There are many times in teaching that a teacher needs to explain things to students. In many college classes, they are young people with limited experience. Occasionally, they simply don’t understand, especially when things are not as they have experienced them in the past. Part of my job as a teacher is to explain things beyond my subject matter.
There are stories that can sometimes help them come to a better understanding. I often have students come to my office after I return a test. They are upset that they didn’t make the grade they had wanted or expected. It is common for me to hear something like “I cannot tell you how hard I studied. In fact, I studied with Mr. A and Ms. B and I knew just as much as they did. We worked every question from class 8 times apiece. Yet, they made a 95 and I made an 83. What am I supposed to do?”
I guess this is on my mind because one of my students told me this afternoon that the 83 he got on a recent test was the first grade he had received in college under 98.
To the student, the facts are clear. He or she did the same work as Mr. A and Ms. B and they made significantly higher scores on the test. At this point, the world doesn’t make sense.
Here’s one story that I sometimes use in cases like this. “Assume you have two tightrope walkers. They both can walk a tightrope. It is a mechanical skill and they both can do it. But, for whatever reason, the first person is just more comfortable. Maybe, the first one practices more carefully. Maybe, the first one thinks more about the mechanics of tightrope walking. Maybe, the first one sits in his room at night and thinks of what odd things can happen and then dreams up a proper response. Or, maybe, tightrope walking just comes more naturally to the first person. Everyone has different abilities in life.
“So, both people are high up on the tightrope one afternoon and they both look great. Suddenly, a very unexpected and very harsh wind blows up. What happens?”
The student realizes the expected answer. “The first person hangs on and the second person falls off.”
And, my response is: “Yeah, exactly. As long as things go as expected, they both do fine. It is the ability to react to the unexpected that usually makes a difference in life between great and adequate and the same is true on tests.
“My guess is that if I had asked exactly the questions on that test that you expected, then Mr. A, Ms. B, and you would have all done great. Doing great when you are faced with the expected is not a big challenge.
“However, I want you to learn how to react to the unexpected. To me, that’s what will make you different out there in the real world. I suspect that you were not as well prepared for the unexpected as I wanted you to be. That is where you probably need to get better in the future. First, of course, you have to be able to do the expected. That goes without saying. Everyone knows that. But, then, if you really want to be great, you need to move on to the unexpected. You need to sit in a dark room (or you need to converse with Mr. A and Ms. B) and think about what unexpected things could happen on the test. If you never grow to the point where you can start dealing with the unexpected, then you are never going to flourish the way I want you to. And, you are capable of doing this. I’m not asking for the impossible. You can’t just be satisfied with being able to do the expected. It takes growth; it takes time. But you are capable.”
Does the story help the student? Sometimes, it does. Not always but certainly for some it makes sense and it pushes them to break through to a more in-depth understanding. I think too much of our school system (from kindergarten on) is geared toward teaching students how to face the expected. That’s fine and certainly necessary. But I don’t think any of our students are going to cure the ills of our world by limiting themselves to figuring out how to face the expected.
If they don’t catch on by themselves, sometimes a story can help.
Showing posts with label Excellence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Excellence. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
I Have An Assignment For You
My wife often watches “Morning Joe” on cable television as she gets ready for the new day. It is a group of people who discuss and debate politics and the world in general each morning. Last week, I wandered through and the people on the show that morning were discussing education. Just as I passed by, one person asserted: “We all know how to get great education: Demand Excellence and Expect Excellence.”
Demand Excellence and Expect Excellence. Hmm, sounds good. I wonder how many of us really do that? Do we really demand excellence from our students? Really? In fact, do we really demand excellence from ourselves? Or, maybe, they are just two sides to the same coin.
RESPONSE ONE TO MORNING JOE: After hearing the commentator, I immediately walked to my study and sent an email to one of my students. “You made a D on your first test in my class. Since then, I have not noticed one iota of improvement. None. You are not one bit better prepared for my class. You are not trying any harder as far as I can see. I can only surmise that your primary goal is to make a D in my class.”
