Tag Archives: Teaching

On Being Bob Reid …

The recent passing of legendary professor Bob Reid sent a chill through those of us who love Baylor. It was a reminder, once again, of a day when great teachers ruled. Not researchers or writers or administrators. Teachers. Inspiring men and women who knew how to move mountains with their words and — what is much more difficult — knew how to move the hearts and minds of hormone-ridden 18-year-old boys.

I wrote a feature on Bob Reid for The Baylor Line a few years ago. Perhaps it will be of interest to you. It was a bittersweet journey for me to read it again when The Line posted it on their website this week: http://www.bayloralumniassociation.com/content/baylor_line__online_publications/prof_robert_rei.asp

Re-reading it, I wondered if we’d ever see his like again.

Bob Reid did not have a Ph.D. He didn’t write scholarly, academic tomes. He loved teaching. He loved his students. And they loved — and still love — him.

He made Greek and Roman history come alive. He was passionate about it. He was a story-teller. Yes, there were dates and facts and figures mixed in from time to time, but you wanted to learn them because they were markers along the way that helped you remember the stories. He was a magician with words. The old Roman emperors and Greek philosophers lived in his classrooms as surely as they once lived in the ancient Mediterranean. He often spoke of past events in the present tense. Sometimes he spoke of them in the first person — then he would catch himself and laugh.

Oh, how we loved to hear him laugh!

Bob Reid believed that Baylor could best be served by inspiring young people, by filling them with a passion for learning and life. We talked about this a few times. The idea that a professor could be so caught up in his research that a student could be just an annoyance baffled him. The idea that research was its own reward and that teaching was something you did as little as possible of as you worked for your own greater academic glory through publishing frankly appalled him.

Bob Reid was a teacher.

Got a problem with that?

And, oh! How I’d love to hear him laugh again …

Like Leading a Horse to Water …

OK, I admit it. I was skeptical. I was nervous. I was, in fact, the typical Baylor University faculty member facing something new. And I was one of the four original members of Baylor’s first Academy of Teaching and Learning.

Oh, our captain — Dr. Gardner Campbell — assured us that by the end of the semester that we would be blogging and Twittering and whatevering as well as our students. And, more importantly, that we’d find it helpful both as a teaching tool and as a researching aid. But I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t so much skeptical as over-whelmed. I learn by narrative. I have trouble with a list. And, in the beginning, blogging was just that — a list. Do that. Do this. Do it twice.

I blogged. Tentatively at first. I messed up. It got fixed. I messed up again. I fixed it. Big step.

In time, Gardner was right. Blogging can be a valuable tool. No, really! I like it. I get it. And this is what I get:

1. Blogging connects you to a world of scholars (or just plain fans). Magazines are nice. But you’ll never make community with the readers of a monthly or quarterly magazine. Now I talk to other true believers. We share stuff. I learn about things in my field that I otherwise would have taken months to find. And blogging connections begat more blogging connections. You’re not alone. There are a world of black gospel enthusiasts out there. It becomes a community of like-minded scholars in ways that an annual conference or a quarterly journal can’t be.

2. It helps me keep important stuff that I don’t know is important at the time. I find a snippet of information. I blog about it and it’s saved forever. Maybe I never use it in my research. But maybe it is just the thing the blogger in Carjackistan is looking for. I helped.

3. It helps me try out new approaches. I think better when I write.  I’ve tried out some intros and some connections and some thoughts in my blog about both writing and teaching.  Once something is expressed and organized like this, I can learn from it.

4. Here is a quote from William Safire. Substitute “blogs” for “diaries:”  “Diaries remind us of details that would otherwise fade from memory and make less vivid our recollection. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, whose private journal is an invaluable source for Civil War historians, watched Abraham Lincoln die in a room across the street from Ford’s Theater and later jotted down a detail that puts the reader in the room: ‘The giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed, which was not long enough for him…’ ”

5. It makes me closer to the students I teach. They think in blogs and FaceBook and Twitter and texting and other forms of communication now, like it or not. Blogging is my first foray in this Brave New Language.

