We The Professors

QUESTIONS FOR IVORY TOWERS TO ASK…AND ANSWER

1. Why, in today’s colleges and universities, doesn’t every student, in conjunction with one or more advisers, design their own major?  Departments would exist to offer courses in a particular specialty, and might suggest a major track, but most students would select “majors” based on the ideas and skills they are interested in pondering and understanding.
   
   
2. Students today can simply look up most of the terminology and the information that used to be taught in a course. Why shouldn’t every teacher understand that because of new digital technologies, projects and concepts can be much more complex and much less like the paper-and-pencil era of long ago?
   
   
3. Are professors discussing with students terms and ideas such as wisdom, lifelong learning, and the WOW factor?
   
   
4. Have university major programs changed their curriculum within the last three years, and have they put in place systems to constantly change and update that curriculum with more rapidly changing ideas and practices?
   
   
5. Creative learning spaces spark creative thinking. Is higher education rethinking the design of classrooms to support modern-day ideas and new ways of teacher-student and student-student interactions?
   
   

SPRING BREAK: ASSIGNMENTS OR NO ASSIGNMENTS?

It’s March. Spring is coming. And with it comes Spring Break…the week (or sometimes two) off from school which students use as opportunities to party or to sleep or to recharge. And the week faculty use to breathe, to catch up, and also to recharge.

Should students be assigned work to do during Spring Break?

No.

Why not?

Because Spring Break is the one vacation during the school year in which work done by the best students will often be only average and work done by the average students will almost universally be awful.

Spring Break is not the time to expect writing to be done, books to be read, thoughts to be formed about academic subjects. It just isn’t.

And any faculty member with any experience will tell you this is true.

 

REQUIRED READING

Three articles that anyone and everyone in and interested in higher education should be required to read. 

“Several Short Sentences About Writing”
Article by Maria Popova
This summary of the book (by the same title as the article) by Verlyn Klinkenbourg demonstrates an interesting perspective on writing and storytelling that anyone in or out of a writing-oriented program can appreciate.

“Why is Academic Writing So Academic?”
Posted by Joshua Rothman
An extremely interesting analysis and perspective on reasons why academic writing differs distinctly from journalistic writing, and why it’s often hard for journalists to understand that. The post also has a link to an equally interesting and controversial article titled “Professors, We need You!” by Nicholas Kristof which appeared in The New York Times.

 
“Keep the ‘Research,’ Ditch the ‘Paper’”
By Marc Bousquet
An article on why professors should still teach their students how to do research, but not to have students write papers about that research unless there is truly something there to contribute.

 

Extra credit reading:

“The Dark Power of Fraternities”
By Caitlin Flanagan
This is an incredibly detailed and well-researched piece about the dangers of college fraternities. The statistics and the incredible examples are more than worthy to make this long commentary a must-read.

 

IT’S COOL TO BE NERVOUS

Maybe you’ve been a faculty member in a college or university for only a few years. Or maybe you’re a seasoned teacher. And maybe you still find that at the beginning of each semester, and even occasionally at the start of any class period, there’s a touch, or even more than a touch, of nervousness.

You find yourself a bit unsure, uneasy and apprehensive.

• Will it all work?
• Can you persuade the class in the way you need to persuade them?
• Can a new technique work as well in practice as it did in the planning?
• Can you actually teach this course that you have never taught before?
• Will the students look at you as a fool who knows nothing?

Is it okay to be nervous?

The answer is simple.

It is definitely cool to be nervous.

It is totally beneficial to be a bit apprehensive. It makes you sharper, less dull, more aware of your abilities and your proficiency. Nervousness in teaching is a great way of self-evaluation. It makes us more cognizant of what we’re doing in the classroom.

But, as the saying goes, never let ‘em (‘em = students) see you sweat. In a class, the teacher always has to be the alpha dog, the unquestionable leader or authority in a group. Nervousness can, if too obvious, dilute that authority. It can challenge a class with the delusion that they can somehow manipulate the professor and assume a type of power.

Nervousness can, indeed, make you a better teacher. Nervousness that is too obvious can make you look like a vulnerable target.

 

THE SOLUTION TO INTERMINABLE GRADING

If you’re a professor who teaches three classes, or even four, then you understand very well the concept of endless and often overwhelming amounts of grading.

And if, as you should, you do not give objective tests, then your grading task becomes even more time-consuming.

And if you assign weekly writing assignments or even have students write something for every class, then your responsibilities and abilities become truly awesome.

And we all know those people outside academia who see our jobs as teaching for 15 hours a week and then just leisurely spending time pursuing other activities. Those people know nothing about the many things we do, often for far more than 40 hours a week. And grading is certainly one of those pursuits.

