Three Teaching Things Thursday

It’s just about the middle of the semester, and like most teachers, I’m reflecting on my classes so far this semester. Like always, I try to keep tabs on what works and what doesn’t, but this semester in particular it feels like taking time to reflect on teaching is more significant. Some of this has to do with the ongoing challenges of the COVID era, a bit has to do with teaching four classes, and it mostly has to do with a sense that I’m finally getting a handle on what I do well in the classroom and what makes a different to my students.

Thing the First

One of the most striking aspects of the “Late COVID” era is how energetic students have become in the classroom. Last semester, when the pandemic seemed a bit endless, Zoom participation was still fairly standard, and students seemed to be genuinely struggle with not only classwork but with their mental (and physical) health.

This semester has been a complete reversal. In three of my classes, students are so consistently enthusiastic that they interrupt my lectures not just with the kind of mundane “when is this due again?” kind of questions, but with challenging, probing, and really difficult questions! Not only that, they also engage one another even in my rather old fashioned “lecture+discussion” style classes. It is almost as if the light at the end of the tunnel is finally bright enough for students to come back to life. 

Thing the Second

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading about resistance and survivance in Native American boarding and residential schools. This has got me thinking more seriously about how our students resist in the classroom and across campus. For example, it has been interesting to observe how we’ve moved from a conversation about “no cop shit” to a conversation about how to enforce the university’s mask policies in the class. While I get that the “no cop shit” post was mostly directed toward enforcing petty rules at the risk of big picture classroom goals, I can’t help but wonder how various COVID related policies will change student attitudes toward the university, administrators, and the classroom.

It goes without saying that university life, like school in general, is as much about enforcing bodily discipline as mental habits. While state institutions like mine do not require chapel attendance or military drill or anything like that, the very structure of our classrooms, buildings, and campus encourage students (and faculty) to move and behave in certain ways. Recent large-scale updates to the campus plan include changes to classroom and office spaces, a new student union, and a renovated library. The recent construction of a new buildings that closes off one corner of the central quad and the placement of a raised median strip on a major campus road, will work to channel student movement across campus in new ways. The more open student study and work spaces of the renovated library and new student union have replaced the post-war warrens of individual study carrels in ways that both encourage collaboration and interaction, but also leave students more exposed to view. Recent building renovations have increasing sought to sequester faculty offices from classrooms and to standardize office spaces in ways that establish more rigid divisions between student learning and faculty research, preparation, and academic life. Ideally this might serve as another impetus toward faculty professionalization, but a more cynical reading of this practice would argue that it discourages student-faculty interaction outside of the managed and controlled environment of the classroom. 

Of course, all these changes are occurring at the time when campus is unusually quiet because of the COVID pandemic. The regular turn over of students will normalize these changes to each incoming class. It’s valuable to remember that at the start of next year, the majority of undergraduate students on campus will not remember a time when COVID didn’t shape student life and the new buildings will have always been part of their experience on campus.

A good archaeologist would consider initiating a longitudinal project that documents the material traces of student engagement in their new (and changing) environments. This would examine ways in which students accommodate themselves to these new spaces and ways in which students bend, modify, and adapt these new spaces to their needs. In other words, how will students resist the efforts of campus planners, faculty, and their peers to enforce certain forms of bodily discipline.

Thing the Third

I’m just about done with deadlines and required assignments. This might seem like a standard faculty lament, but I’m starting to seriously reconsider how I plan my classes each semester to minimize my reliance on deadlines to structure the learning environment. I’ve never been a huge fan of deadlines for student work and have moved increasingly toward an “everything is due at the end of the semester” approach with a few internal recommended due dates designed to give students just a bit of structure.  

I’m starting to think seriously about adjusting my classes so that they allow for a greater degree of flexibility for students especially since deadlines seem to be a leading cause of student anxiety.