The next day in class that student was clearly better prepared. Not sure how long it will last but it was nice to see him more engaged.
Was I demanding more excellence from him or was the email a way of demanding more excellence in my own teaching?
RESPONSE TWO TO MORNING JOE: However, that was not the part of “Demand Excellence and Expect Excellence” that really stuck with me. Since then, I have wondered a lot about two questions. First, what do I mean by excellence? Second, do my students understand what I mean by excellence?
How can I demand excellence if I don’t know what it means?
How can I expect excellence if my students don’t know what I mean?
Excellence is a word that is bounced around a lot in teaching. But is it just a word or does it have a real meaning to you?
So, I have an assignment for you. Write a short paragraph where you describe what you mean by a person being an excellent student in your class. Should be simple stuff. In your class, what is excellence? Is excellence just being able to achieve a certain score on a test? Surely not. If so, no wonder our education system is troubled.
For your students, what do you really mean by the term “excellence?” Then, email that paragraph directly to your students (and send me a copy at Jhoyle@richmond.edu).
Here’s what I mean by student excellence (not good, but truly excellent):
The student needs to come to every class having prepared and thought about the assignment so that they can discuss and debate each question with the teacher and other students. They need to show me that they understand the material so well that they can legitimately address any and all related questions. It’s not the first question that counts but where they can go from there. They don’t have to be right but their answers have to show a logical thought process. They need to spend sufficient time immediately after class organizing and reviewing our discussions so they can start to see the patterns and structure that form the foundation for the discipline. Then, they need to prove that they have gained a working understanding of this knowledge. They have the opportunity of doing this by showing me on a test that they can take a question they’ve never seen before and break it down into its component parts so that they can connect it to the logic and structure of the discipline in the same way we have done in class. In other words, they can use that connection to come up with a resolution to a problem that makes sense and that they can support.
In my class, that is excellence.
That really does deserve an A.
Demand Excellence and Expect Excellence. Hmm, sounds good. I wonder how many of us really do that? Do we really demand excellence from our students? Really? In fact, do we really demand excellence from ourselves? Or, maybe, they are just two sides to the same coin.
RESPONSE ONE TO MORNING JOE: After hearing the commentator, I immediately walked to my study and sent an email to one of my students. “You made a D on your first test in my class. Since then, I have not noticed one iota of improvement. None. You are not one bit better prepared for my class. You are not trying any harder as far as I can see. I can only surmise that your primary goal is to make a D in my class.”
The next day in class that student was clearly better prepared. Not sure how long it will last but it was nice to see him more engaged.
Was I demanding more excellence from him or was the email a way of demanding more excellence in my own teaching?
RESPONSE TWO TO MORNING JOE: However, that was not the part of “Demand Excellence and Expect Excellence” that really stuck with me. Since then, I have wondered a lot about two questions. First, what do I mean by excellence? Second, do my students understand what I mean by excellence?
How can I demand excellence if I don’t know what it means?
How can I expect excellence if my students don’t know what I mean?
Excellence is a word that is bounced around a lot in teaching. But is it just a word or does it have a real meaning to you?
So, I have an assignment for you. Write a short paragraph where you describe what you mean by a person being an excellent student in your class. Should be simple stuff. In your class, what is excellence? Is excellence just being able to achieve a certain score on a test? Surely not. If so, no wonder our education system is troubled.
For your students, what do you really mean by the term “excellence?” Then, email that paragraph directly to your students (and send me a copy at Jhoyle@richmond.edu).
Here’s what I mean by student excellence (not good, but truly excellent):
The student needs to come to every class having prepared and thought about the assignment so that they can discuss and debate each question with the teacher and other students. They need to show me that they understand the material so well that they can legitimately address any and all related questions. It’s not the first question that counts but where they can go from there. They don’t have to be right but their answers have to show a logical thought process. They need to spend sufficient time immediately after class organizing and reviewing our discussions so they can start to see the patterns and structure that form the foundation for the discipline. Then, they need to prove that they have gained a working understanding of this knowledge. They have the opportunity of doing this by showing me on a test that they can take a question they’ve never seen before and break it down into its component parts so that they can connect it to the logic and structure of the discipline in the same way we have done in class. In other words, they can use that connection to come up with a resolution to a problem that makes sense and that they can support.