So what is the solution to this seemingly endless and thankless work? What do we do?

• How do we solve the problem of endless grading?
• How do we get weeknights and weekends free from the burden of always knowing there is grading to do?
• What magical techniques exist to make this thing called grading less time-consuming and much easier?

The simple and the absolute answer: NOTHING.

• Writers spend considerable time writing and endless hours editing and rewriting.
• Scientists meticulously plan experiments and then spend hours and hours and hours creating materials and attempting to achieve results. Their efforts often feel endless.
• Athletes train constantly and spend much shorter amounts of time actually competing.

Grading is just part of the game. For profs, it’s seat-of-the-pants to seat-of-the-chair.

Sure, there are ways to ease things a bit. Methods like having students do some self-evaluation, or having writing assignments not exceed 100 or 250 words, or using well-designed rubrics, or doing end-of-the-semester portfolio evaluation.

But like any artist or scientist or actor or writer or anthropologist or attorney, there are always activities that are far, far more time intensive than the actual things people see.

And so, for we professors, spending time evaluating the performance of students in order for students to see where to improve and how to improve is just the way it has to be done.

So do it well.

Do it without complaining.

And do it because you call yourself a teacher.

 

FRESH KEYS FOR THE CLASSROOM

There are those who say change for the sake of change never works. But over a 15 to 18 week term, change for the sake of energy is often necessary.

Professors often feel like they are locked in for the whole semester to all the things that they first begin. But that doesn’t have to be the case. An addendum to the syllabus or a new imaginative concept can often serve to make a course more fascinating and more educational.

Here are five things you can begin in your classes today; five keys to being a different (and better) teacher than you were when the term began.

1. Tell your students that beginning today you are going to raise the bar higher in the course. You’re going to add a new level of challenge and complexity. What you, the prof, will find when you do this is that while the students will have to work harder, the ones who truly want to learn will always rise to whatever realistic height you set.
   
   
2. Ask students at the end of each class session: What have you learned? Then hand out small note cards and ask each student to write a single sentence about the one important concept or idea they learned during that class. Do this after every class.
   
   
3. Come early to every class so that when most students arrive you are already there.  Sit among the class and talk to them as they enter. Make it enjoyable and worthwhile for them to be a bit early. Work at discovering ways to make your class a place where students like to be, and where they love the educational value and enjoy the camaraderie. Often you can ask students themselves for small suggestions about this.
   
   
4. Emphasize to students that right now in their lives being a student is their job. Tell them you’re going to make the course more like a job. Absences for any reason should be communicated to you before class either by email, text or phone. Simply missing class without notice is unacceptable. Explain that poor performance can result in a warning. A student can get fired. Then follow through with this for the rest of the term.
   
   
5. Assign seats. Designate a couple of students each class to organize this. Seat students alphabetically by first or last name, by birth sign, and even boy-girl. And if you really want to make a class interesting, have students seat themselves in order of perceived grades.

Courses are about being interesting in all sorts of different ways. And it’s the profs job to lead that effort.

 

FIVE FUNCTIONALLY FASCINATING CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES

Here are five things to do that will make your classes more engaging, more appealing, and more learning-centered. 

1. When you enter the classroom, write on the whiteboard the four or five individual words or short phrases that the entire class will be built around. Then cleverly do this.
   
   
2. Enter the classroom and sit down in one of the classroom seats. Converse with the students around you. Be casual. When the class begins, start with a question related to the topic of the day. “Let’s begin by discussing the reading I gave you for today on the role of news and opinion in today’s society. A question I have is: Why does it even matter that we understand this? Why should we care? Why do you think I even had you read this?” Then, continuing to stay seated among the students, simply answer those initial questions and lead the class through a comprehensive understanding of the topic. And eventually as you do this, stand up and move around the room as you talk and students talk. Never really stand in the front of the room. Just maintain control and let the choreographed discussion flow.
   
   
3. Another effective technique is to walk into the class with four whiteboard markers. Put them down in the front of the room. Walk to the back of the room and tell the class that each and every student is to walk to the whiteboard and write a short but significant and discussable question about the reading and/or the topic of the class. Then build the class around the best of those questions. Also, ask some students to answer other student’s questions.
   
