Entry the Third or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Class

Although I don’t really care for the stylistic qualities of the writing in McKeachie, I did learn a lot of things that I feel will come in handy. I feel as though my classes are getting better, but there are days when I swear they are all devolving.

I. I found the following ideas useful:

• First, getting students to do the reading assignment. This is something I have been fighting in my classes. It is much harder to teach the material if everyone in the class is hearing it for the first time. I like a couple of the methods listed in the week’s reading; the one-minute-paper and having a quiz on the material. I think these methods are a good way to ensure that students, at the very least, do some of the reading. McKeachie makes an interesting point when he writes “to many, ‘read’ is simply to pass one’s eyes over tge words as one does in reading a story.” I think this is very true. Many students don’t read for comprehension, they do it as if it were a chore and once it’s over they can resume living, which leads me to the second idea that I found useful; Learning More from Reading
  
• Learning more from reading is something that we all hope our students are striving to do, but often times that is not the case. I have found that a very small percentage of my classes actually seem to have read and comprehended the text book material and an even smaller percentage can apply it to the questions I pose in class. McKeachie gave some great tips for dealing with this; specific instructions, taking marginal notes, underlining and high-lighting, etc… These are all methods that many of us graduate students use every time we read anything and we had to start sometime. I think it’s time my student’s learned how to read.

II. Here is how I can implement these things into my teaching:

• First off, I feel like I’ve been too easy on my students thus far. I am getting tired of have to break down every little concept because no one bothered to read. It is high time they learned that the text book is meant for something other than propping up wobbly chairs, and I think the best way to do that is to start having a quiz each week until they can show me that we don’t need them. It sounds harsh, but I really think it will work. I feel like they are skating through my course and that just is not okay. I really would like to come to class one day and have everyone actively participating in a discussion about the material and not just a summary of the material.
  
• Second, if I want my students to do well on their quizzes and be able to participate in discussion they should know how to read correctly. I don’t think it would be a bad idea to take a half day of class to go over how they should be approaching their text book assignments. My hope is that if I can show them how to read correctly it make our class more enjoyable and help them later on when they have to read for other classes. I don’t expect everyone to get the hang of it right away, but if I can get them thinking about the material instead of passively glancing at it then the rest will fall into place.

III. Other things that I believe my teaching would benefit from:

• I feel that it is important for me to be aware of, and understand the cause of, barriers to discussion. After this week’s reading I noticed that I was acting as an occasional barrier to discussion because I would answer questions before the students had a chance to really form an answer. This sort of broke my heart because I love in-class-discussions and always learned a lot from them. The fact that I wasn’t facilitating a good environment for discussion made me want to change, and change I shall.

• Student-led discussions are something that I have been afraid to try in my class. This is because it’s hard for me to relinquish control of the information. It’s not that I don’t think my students are capable, quite the opposite, it’s just hard to let go. I really would like to have my students teach certain information and am going to try to let go enough to make it happen. I feel that allowing them to teach one another will increase their comprehension of the material as a whole.
  

*Sorry about the formatting. Blogger (more like booger) kept messing everything up when it tried to transfer the text from compose to preview.