In my class, that is excellence.
That really does deserve an A.
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Do They Appreciate What You Do?
This is my 125th blog entry in the last 25 months. When I started this site, I promised myself that I’d try to do at least 15 entries. My guess is that I would have quit long ago were it not for the many kind emails that I have received. Thanks – I love hearing from people who tell me about their own love of teaching and the challenges they face each day.
Today’s entry is broken into several individual parts.
PART ONE – I travel around the country 3-5 times per year to give teaching programs and presentations. Invariably, at each stop, some teacher will ask in complete exasperation “why should I even try to do better? The students do not appreciate what I do. They certainly don’t appreciate when I try to make them work and think.”
It is very tough to spend the time necessary to move toward excellence if you believe that no one appreciates you. It is hard to put out so much energy if no one cares. I often think deans and department chairs ought to be required to pat as many teachers on the back as possible each semester. However, the people who really benefit from your work are the students. They are the ones who should care the most. Do they truly appreciate your effort? That, as Hamlet says, is the question.
PART TWO – In one particular class that I teach, most of the students are junior accounting majors. It is a challenging course but virtually all of my students are capable. They can learn enough accounting to do well after they graduate. Interestingly enough, it is not the knowledge of accounting that often makes a difference in the level of success they achieve in their chosen careers. It is their ability to supervise others that can really count the most.
Within the first year or two after graduation, they will move into a position where they have to supervise other (younger) individuals. Instead of being responsible for just themselves, they suddenly become responsible for 2-5 associates. Suddenly, it is the ability to do well in that supervisory leadership position that starts to become important. We teach group work and team work in college but we don’t often address supervisory leadership.
One of the problems for them is that they don’t have many role models. If I mention the word “leadership,” they will tell me all about presidents (Roosevelt, for example, or Lincoln) or a great general (U.S. Grant or R.E. Lee) or a corporate executive (Bill Gates or Steve Jobs). But none of those individuals (at least when they became famous) were supervisory leaders. George Washington was not trying to motivate and guide 2-5 people under his direct supervision. Those leaders are on a different planet from the students.
Although it is not exactly the same, the closest role models that my students have for supervisory leadership are their teachers. The teacher walks into the room each day and is responsible for motivating and guiding 10 to 30 students or more. In most cases, how well the students do is largely based on how well the teacher does.
For that reason, I want my students to spend some mental energy thinking about how teachers manage to accomplish what they do. Most college students have been in class for roughly 80 percent of their lives. They have interacted with dozens of teachers in a very direct and personal way. They have observed both good teaching and bad. However, they rarely consider how a teacher works and what makes one person particularly successful. For a young person, who will soon be in a supervisory position, there is a lot that can be learned from their teachers.
I recently started giving my students a series of three exercises to help them consider how a good supervisor motivates and guides the people who fall under their care. The first assignment is simply to pick the best college teacher they have ever had and write a paragraph or two to describe why that person was the best. Notice, I specifically do not use the term “favorite teacher.” That is something entirely different. I want them to focus their attention on what makes a person the very best teacher they have ever had in college.
PART THREE – When I get the results of this assignment, many of the answers are genuinely touching. It is hard to read them without feeling a sense of real pride and admiration for teachers and how they affect the lives of their students. My guess is that the students would never say such things directly to a teacher (heavens, that might be embarrassing). However, in a written assignment, they have a chance to reflect on what a particular teacher did and talk about the impact that the teacher’s work had on them.
I tell the students that they should think a lot but they can keep the written assignment short. They are busy and I don’t want them spending too much time on this one task. Despite that suggestion, many of them write long detailed essays praising the best teacher they have had in college.