   
4. This technique works best in a class that meets for 75 minutes or more. First, briefly present the day’s topic to the class. Let’s say it’s an introduction to the study of rhetoric. You would explain that rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the capability of writers or speakers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Hopefully the students would have read something about this and perhaps even heard a great example of persuasive public speaking. Then (and this is the good part) give each student a note card. Then have them raise their right hands and take an oath. The oath says: “I (name) promise to not speak to another person for the next 20 minutes. I will remain silently alone in introspective contemplation in a quiet place.” Explain to them that this is an extreme deep thinking assignment. They will all leave the classroom for 20 minutes. They will find a quiet place (not the classroom) and spend every second of the time thinking about rhetoric and its significance to public dialogue. Is rhetoric dead today? Is posting on social media or tweeting the new rhetoric? Why might rhetoric be the most important thing to be studied and discussed in today’s smaller world? Then, on the notecard they are to write one unbelievably significant 10-word sentence that is the result of their deep thinking about rhetoric. The thing they write should be worthy of the kind of thinking a college student should engage in. When they return, each student will read what they wrote and the discussion can proceed from there.
   
   
5. Have the class meet in four different campus locations for four consecutive classes. I have met in places like the University President’s conference room, the center of the college basketball court, a large auditorium, a fraternity house, a dining hall, a coffee shop, a theatre, a dance studio, a yoga studio, a museum and a variety of science labs. In many of these rooms we sat on the floor in a circle. Usually I first talked about the purpose of the room we were in and how the class might be conducted in the spirit of the associated activities. Discussion was then led creatively, purposefully and often student-driven.  Sometimes small group activities occurred.

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There are many more equally and more inventive activities that could happen depending upon the subject matter of the course and the class. The purpose of these things, however, is not to be creative or inventive. The purpose is to make learning more interesting and to show that there are different ways to think and learn and not all require a classroom or a teacher or a lecture. Learning can be self-driven, discussion-driven, location-driven and question-driven.

Inventive techniques do work. All they have to be is tailored to the topic-of-the-day and then choreographed.

 

ACTION!

I watch the 24-hour news channels. I hear the endless reporting, opinions, dialogues, and panel discussions about big and small news. I watch politicians, pundits and prognosticators endlessly talk and complain and hope for better.

It’s sometimes interesting, often tedious and always frustrating.

Why frustrating? Because there’s way, way, way too much talk and way, way, way too little action. Now I know that the news networks are not responsible for action. Their jobs are to observe and comment.

But endless comment, observation, analysis and complaints without any action is just plain exasperating.

And so it is with academia. We too endlessly talk and opinionize and complain about what is wrong, what needs to be fixed, what makes us crazy.

But very little actually happens to remedy these things. Classes are still over-enrolled. Adjuncts are still too abundant. Faculty still feel underpaid and not appreciated. Administrators are still called too disconnected. The list could go on and on.

And all the higher education blogs and magazines and books and websites are just so much sand in the wind without action and commitment and passion for change by all of us.

ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!

New faculty can lead the charge because their ideas are the freshest and their careers will be the longest. But tenured and long-time faculty have to also lead these charges. Everyone involved in higher education must lead a charge for action. Small schools can take constructive action first and large research universities can follow. Or vice-versa.

If real and necessary change is to happen, action must be taken.

Otherwise it’s just all meaningless talk. And that’s simply pointless.

 

LET’S CREATE ENTREPRENEURIAL DREAMS

It’s January. And as a person employed by a higher education institution, you should be making resolutions about academic activities. But never, ever, never call what you make a resolution. Resolutions are things we hope we’ll do. No guarantees. Too often just made and forgotten.

What you should actually be forming are declarations I call entrepreneurial dreams.

Yes, I can already see your eyes rolling.

OMG, you’re saying. The expression is way too “out there,” too emotional, too touchy feely, one of those expressions created by people who sit in bean bag chairs in their offices and still wish they could follow the Grateful Dead.

But you should still use the expression. Every last one of you should use it. And you should use it publicly and loudly.

Because higher education needs more doses of entrepreneurship.

• The organizing, managing, and assuming the risks of an enterprise characterize the word entrepreneurial.
• Dreams are ideas or visions often created in the imagination that one wants very much to do.

So entrepreneurial dreams are sorta/kinda ideas and visions you can champion, and can do your absolute best to take the risks and make happen.

All of us except the most cockeyed optimist believe that higher education needs some help. Certainly everything is not broken, but some things definitely need work. And simply saying parts of the system are broken does not begin to fix them. It takes one voice and another and another and then a lot of effort.

Barack Obama said: "One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”

John Dewey said: “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

Entrepreneurial dreams are things you can get passionate and emotional about, and things that are all about change.

Here are four dreams for the winter and spring to start you out.  (I will only give you a couple sentences on each idea. You can adapt, organize, manage and assume the risk yourself.)

