The Art of Teaching

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Clarissa

July 17, 2016

We asked our job candidate how she handles discipline issues in the classroom. This summer she’s been teaching East St Louis high schoolers, so discipline issues were unavoidable.

She said that when she wanted the students to pipe down or take off their headphones, she would say, “Silence, please!” or “Please remove the headphones” but not in her regular voice. She’d say it in all kinds of weird, funny voices. (Like the way I say “phau-t-hay-toes” to make Klara laugh.) And this is when I knew that she was a real teacher.

The only way to have authority in the classroom is to relinquish it. It’s like a boomerang: let it go and it will come back to you. A real teacher isn’t afraid of looking silly, saying “I have no idea”, and singing in a horribly off-key voice to make students laugh (like I sometimes do.) Students see that you are comfortable and relax. And when they are not anxious, they don’t need to act out.

It’s always the teachers who fight for power that have the worst discipline issues. All of these “Hand in the essay a minute after 5 pm and I’ll take off 10%!”, “Each instance of tardiness reduces your attendance grade!”, etc are completely counterproductive.

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14 responses to “The Art of Teaching”

el

July 17, 2016

Could you please write more how to achieve disciple in the classroom? For instance, if some students are talking, when a teacher explains new material.

And how to become more confident in one’s abilities as a teacher.

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JaneB

July 17, 2016

Absolutely agree with you for once on this – if you expect teaching to be a confrontation, it will be. If you expect you, the expert, to be in total charge of them, the supplicants, it will not be fun and often not be easy. If you expect teaching to be a collaboration between you, the guide who is more experienced but does not know everything, and the rest of the class, who are starting on this great adventure of learning for themselves and just walking along with you for a while, it always works out better.

Students detect falsity, I know I did, and the leader’s insecurity makes the rest of the room uneasy (and encourages youngsters/the more bullish to test their authority, it’s as much biological as cultural!). Bringing a bit of your real self into the classroom, whether it’s a silly voice, a tuneless song, Star Trek trivia or daft case studies (my How To Design a Project class this year know ALL about the purple kangaroos of Jupiter which eat cloud-candy, we discussed them very seriously for weeks as they helped me work through the steps to put together my research plan, and they did great work on their real projects, even if a couple of my colleagues were very annoyed that I didn’t teach “my real research topic” like they did – hah, my students did better than theirs overall, possibly because they felt safe trying stuff out?) Wildly extravagent made-up examples are my “thing” for bringing a bit of me into the classroom and helping students move from concrete to abstract ideas.

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David Gendron

July 17, 2016

Great post!

I would not even ask to remove headphones, my teaching is interesting enough so that they remove headphones themselves.

“All of these “Hand in the essay a minute after 5 pm and I’ll take off 10%!”, “Each instance of tardiness reduces your attendance grade!”, etc are completely counterproductive. ”

Attendance grade is a bad idea. Unfortunately, the majority of teachers in CEGEPs in Québec and in universities support “Hand in the essay a minute after 5 pm and you’ll have zero”.

This is big problem for me in teaching jobs interviews. I have to pretend that I would behave the contrary that I would do, because the vast majority of teachers in CÉGEPs are incompetent fools who have chosen to teach to satisfy their power-trip fantasies, not for helping others. (And by helping others, I don’t mean that I’m not a tough grader)

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 17, 2016
  
  I agree completely. I never enforce any discipline, don’t prohibit phones in the classroom, always let students have extensions, don’t mind tardiness or missed class. And I have the best discipline as a result.
  
  I agree about the annoying power-tripping, too.
  
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  1. David Gendron
    
    July 18, 2016
    
    In the semester of Fall 2012, an asshole econometrics (econometrists are often congenital liars: they are economists who wannabe statisticians without acquiring all the necessary skills to be a statistician…so they hate working with statisticians like me) professor asked me to come to his office. He was angry at me because he found out that, as he said “You help too much other students” (although his TA thanked me for that). I reply that “If you want that to change, hire me as your TA” and he said that I jeopardize his 30% minimum rate of failure in his class with my behaviour and that I have to stop this…or else…
    
    This is the moment when troubles began for me. My exclusion process got under way ineluctably.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      July 18, 2016
      
      Your English has improved dramatically. It’s clear you are working very hard on it. That’s great!
      
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      1. David Gendron
        
        July 18, 2016
        
        Oh, thank you, all those troubled years in grad school have helped me a lot in English, though,
        
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        David Gendron
        
        July 18, 2016
        
        But the main remaining task will be to improve my conversation skills. However, there’s no more effort to do in my listening and reading.
        
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      2. David Gendron
        
        July 18, 2016
        
        Since my Ph. D. exclusion, I’ve decided to no longer help other students. I have found out that I kick ass as a teacher, so I don’t need to prove it anymore.
        
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TomW

July 17, 2016

I totally agree, it’s so much easier when you are reasonoble and flexible in your approach with students. I have a job to do, they have a job to do, but there is no need to be adversaries in the classroom. I frequently allow the class to set the due dates on writing assignments and I always tell them I’d rather have a good paper a day late than a big mess handed in on time.

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Fie upon this quiet life

July 18, 2016

This is why I hate team teaching. My Humanities class has a team of nine professors and everything in that group is so strict, because we have a total of 300 students at a time, and with so many students and so many professors, we have to all follow the same Draconian rules. (Like not accepting papers five minutes late.) No wonder so many people hate this class.

My solo-teaching classes are very different — much more relaxed. Almost everyone loves those classes, but they don’t love Humanities.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 18, 2016
  
  I would detest team teaching, too. I’m doing all I can to avoid it.
  
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fluffymog

July 19, 2016

I have 100% team teaching next year. Nearly everything is team taught here, and rules are largely out of my control ( submission of work is done on line for example using a standard set up so lates are auto-recorded and auto- penalised ).

I can see the pluses – all profs have the same rules, less confusing for students, and we have a generous system of extensions handled by one person for all modules, so it’s easier for a student with a real problem to get adjustments, but it’s very frustrating! My evals are strongly reflective of how my style meshes with the rest of the team, and academia in its early stages selects for people who are good at solo working, which often goes with BAD at team working!

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 19, 2016
  
  I don’t like this system at all, to be honest. It’s like a conveyor belt. Everything is automated and life is squeezed out of everything.
  
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