Here are just a few quotes that I picked out, almost at random. I have 52 students; I could have given 52 quotes similar to these.
You cannot read these without being proud that you are a teacher. When you read students saying things like this, you realize what a great career you have chosen. Teaching is the most wonderful and important job in the world because YOU have the chance to have this kind of influence. Read these and realize that this is what you have the good fortune to do every day.
--“If I could describe his attitude towards his students in one word, it would be egalitarian. He made each and every student feel as if they were important. Whether you were the best student or the worst student, he still gave equal attention to all.”
--“As for his expectations for the course, he did not hold our hand – he inspired us to do our own research in order to make the connections that would elevate our performance to an A level.”
--“Not only is her class a joy to be in – filled with discussions regarding everything from race to culture shock – she is also a great role model with diverse experiences to back up her advice.”
--“He made each and every student push themselves to the limit and use critical thinking that they had probably never used previously. There were times where I would walk out of that class and I would feel like my mind just got blown. That was partially because of what he had said but mainly because of the amazement I had at how he was able to guide me into thinking in ways that I never known I could do.”
--“The distinction of excellence comes from his ability to connect to and motivate students. He helped me to not only learn the material, but to want to learn the material. This admittedly tough accomplishment was achieved because he made sure to get to know me.”
--“She was patient, especially with someone like me, who is not used to writing papers that do not contain some type of mathematical equation.”
--“He didn’t mock my writing abilities, though they were clearly lacking. Nor did he act discouraged. Rather, he told me he wanted to give me an A, but I needed to do A work.”
--“His passion for his subject is unmatched by any other professor I have had while at the University of Richmond, and it rubbed off on everyone in the class.”
--“Often times we would have long, time-consuming assignments. However, as long as I had shown initiative and spent time thinking critically about a problem, (the teacher) was willing to work with me to understand the concepts that I was applying.”
--“He is extremely friendly and approachable and almost always has a smile on his face. All of his students can see how much he loves teaching (the subject) and this makes them want to work harder.”
--“(The teacher) clearly articulated his expectations and requirements to succeed. He went beyond telling me what to do, but actively pushed and engaged me. His confidence in me, as well as his general desire to see me succeed, drove me to perform extremely well in this class.”
--“She posed challenging and thought-provoking questions in class that made me dig deeper into the text which gave me a better chance to write a paper with substantial content.”
--“We would often get emails from him at 4 or 5 in the morning with very complex Excel models and/or regression methods that helped us better understand and practice using the material.”
--“He focused more on the actual learning of concepts as opposed to memorization and grades.”
PART FOUR – I do not think you can read any of these (or all of the remaining papers that I didn’t have room to quote) and not realize how much students appreciate your hard work. Yes, they will whine and they will complain and they will moan about the work load. That’s human nature. That’s just what college students do. But I’m convinced that it is like strenuous physical exercise. In their hearts, they really want to be pushed to be great and they appreciate it. They might never walk up to you and say thanks but it is clear when they write about their teachers how very much they appreciate the ones who try the hardest and care for them the most.
PART FIVE – My students in this class make up well below 2 percent of the entire student body on our campus. Consequently, there are many, many great teachers around here who they never get a chance to have in class. For that reason, many of our best teachers do not get mentioned because these students had never been lucky enough to be in their classes. However, I want to give a huge shout out to all of the folks who were named by my students. These were students who had been at the University of Richmond for six semesters and felt that YOU were the very best college teacher they had ever had. That just has to feel wonderful. That is the reason you get into this business. You are changing lives in a very positiv way. Congratulations!!!
Tom Arnold
Ed Ayers
Harold Babb
Julie Baker
Patti Carey
Will Case
Arthur Charlesworth
Alex Checkovich
Oliver Delers
Frank Eakin
Al Fagan
Jan French
Della Fenster
Marshall Geiger
Volker Grzimek
Linda Hobgood
Kim Marie McGoldrick
Manuella Meyer
Jim Monks
Randolph New
Bob Nicholson
Angel Otero-Blanco
Elizabeth Outka
Daniel Paik
Rob Phillips
Randle Raggio
Phil Rohrbach
David Routt
Louis Schwartz
Daniel Selby
Thomas Shields
Monika Siebert
Stephen Simon
Melanie Simpson
Jerry Stevens
Akira Suzuki
Andy Szakmary
Jonathan Wight
Today’s entry is broken into several individual parts.