1. Plan an amazing orientation for new students next Fall. Not one based only on social activities and games. But one based on the meaning of a college education, the academic expectations, and even service learning.
2. Change up the ways you teach or administrate. Do what you do differently and in ways you dream to be both better and a little out of your comfort zone. It’s often called re-imagining yourself and your job and it involves lots of risk and plenty of reward.
3. Don’t ever make your classes an extension of high school. Figure out ways to talk about this departmentally and even college-wide. Make certain every student understands the prestige of a college education and the need to have a different mind-set and work ethic.
4. Be action-oriented. Higher education can only be helped by action. If you’re a new prof, suggest changes and enlist support. If you’re burning out, fix the reasons why and help others with similar situations. If you’re near retirement, suggest changes and enlist support just like new profs.

Be an entrepreneur of dreams.

Make the time to do it. It will be worth it. Higher education depends on it.

 

THINK DIFFERENT

To put on your bulletin board, paint on your wall,
handout to your students, or display on campus.

 

“Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

― Apple Inc., 1997

 

REVOLUTIONARY THINKING; GETTING BEYOND AVERAGE

Teenagers want to fit in. Teenagers are often the ultimate example of cliquishness. They want to do things just as their friends do things. They never want to be too different.

Lots of job situations are also like that. Everybody does things the same way. Some succeed a little more, but no one is really thinking or working outside the box.

But higher education teachers and administrators have to be distinctive. After all, we are not teenagers.  Sure, there has to be a certain amount of fitting in, of belonging. But there does not have to be a lot of doing things the way others do things.

In higher education there has to be a sense of revolutionary thinking, of individuality, of originality.

On September 27 author and entrepreneur Seth Godin wrote the following blog post:

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The merchants of average

They will push you to fit in, to dress alike, to use the same tools, to fit the format.

They are the high school English teacher in love with his rubric and the book editor who needs you to fit in with the program. "That's the way we do things around here." They are the well-meaning productivity guru who wants you to get faster, not better, and the social media consultant who is driving with his rear-view mirror.

The safest thing you can do, it seems, is to fit in. Total deniability. Say: Hey, I’m just doing what the masses do.

The masses are average. And by definition, we have a surplus of average.

Don’t be different just to be different. Be different to be better.

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Teaching and administrating on the college level is absolutely relevant to Seth’s words. Totally and unequivocally relevant.

In higher education there unfortunately is a surplus of average. Too often even a surplus of complaining and being disgruntled. And there seems to be a surplus of doing what everyone else does.

But that’s just wrong.

In higher education, because of the importance of imparting knowledge and shaping future generations, there should be a lot of excellent.

There should be a lot of being different to be better.

And there unquestionably should be a lot of insane commitment to doing things better in a different way.

BEING ACADEMIC ABOUT CREATIVITY

Can creativity be taught? Should it be something universities and colleges concern themselves with in an academic way? Can it be defined in a way that even allows it to be taught?

As part of an accreditation discussion at the last university I worked for it
was suggested that our program should be more concerned with the creativity of our students.  The accreditation coordinator suggested that there needed to be more creativity taught in our classes and more creativity demonstrated in our assessment reports.

Thus began a long and arduous discussion.

Our program, I should mention, was in communication and media. And there was great debate about what exactly teaching and evaluating creativity actually meant and how it could be accomplished. Part of the discussion obviously centered on whether creativity is something a person is born with or something that can be taught and improved? Is it a skill? Can reading about creativity make one more creative? Can practice make a person more creative?

There were ultimately more questions than answers. Some faculty were adamant that creativity could be infused into classes. They just weren’t quite certain how. Almost no one wanted to say that creativity could not be taught. Some obviously agreed it might be easier in an art or a creative writing course than a course in media storytelling.

Many higher education courses actually do have the word creativity or creative in the course title. Not because the course necessarily teaches creativity, but rather because the course topic requires creativity in the mastery of the topic.

Often creativity is seen as being original and surprising. It can also be viewed as asking new questions in different ways, having multiple solutions to problems and communicating ideas in innovative ways. The instruction in and evaluation of those elements is often very subjective and very ambiguous.

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Sir Ken Robinson, British author and international adviser on education, says: “You can be creative in math, science, music, dance, cuisine, teaching, running a family, or engineering. Because creativity is a process of having original ideas that have value. A big part of being creative is looking for new ways of doing things within whatever activity you're involved in…

A creative process may begin with a flash of a new idea or with a hunch. It may just start as noodling around with a problem, getting some fresh ideas along the way. It's a process, not a single event, and genuine creative processes involve critical thinking as well as imaginative insights and fresh ideas.

But creativity isn't just about coming up with new ideas; some ideas might be completely crazy and impractical. So an essential bit of every creative process is evaluation. If you're working on a mathematical problem, you're constantly evaluating it, thinking, "Does that feel right?" If you're composing a piece on the piano, part of you is listening to what you're doing and thinking, "Does that work? Is that going in a good direction?”