6. It makes me a step closer to effectively working with my colleagues who still fear these new technologies. I’m able now to say, “No, this is not a waste of time. I know we write all of the time. But this is … different. And here is how it can help…”

Six things I’ve learned this semester. Six new things. That’s a good semester’s work. Thank you, Gardner and Heidi and Debra and Mona and the ATL.

In return, here are three things that I have figured out (with the help, again of William Safire) that I’d like to share back:

A. You own the blog. The blog doesn’t own you.

B. Write for yourself.

C. Put down what cannot be reconstructed.

Say Hey!

The secret of life can be found in baseball.

Oh, not today’s steroid-driven, television revenue-addicted, brazillion-dollar bonus baby baseball, but the “real” baseball of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, and the St. Louis Browns. Virtually every novelist I’ve ever interviewed has been a baseball fan (Cub and Red Sox fanatics predominate). I can still name the line up and batting averages of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals (who beat, of course, the Great Satan — the New York Yankees).

And it is with that background that I re-read Seymour Papert’s thoughtful (if turgid) “Why School Reform is Impossible”. It’s a slow but worthwhile slog for those of us wanting to know if this patient (education) can be saved.

Frankly, Papert isn’t convinced it can — or should be — resuscitated. Certainly there is much to be discouraged about right now. Public school teachers and university lecturers and adjuncts teaching four sections of freshman English are on the front lines of a cultural and technological war, even while Higher Education retreats further and further into the distant past, cutting off supply lines, and shooting its wounded warriors.

Hell, I’d be depressed … except … except … it’s Spring Training. It’s baseball. It’s a well-reviewed new book about Willie Mays, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend by James S. Hirsch. I’ll probably read it someday.

In the meantime, I loved Peter Hamill’s review in the February 28, 2010 New York Times Book Review section. Hamill (a recovering Brooklyn Dodger fan) is one of our great writers, a brilliant newspaperman and stylist, and currently a distinguished writer in residence at N.Y.U.

As is their custom, The Editors of the Book Review section include a short bio/appreciation of Hamill at the beginning of the magazine. In it, they cite Pete saying that he’s actually optimistic about the future of journalism:

“The delivery system is changing , but the kids I meet at N.Y.U. have the passion and desire. They deserve to work with great editors, full of exactitude, including grouchy copy editors who insist that ‘reference’ is a noun, not a verb. In a place where they will learn something new every day. I hope also that their future work is in the company of others, where stories are bounced around in city rooms and saloons. If not, they will miss a lot, including the sardonic laughter.”

This is profound stuff. As profound, in its own way, as Papert’s essay. “The delivery system is changing.” When it comes to technology, the future is now.It’s not in the batter’s box, it’s at the plate, with a belt-high curve ball that’s not breaking coming right down the pipe. Those of us who refuse to see it/believe it will end up with the “Golden Sombrero” (four strikeouts in a game) and the game, the sport, the future will pass us by.

Get over it. Deal with it. Learn to use technology.

Second, “In a place where they will learn something new every day.” This isn’t about the students, this is about their professors. WE ought to be the ones learning something new every day. About the BEST means to BEST reach those students who are full of, as Hamill writes, “passion and desire.”

And third, “I hope also that their future work is in the company of others …”. Hamill may be talking about his journalism students, but this applies directly to professors. I hear too many of my colleagues bad-mouthing the students — and each other. I see too many of my colleagues across the academy hide behind closed doors, avoiding students, dissing their counterparts down the hall. They claim Research is their god and that students are at best an annoyance and secretly (and not so secretly) despise them.

Guess what? I hear students talk. They know who you are. They despise you. You’re just another hurdle to overcome on the way to the future. Their future.

