Teaching Blog at Baruch College

When I was a boy I was extremely proud of one of my dad’s apple trees, the one onto which he had grafted three varieties of apples and a pear. By carefully attaching cuttings from these different fruits onto the stem of a single tree he had been able to make it bear a cornucopia. This is probably why I use the grafting metaphor to speak of what I see myself doing in the classroom.

Students come to us with a range of knowledge about many things (although many of us are much more concerned about what they seem not to know). I think it helps enormously to find out what our students do know and then put this information to use as starting points-the places where we can begin grafting on the new concepts we seek to impart to them. If we simply begin tossing out information, without having a sense of what students are able and ready to do with it, we run the risk of having it hurtle right past them, without finding any place to attach. If we take some time to find out what they already know, then we can graft the new material onto a trunk full of sap that will help the new ideas blossom and fruit.

I often come to a full stop before starting a new topic and spend a little time feeling the class out. I pass out blank index cards and ask them to answer a few questions anonymously. Then I read them out to the class, so that we all get some sense of what the group collectively knows and doesn’t know. In the course of this I’m able to begin planting seeds of interest, to provoke some of them into curiosity, and to help them reflect on what it is they’ve already learned somewhere else but thought they’d forgotten (and it also assures them that they do know something). And then I work to graft the new material onto what we’ve found they already know.

(Glenn’s caveat: I’m writing this for new teachers, folks still struggling to find their way in the classroom, and not for seasoned professionals, though the old salts among you are welcome to it.)

Is it me or are many of our BBA students preoccupied with securing the type of prestigious, high-paying jobs that can take a terrible toll on the personal life? How many undergraduate students do you know whose life ambition is to be an investment banker, management consultant or auditor for the Big Four? Don’t get me wrong—I know many who are happily employed by such firms (even in this economy), and it reflects well on Baruch College every time we place a student. My question is this: should professors push their students to think more about their future work-life balance?

Over the years, I discovered some interesting comments on careers and job hunting that I share with students every semester. I’d like to share a sample with you.

1. Michael R. Bloomberg’s commencement address, Johns Hopkins, May 22, 2003 (click here for transcription). Read the two paragraphs that begin, “Whether or not you go to graduate school…”

2. Steve Jobs’ commencement address, Stanford, June 14, 2005 (click here for transcription). Read the two paragraphs that follow the “My third story is about death” subsection, or fast forward to time 8:45 in the following video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA[/youtube]

3. “Stupid Interview Questions,” by Liz Ryan, Business Week, Sept 21, 2005 (click here for full text).

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My classes meet twice a week. And while my syllabus presents a carefully planned series of linked readings, writing assignments, and in-class activities, I know my students don’t always experience the course as seamlessly as I might like. How could they with everything else they have to do?

One simple technique I’ve been experimenting with aims to create stronger links between individual class sessions. It’s a version of the strategy I used while writing my dissertation: to end each day’s work by jotting down a single concrete task to get started with in the morning. Applying this strategy to the classroom is easy and takes only a few minutes of class time; what’s more, it can provide an important form of intellectual communication between students and professor.

Here’s what I do:

Step 1. At the end of class, I ask students to reflect in writing on a still unclear point, a key concept just covered, or a remaining question from that day’s activity or discussion. (3-5 minutes)

Step 2. At the beginning of the next class, I ask students to share some of what they wrote at the end of the previous class and we use that as our new starting point. (3-5 minutes)

Building in time to think and reflect at the end of each class in this way can enable students to create continuity in their learning, and develop the good habit of ending a work session by identifying some next steps. In addition, students get practice summarizing and assimilating what they know, what they’ve learned, and what’s still not clear. And instructors get a better sense of students’ experience of the course.

Since the writing functions as a kind of mental bookmark, to be consulted and taken up at the beginning of the next class, there’s no need to collect it (although you might).

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Physicist and award-winning master teacher Robert Brown [1] taught me several years ago to learn every student’s name every semester. This begs a related question: what should students call you?

At many independent secondary schools (for example, Quaker Friends schools) and progressive liberal arts colleges, students have been on a first-name basis with teachers for decades. But there seems to be a formality at the university level in general and at Baruch in particular (even my administrative assistants call me “Professor”). Why is this?

Struggling with this question, I thought about Brown. He insists on being called “Doctor Brown,” and yet his students consistently rate him as the most helpful and approachable person they know. Brown tells me that he knows of many faculty who are called by their first name, and their popularity with the students, in his opinion, is really not closely correlated with whether they are on a first-name basis.

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[1] Brown, R. 2005. “‘Lowfalutin’ Learning List”, The Physics Teacher, 43(1), 55-56. (This collection of 10 suggestions for young teachers is a “must read” for all junior faculty of any discipline.)