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Like many things, creativity certainly is a process. One that begins or reveals itself in the very early elementary grades, is too often beaten down in the later grades, and perhaps reignited in college. It can be improved by incorporating original thinking, brainstorming, different ways of examining and evaluating things, and practice in all those things. It probably cannot be taught from scratch, at least not in college.

As a university faculty too often we simply view creativity as a thing in a box that students should bring to college with them. There’s little thought or scholarly discussion of the specific word creative or the concept of creativity because those things are so amorphous and so rarely discussed. Yes, it is almost like everyone assumes that everyone else understands the concept of creativity. 

But a discussion is exactly what is necessary. It’s an important thing to have a “creative” discussion about. It’s important to consider the place of creativity and the concept of what might be creative in your program.

As academic professionals creativity is one more part of academia worthy of more discussion than it gets and perhaps worthy of more research than is done.

 

TEACH LIKE YOU’RE IN THE FUTURE

Whatever you do in a classroom, make it matter. Make it count.

You’re a teacher in a mom‘n pop shop called a department serving paying customers. The product is course content.

• Do not be afraid of being fascinating and energetic.
• Do not be afraid of going outside your comfort zone to make a point.
• Do not be afraid of occasionally being silly or foolish if it makes the point you want.
• If you're not energetic by nature, then find ways not to be dull.

You must do this or you should rethink your career choice.

Keep telling yourself that it is the 21^st century, not the 20^th. Colleges and universities were very different just 15 or 20 years ago. So was education. Fifteen years ago it was 1998. Twenty years ago it was 1993. Look up all the technology and teaching ideas that did not exist then.

Wear ruby slippers to class so that occasionally you can tap the heels together to get out of the past. 

Most of the techniques and methods that often worked “then” just absolutely do not work “now.” Today we do not teach a lot about gathering information. Today we teach how to think about and analyze that information and what to do with that information. Critical thinking, problem analysis, skills training, always concentrating on the why rather than the what. That’s the core of what we do.

What counts is that your teaching matters. What matters is that your teaching counts.

CUSTOMERS ARE NUMBER ONE

 

Teaching is frustration, which leads to burnout.

Because, honestly, teaching is hard.

And because in higher education there are also things called research and service.

That’s department committees, university committees, conference papers, convention panels, books, articles, reviews and on and on and on.

A prof can’t spend all her time on teaching when there are so many other irons in fires that also must be tended.

What to do? What to do?

But here’s the deal. An institution of higher education is a place where students come to be educated by professors. No students would mean no professors. No educated students mean a less learned society. A less educated society means weaker leadership. And on and on.

Yes, the role of a professor is to do research to make a contribution to his field or to the world. And a university requires committees and meetings to operate effectively. But not at the partial expense of the students who are the very reason the university exists in the first place.

To ever say that a professor’s first and primary job is not to teach is just wrong. Administrators can attend meetings with other administrators. (Faculty can attend on a limited basis to ensure faculty governance.) Summers and evenings and weekends and the occasional weekday can be for necessary and important research. (Not for everyone, but for those profs for whom research is a part of their DNA.)

A university’s first and primary purpose is to provide the best possible education to its paying customers—the students. Because without the customers the stores will close and society will suffer.

 

 

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE!

 

Is great teaching just pie in the sky?

Is it just an unreachable goal to be able to make every class an excellent class and every course a meaningful course?

Is it too much preparation, too much work?

Is it impossible?

The thing is: You will never really know that you're great.

 But every single minute in every single class has to count.

Teachers have to expect much more from themselves than they expect from their students.

Even though higher education teachers are people with lives and obligations, those obligations cannot compromise what you do. It has to be at least 40 hours a week. It has to be individual attention. It has to be forcing and demanding student success and constantly figuring out how to do that. It has to be clicking on mental lights.

Teaching is a job, not a vacation with classes.

Parents expected each of their child’s teachers to be wonderful. That expectation didn’t end after grade 12.

Great teaching is all about personal perseverance. That’s the real key.

With good teachers miracles do happen. And each teacher has to set his or her personal bar high enough to be a miracle worker.

Teaching is really a calling, not just a job.

 

BINGING ON IMMERSION LEARNING

 

You have my complete attention. You are all I think about. The mental effort I am making to study everything about you is intense.

Now, instead of thinking of a person in the sentences above, substitute the word you with a subject such as chemistry, literature, sculpture, clinical psychology or even public speaking.

Once a student becomes interested in something, really interested, immersion should kick in. Some experts also call this concept binge learning.  It is the deep desire to learn everything about something. The student eats, drinks and sleeps the subject. He/she is driven.

 Is this good? Often, complete learning can only come with immersion. The best of the best immersed themselves in a topic and that’s why they became the best of the best.

And usually this level of subject engagement often happens to juniors and seniors who have settled on a career choice or a grad school area.