PART ONE – I travel around the country 3-5 times per year to give teaching programs and presentations. Invariably, at each stop, some teacher will ask in complete exasperation “why should I even try to do better? The students do not appreciate what I do. They certainly don’t appreciate when I try to make them work and think.”
It is very tough to spend the time necessary to move toward excellence if you believe that no one appreciates you. It is hard to put out so much energy if no one cares. I often think deans and department chairs ought to be required to pat as many teachers on the back as possible each semester. However, the people who really benefit from your work are the students. They are the ones who should care the most. Do they truly appreciate your effort? That, as Hamlet says, is the question.
PART TWO – In one particular class that I teach, most of the students are junior accounting majors. It is a challenging course but virtually all of my students are capable. They can learn enough accounting to do well after they graduate. Interestingly enough, it is not the knowledge of accounting that often makes a difference in the level of success they achieve in their chosen careers. It is their ability to supervise others that can really count the most.
Within the first year or two after graduation, they will move into a position where they have to supervise other (younger) individuals. Instead of being responsible for just themselves, they suddenly become responsible for 2-5 associates. Suddenly, it is the ability to do well in that supervisory leadership position that starts to become important. We teach group work and team work in college but we don’t often address supervisory leadership.
One of the problems for them is that they don’t have many role models. If I mention the word “leadership,” they will tell me all about presidents (Roosevelt, for example, or Lincoln) or a great general (U.S. Grant or R.E. Lee) or a corporate executive (Bill Gates or Steve Jobs). But none of those individuals (at least when they became famous) were supervisory leaders. George Washington was not trying to motivate and guide 2-5 people under his direct supervision. Those leaders are on a different planet from the students.
Although it is not exactly the same, the closest role models that my students have for supervisory leadership are their teachers. The teacher walks into the room each day and is responsible for motivating and guiding 10 to 30 students or more. In most cases, how well the students do is largely based on how well the teacher does.
For that reason, I want my students to spend some mental energy thinking about how teachers manage to accomplish what they do. Most college students have been in class for roughly 80 percent of their lives. They have interacted with dozens of teachers in a very direct and personal way. They have observed both good teaching and bad. However, they rarely consider how a teacher works and what makes one person particularly successful. For a young person, who will soon be in a supervisory position, there is a lot that can be learned from their teachers.
I recently started giving my students a series of three exercises to help them consider how a good supervisor motivates and guides the people who fall under their care. The first assignment is simply to pick the best college teacher they have ever had and write a paragraph or two to describe why that person was the best. Notice, I specifically do not use the term “favorite teacher.” That is something entirely different. I want them to focus their attention on what makes a person the very best teacher they have ever had in college.
PART THREE – When I get the results of this assignment, many of the answers are genuinely touching. It is hard to read them without feeling a sense of real pride and admiration for teachers and how they affect the lives of their students. My guess is that the students would never say such things directly to a teacher (heavens, that might be embarrassing). However, in a written assignment, they have a chance to reflect on what a particular teacher did and talk about the impact that the teacher’s work had on them.
I tell the students that they should think a lot but they can keep the written assignment short. They are busy and I don’t want them spending too much time on this one task. Despite that suggestion, many of them write long detailed essays praising the best teacher they have had in college.
Here are just a few quotes that I picked out, almost at random. I have 52 students; I could have given 52 quotes similar to these.
You cannot read these without being proud that you are a teacher. When you read students saying things like this, you realize what a great career you have chosen. Teaching is the most wonderful and important job in the world because YOU have the chance to have this kind of influence. Read these and realize that this is what you have the good fortune to do every day.
