've even touched the course material. Sounds overwhelming, doesn't it? Don't get discouraged. Often, we can compensate for those things that we cannot easily change. For Teaching Tips Erickson & Strommer's book, "Teaching College Freshmen" can give us a better indication of what to do on the first day of class: How do we start off on the right foot? Students want information about the course - the content, the requirements, the evaluation procedures, and so on. These matters constitute the explicit agenda for the first class meeting. Equally important is a hidden, or at least unspoken, agenda as students try to determine what the professor is like, who the other students are, how the instructor and students will behave, and what climate will prevail. A good syllabus addresses items on the explicit agenda, but the hidden agenda is experiential. It, too, merits attention. In addition to distributing the syllabus, then, our agenda for the first class would include the following: 1. Find out something about students enrolled in the class. Information about their backgrounds, interests, activities, and aspirations can be helpful in planning classes. Requesting such information also suggests that the instructor is interested in students. 2. Help students meet and establish connections with other students in class. Feelings of isolation get in the way of learning. 3. Get students to talk. If they speak up on the first day, they will be more likely to participate in subsequent class meetings. 4. Include an activity that requires students to be actively involved - a problem to solve, a question to discuss, a paragraph to write. If they sit passively through the first class, they will do the same in the next. 5. Make an assignment for the second class. Faculty are sometimes reluctant to give assignments until enrollments settle, but how are students to know what the course will be like without an assignment? example, if our voice just doesn't project well, we can get a microphone. If we are worried that our age might negatively affect us, our sense of humor might balance it out. Or if we're worried that our gender won't be taken seriously in the discipline, extra studying might help us to prove our knowledge base. The most important thing to note is that we need to know ourselves as individuals and as instructors in order to rationally and intentionally realize our best method of compensation. Videotaping your teaching or asking an honest colleague to observe you could be a good start to this process. After getting to know ourselves, it is important that we be transparent about the expectations we have of our students. As I was getting ready to write this piece on classroom management, I asked a few students about classroom management issues they saw in their classes. One said, "My instructor got upset at us because none of us had done the reading. He pretty much stormed out of class." Delving a little further, I inquired, "Why hadn't |