But is there anything wrong with a student becoming immersed in a topic at any age?

So, how is immersion/binge learning encouraged? Penelope Trunk, in her blog titled Brazen Careerist, says: “the only way that you can binge learn is to know how to find course materials on your own and choose the sequence of those materials that works best for you.  This means you can’t rely on someone else’s syllabus and you can’t rely on somebody laying out the steps for you.”

Whoa. What about teachers?

Penelope again: “In the workplace, to create our own value, we must create our own learning path. You have to unlearn the habit of waiting to be told what comes next in your education if you want to take control of your adult life...This is actually true that usually you don’t learn about yourself when you’re studying, because if people tell you what to study, then you gain no insight into who you are.”

In the film Lee Daniels' The Butler, Forest Whitaker’s character—a butler—is told “The room should feel empty when you’re in it.”

As students progress through their education, perhaps less teaching and more coaching and encouraged independence is the role of the teacher. Especially for those students with intense interest in a subject.

And maybe sometimes the classroom can be without a teacher, or with a teacher just lurking in the shadows.

Agree, or not? 

BE A CHAMPION. FORM A SKUNKWORKS.

 

Change is the hardest thing to bring about.

In higher education some say significant change in things such as pedagogy and/or curriculum and/or 20th century or even 19th century ideas takes so long as to make it virtually impossible.

But, it isn’t impossible. It can’t be.

So how can it be accomplished?

Through champions and through skunkworks.

Every new idea or concept or even, sometimes, brainstorm requires a champion to make it happen, or to put it on the path to happening. Management guru Peter Drucker defined a champion as “a monomaniac with a mission.” She is a supporter, a warrior, one who passionately believes and cares and is willing to take the idea by the hand and lead it forward.

And sometimes what leads the idea forward is a skunkworks. Developed by Lockheed Martin in the 1940’s, a skunkworks is a group of like-minded believers found and organized by champions.

In his classic Harvard Business Review article, "Controlled Chaos," James Brian Quinn writes, “every highly innovative enterprise in my research sample emulated small company practices by using groups that functioned in a skunkworks style.”

These ad hoc groups of turned-on innovators are what management consultant and author Bob Waterman, refers to in his book, Adhocracy. He writes “Adhocracy is any organization form that challenges the bureaucracy in order to embrace the new. It cuts through organizational charts, departments, functions, job descriptions, hierarchy, and tradition like a hot knife through butter...ad hoc organizational forms are the most powerful tools we have for effecting change.”

And as Tom Peters advanced the concept, skunkworks became groups that often worked at warp speed, accomplishing things quicker than normal procedures often permitted. They were the guerilla warriors of their organizations: working precise, working quickly, working behind the scenes.

Yes, change in higher education can be difficult. There are so many layers of bureaucracy, so many naysayers, so many committees and taskforces, and so little time to do any of this.

But a champion makes time.

A champion organizes.

A champion puts things and people together and proves it can be done.

Because change doesn’t happen in higher education by lonely voices grousing to the multitudes.

Do you have a change that needs to happen?

Then be a champion.

 

THE BEST THERE EVER WAS

 

In the excellent baseball film, The Natural, there is a moment of dialogue between the main character, Roy Hobbs, and a woman he knows.

Roy Hobbs: I coulda been better. I coulda broke every record in the book.              

 Iris Gaines: And then?

Roy Hobbs: And then? And then when I walked down the street people would've said: "There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game."

I have always been intrigued by the idea of “the best there ever was.” I do understand the obvious unattainability. And the fact that it is just a line in a book and in a Hollywood screenplay.

But, I think there might be more here than just an unreachable story point.

I think there's something that can be worth pondering.

Whether we have taught for 10 days or 10 years, haven’t we all seen the professor who simply doesn’t bring his or her A-game to the playing field? Whether it is because of age, repetition, boredom, incompetence, overwork or just simple lack of motivation, those faculty members exist everywhere. The cliché of yellowed notes and a monotone delivery are never far from the truth.

Those faculty drag down the esprit de corps. They drag down the students. They drag down all by their actions and attitude.

And their attitude is never even close to good, let alone the “best there ever was.”

So should we ignore those people? Of course we should, at least in terms of ourselves and our own growth. Their lack of whatever is not our immediate concern.

Our goal is the opposite: personal challenge, self-growth and, simply, bringing our A-game to the field every day. Every day.

As teachers we think of our own skills in various ways. Some things we are very good at doing. Some things we are okay or adequate at doing. And some things we constantly work at improving.

And we ask ourselves questions.

• What about the fact that it too often seems like I’m teaching to the few rather than the many.

• What about the fact that I have to teach the same class over and over?