--“If I could describe his attitude towards his students in one word, it would be egalitarian. He made each and every student feel as if they were important. Whether you were the best student or the worst student, he still gave equal attention to all.”
--“As for his expectations for the course, he did not hold our hand – he inspired us to do our own research in order to make the connections that would elevate our performance to an A level.”
--“Not only is her class a joy to be in – filled with discussions regarding everything from race to culture shock – she is also a great role model with diverse experiences to back up her advice.”
--“He made each and every student push themselves to the limit and use critical thinking that they had probably never used previously. There were times where I would walk out of that class and I would feel like my mind just got blown. That was partially because of what he had said but mainly because of the amazement I had at how he was able to guide me into thinking in ways that I never known I could do.”
--“The distinction of excellence comes from his ability to connect to and motivate students. He helped me to not only learn the material, but to want to learn the material. This admittedly tough accomplishment was achieved because he made sure to get to know me.”
--“She was patient, especially with someone like me, who is not used to writing papers that do not contain some type of mathematical equation.”
--“He didn’t mock my writing abilities, though they were clearly lacking. Nor did he act discouraged. Rather, he told me he wanted to give me an A, but I needed to do A work.”
--“His passion for his subject is unmatched by any other professor I have had while at the University of Richmond, and it rubbed off on everyone in the class.”
--“Often times we would have long, time-consuming assignments. However, as long as I had shown initiative and spent time thinking critically about a problem, (the teacher) was willing to work with me to understand the concepts that I was applying.”
--“He is extremely friendly and approachable and almost always has a smile on his face. All of his students can see how much he loves teaching (the subject) and this makes them want to work harder.”
--“(The teacher) clearly articulated his expectations and requirements to succeed. He went beyond telling me what to do, but actively pushed and engaged me. His confidence in me, as well as his general desire to see me succeed, drove me to perform extremely well in this class.”
--“She posed challenging and thought-provoking questions in class that made me dig deeper into the text which gave me a better chance to write a paper with substantial content.”
--“We would often get emails from him at 4 or 5 in the morning with very complex Excel models and/or regression methods that helped us better understand and practice using the material.”
--“He focused more on the actual learning of concepts as opposed to memorization and grades.”
PART FOUR – I do not think you can read any of these (or all of the remaining papers that I didn’t have room to quote) and not realize how much students appreciate your hard work. Yes, they will whine and they will complain and they will moan about the work load. That’s human nature. That’s just what college students do. But I’m convinced that it is like strenuous physical exercise. In their hearts, they really want to be pushed to be great and they appreciate it. They might never walk up to you and say thanks but it is clear when they write about their teachers how very much they appreciate the ones who try the hardest and care for them the most.
PART FIVE – My students in this class make up well below 2 percent of the entire student body on our campus. Consequently, there are many, many great teachers around here who they never get a chance to have in class. For that reason, many of our best teachers do not get mentioned because these students had never been lucky enough to be in their classes. However, I want to give a huge shout out to all of the folks who were named by my students. These were students who had been at the University of Richmond for six semesters and felt that YOU were the very best college teacher they had ever had. That just has to feel wonderful. That is the reason you get into this business. You are changing lives in a very positiv way. Congratulations!!!
Tom Arnold
Ed Ayers
Harold Babb
Julie Baker
Patti Carey
Will Case
Arthur Charlesworth
Alex Checkovich
Oliver Delers
Frank Eakin
Al Fagan
Jan French
Della Fenster
Marshall Geiger
Volker Grzimek
Linda Hobgood
Kim Marie McGoldrick
Manuella Meyer
Jim Monks
Randolph New
Bob Nicholson
Angel Otero-Blanco
Elizabeth Outka
Daniel Paik
Rob Phillips
Randle Raggio
Phil Rohrbach
David Routt
Louis Schwartz
Daniel Selby
Thomas Shields
Monika Siebert
Stephen Simon
Melanie Simpson
Jerry Stevens
Akira Suzuki
Andy Szakmary
Jonathan Wight
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