Sometimes you bomb, and sometimes you succeed, and sometimes you have no idea what just happened.
Today was rough: My flight was delayed for 2 hours yesterday, which threw my whole study plan off kilter, which means I was reading what I was teaching on for section about an hour before I actually had to teach. Fortunately, I had read the material as an undergrad (Schorske) and its in a field which was until recently my specialty, and it was on Jews and anti-semitism, so I was feeling pretty good going in.
I covered the material, filled in the class on Jewish culture in 19th century Europe and addressed the readings all w/in a hour. The usual suspects talked and I got a lot of questions, but I really had the feeling that I had lost the students. I was getting a number of glazed looks and I went a bit off topic. Part of the problem is my 29 freakin' person section, and part of the problem was that I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. Overall, I finished the hour feeling like I must have confused them (b/c I sort of confused myself), and didn't get the dynamic going that I had last week.
As I was packing up a student (who I actually thought really disliked my section style) came up to me to thank me for one of the best sections she had ever had. She said she was "totally amazed" at how smart I was and how much I knew. After chatting briefly about dance she ran off to another class and I walked outside, only to run into another student who thanked me for such a wonderful section and ended with, "you really know your shit. And I'm not just trying to blow sunshine up your skirt..." (he then asked if he should take The Last Modernist's Stalin and Hitler class for which I had given an earlier ringing endorsement).
I'm actually not so much trying to blow sunshine up my own skirt, as I am constantly amazed at the difference between how you think you are doing in class versus how the class perceives you. As soon as I think I can read my students I get thrown for a loop. I'm trying to up the bar for this class, (introducing them to historiography, outlining the main argument, weighing the evidence used, and then analyzing what was convincing and what wasn't - btw way easy to do when you get tossed a great historical essay that goes off an a random psycho-historical tangent about being too attached to Mama...), and it seems like it may actually be working. Although a data set of 2 out of 29 is far from conclusive evidence,and it makes me wonder how I can reach some of the students I've lost. How do you strike a balance? How do you figure out you need to balance your material more, and then how do you do it? and how do you engage the students you've lost?
I suppose this is th golden question of all educators: how to self-evaluate and make necessary changes? Quickly followed by figuring out which changes to make.
Either way, I'm glad to know that I'm doing several things right, now I just have to figure out how to adjust what I'm doing wrong.
When I read my winter quarter evals, I could recognize the handwriting because I collected discussion questions every week. Several students who rarely (if ever) spoke, student I assumed hated my section, the class, and history...said this was the best section they'd ever had.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's impossible to gauge what students get out of section. And we're probably all harder on ourselves than we should be. Just because I showed the TA's I liked section by participating a lot doesn't mean that's how my students will do it.