• What about the monotony of grading and planning and day after day of what gets to be tediousness?

• What about learning new technology, new techniques, new information, and meeting new people?

Why challenge myself further?

Maybe for promotion, tenure, or self-esteem. Maybe to live and breath creativity, knowledge, and exposition. Maybe because we have a burning desire to do this.

YES. Exactly.

And if you think that’s all bulls#*t, then perhaps higher education is just not for you. (Yep, that’s a little preachy, but mostly true.)

Challenging yourself for any worthwhile and beneficial purpose is great. And we have to be in it for the long haul, not just the moment gratifying, self-satisfying, ego-boosting day or week of being really excellent.

There has to be motivation to be better and better for years and years.

How have I tried? I’m not calling myself any sort of expert, but every time I taught a class I tried to teach it a little differently. Every time I gave assignments I tried to avoid the same-old, same-old. I used the summers that I taught for experimenting with new ways to teach during the regular year. I read about my field, about teaching, about motivation. I watched others in my department or college who were better than I was. I tried hard and consciously to never stop learning and improving.

I never stopped trying. Even when my time was at a premium. I had a family. I had creative interests. But I loved the challenge, actually needed the challenge. And I made time for the challenge because it was my job.

The first four years I was an administrator, I sucked. Sucked really badly. So bad that I stopped for nine years. When I went back to it, I was markedly better, not only because I had matured a bit, but because I had consciously thought and studied how to be better.

In order to move academia forward in the many ways it has to be moved forward, it will take all of us to deal with constant self-challenge and self-improvement.

Can we get to “the best that ever was?”

If we don’t try, we will never even get to “as good as we can be.”

 

 

SOLVING PROBLEMS, ROLLING DICE

 

“Always amaze yourself with what you can do.”

Should teaching in higher education be fun? Should college teachers actually be allowed to see view their classes as extremely enjoyable and gratifying? And except for sometimes endless grading, shouldn’t preparation for class and the actual execution of that preparation be the most pleasurable thing we do at work (except maybe for the NCAA basketball pool)?

OR

Should teachers envision themselves like Albert Einstein, pipe in hand, incredible
equations on the board, oozing knowledge and formality? We stand at the front of the class being the font of knowledge that we all know we are. Wearing a sweater or a coat and tie or a long-sleeved plain colored dress and just absolutely positively looking like a consummate professor. (Now I will admit that I always saw Einstein as a fun guy because of that hair. He had to have had a cool sense of humor.)

So let’s look at a few situations, things that can force us not to be professors, and also to think a little about making even the conundrums fun.

1. Problem. They (students) just don’t pay attention. They seem to want entertainment. They seem distracted. Here are a couple of suggestions. The first is the simplest. Just discuss the whole attention thing with ‘em. Tell ‘em anyone can pay attention to anything for 3-hours a week for 16 weeks. That’s what they decided to pay for and that’s what you promise to give ‘em. Your best.

Another thing, more brutal, is to literally divide the class in two. On one side should sit those students who want to participate, who are eager to learn and who, yes, want an A or a B+. We’ll call this the interested group. On the other side are the slackers who will get little attention, pay little attention, do minimal work and who may or may not pass. We’ll call them the less-interested group. Have students self select just to see who’s where. Trust me, you will always have students in each group. Also, explain to the class that after a few classes you will have the ability to move people into the interested group, or out of it. But point out that the goal is to get everyone in the interested group, even though everyone will probably not get an A or a B+. Then, after class, have those who self selected into the slacker group stay behind. Talk to them about dropping the class. Talk to them about motivation. And have each one of them email you that evening concerning the reasons why they chose to be in the slacker group. When they email you, reply to them instantly countering their reasons.

Is this technique mean and demeaning? No, it’s motivational and honest. It can show students who you are and that you expect the same from them as they should from you. And if they don’t want to buy in, you will give them less attention.

I have done this and it does work. I had three students who were in the less-interested group, by choice, all semester. They did everything everyone else in the class did, although if there were teams, they were their own team. I tried as hard as possible to be fair and objective toward them. (And to get them to want to be in the other group.) In the end, one got a C. Two got D’s. At one point during the term, there had been eight in the less-interested group.

Obviously this technique is not for everyone, nor is it for every class. But, it’s worth considering…and maybe trying.

2. Problem. Students don’t ask any questions. Many of them don’t answer many questions. They don’t want interaction. They want talked at and pacified. Solution. Simple. Refuse to play their game. Call it a game. Tell them you’re going to play a different game. New rules. Bring a pair of dice. Number students one through 12, using that sequence even if there are more than 12. Then make a discussion point and roll the dice. If it comes up seven, then the student(s) numbered seven must respond. Continue this until the class gets the point. Keep it all professional. Use the dice as simply a tool to get responses.

Another suggestion is to take some time and watch a YouTube series called “BetweenTwo Ferns” with Zak Galifanakas or any interview done by Stephen Colbert. These two, in character, are masters of the quick response and asking questions totally out of the blue. It’s like asking Bill Gates if he likes apples, or asking Warren Buffet how good he is at playing Monopoly.   

Teachers need to be this way too about their subjects. Not comedians, but quick with lots of questions asked in different (sometimes weird) ways in fairly rapid succession to generate responses and key points for further discussion. There’s a certain rhythm to this exercise, and it does get a lot of students involved. It encourages thinking and analysis and the idea that there are different ways to frame questions and answers. And it shows that creativity doesn’t hurt.

3. A final problem. But I’m teaching the same stuff I’ve taught for years. Why can’t I keep teaching that way? Why can’t I teach like I was taught in grad school? He just stood in front of us and talked. (Hey, it was grad school and he was talking to motivated doctoral students. You simply can’t do that. I was a teacher for, gulp, 40 years. And if I had taught in 2012 the same way I taught in 1978 (My gosh, was Jimmy Carter really the President? And didn’t I vote for Gerald Ford?) I would have never gotten promoted, never gotten tenure, never lasted. Students are very different today. Technology is over the top. Attention spans are about as long as a television sitcom without commercials (22 minutes). You have to figure out new ways to do the old things. My quick solution. Read this blog, of course. But also, get a copy of the book “What the Best College Teachers Do” by  Ken Bain. (Preferably an e-copy.) Read it quickly. Take notes. Then adapt what it says to what you do. Yes, it’s the best teaching book written  this century. It will help you. Guaranteed. And one more thing. Even if you’ve taught Psychology 101 every semester since 2001, each time you teach it, it should be a little different. Don’t use the same notes in the same ways. Don’t use the same techniques. Change it around. Both the teaching techniques and the content presentation. Yea, you can.

Is it fun yet? It should be. Teachers have fun because we are always in college. We never graduate. We get to forever interact with young, optimistic, determined and curious kids. Never do it for the summers off or the long vacations, Do it to shape the future, change worlds, be creative, teach passionately, and amaze yourself and others with the breadth of your abilities.

Let’s end with a quotation about walking.

"The most telling thing about a person coming in for an interview is how they walk. Do they move with purpose, or are they meandering? If they meander, they can't work for my company. Period." --Vanessa Nornberg, founder of Metal Magic.

 

RULES OF THE GAME

 

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else. --Albert Einstein

I said earlier.

A magic word is engagement. In order to teach you have to metaphorically hit students up the side of the head so they can comprehend the amazingness of the content and the amazingness of the ways you will direct them through mind-blowing material.

To engage, you have to set rules.

Realize some rules are for yourself. Explain the other rules to your class.

Rules (even for yourself) are not meant to be vindictive or parental. They are just to help the teaching and the learning along.

1. Think through what students might not know. Many students have to be taught or reminded how to take notes correctly. Many have to be taught how to do deep reading. Many need to understand why their articulated views can be important. Some even need to be taught manners.

2. In the syllabus fine print, it should be said: All mobile phones and other electronic devices (e.g., iPods, iPads) must be turned off (or on vibrate) and hidden from view during class time. All personal computers or other electronic devices will only be used for taking class notes with instructor permission. This applies to the entire class period.

3. Tell yourself that you are not teaching yourself, not fascinating yourself, not entertaining anyone. You are presenting content to students in ways that make that content feel essential to them.

4. Realize that your students are paying customers. You as the teacher are part of the product they are paying for and you determine how the product is presented and used. Explain to them that college is big-kid school. Not high school. Not an apprenticeship. Not an internship. It is intended, overall, to make each student an educated and thoughtful citizen, about this subject, about himself or herself, and about life. YOU CANNOT SAY THAT ENOUGH.

5. Explain to your students that there is absolutely nothing wrong with repeating a course. Sometimes every person does not always get material the first time. Different people learn at different paces.

6. As a student, do not focus on grades. Focus on what you are learning, what you are thinking about, what you are saying WOW to understanding.

7. Know that each class develops a rhythm and a personality. Make sure that you have a part in all that. Sometimes classes can be three-year-olds who will constantly test the limits. Sometimes they can be mature adults. Often they are a mix. Respect the personality.

8. You are not a parent. Not a guide. Not a pioneer. You are a little bit of all those. But you are a teacher. Define it for yourself; write it big on a sheet of paper. Post it where you can look at it every day.

I always posted actor Nick Nolte’s response to a parent in the 1984 film “Teachers."

Parent: You’re crazy, you know that?

Nolte: No, I’m a teacher.