Baseball. Journalism. The academy. We’ve got a lot in common. Hirsch reports that Willie Mays approached every game (and he played a LOT of them) with a genuine enthusiasm and joy. In our worst days, we’re still touching lives, changing lives. It’s a privilege, not a burden.

We operate in a deeply, deeply flawed system. I’m not sure if Papert thinks it is salvageable. Maybe not …

But it’s Spring Training … every team has a chance … and Willie Mays is in centerfield….

Ch-ch-changes …

Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
— David Bowie

Most things change, by entrophy if nothing else. Governments evolve and change. Even the military, that bastion of conservatism changes. The generals in World War I who watched the flower of the youth of several nations die senselessly before the machine gun were operating under principles set in place before Napoleon. But even they were forced to change with the onset of World War II.

Education, however, does not change. Yes, there are differences between modern education and the original Socratic method, but Socrates never had an Introduction to Mass Communications class of 300. And my smallest classes do, indeed, revert back to the Socratic question/answer method.

In fact, education fights change. Professors fight fierce rear-guard scorched earth actions against change. (And the higher the ranking of the professor, the greater the resistance to change.) Alumni withhold donations over perceived changes. Administrations move at a glacial speed, even when a change is clearly in everybody’s best interests.

Seymour Papert’s thoughtful paper “Why School Reform is Impossible” is a reasoned response to the this age-old question. His observation that even modern technology, which has changed all other facets of modern life, has failed to impact education (secondary and college), save for tiny pockets of enlightenment here and there is perhaps the most chilling section of the essay.

Sure, professors and students now communicate by e-mail, professors use Blackboard for grades and attendance, some even link edited film clips to Power Point presentations. But those are superficial changes at best.

The basic methods of teaching (lecturing and testing) are virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, our students drop out, tune out, and grow more cynical, even as our old school methods of conveying information grow more irrelevant. David Bowie again:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through

When we allow them to bring their laptops to class, students check their e-mail and Facebook pages, surf the Internet, or play games. I can see the glow of their cellphones as they text each other, pretending that they’re listening. Although lately, some have quit pretending…

Still, Why Education Reform is Impossible implies that the revolution will occur. In fact, it is occuring now. The difference is that this revolution is occuring — like the very best revolutions always do — from the bottom up.

We’re in a period of transition — the first waves of students who have mastered these new technologies are flooding our educational systems. When they’ve moved on into their careers — and hopefully some of them will choose K-12 and college education — they’ll bring with them the technology skills many of us current lack. Old timers will fight them. School boards won’t support them. Parents will complain about them. But the sheer weight of numbers will overcome all obstacles. Technologically aware and adept teachers will teach technologically aware and adept students … and things will change.

It’s happening now in the Journalism Department. We’re scrambling to keep up with students who already know (or who can quickly master) Dream Weaver, End Design, Adobe, and digital editing. We’re having to learn how to challenge these kids, how to assess them, how to incorporate what they know and want to know into our teaching methods on the fly. And the results, I’m happy to say, aren’t half bad.

I have colleagues in other departments who say that’s all well and good for “the trades” (as some of the derisively call departments like Journalism, FDM, Consumer Science), but that these changes will NEVER infiltrate their “pure” academics, the humanities, philosophy, math, Latin, Great Texts. They tell me that a REAL education is not possible utilizing these tools and advances.

Fine. Or, as my students say, “Whatever.”

The Fourth Wave. The Fifth Wave. The Sixth Wave … but who is counting anymore? The kids are bringing it with them NOW.

And guess what? The kids are alright.

Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon you’re gonna get a little older
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can’t trace time

Slip-sliding away …

Slip sliding away, slip sliding away
You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away
— Paul Simon 

Steven Strogatz has a wonderful new series of blogs in The New York Times “Opinionator” section. They’re on why we should love math. Really.

The first two — “From Fish to Infinity” and “Rock Groups” — capture the enthusiasm he has for the subject. He writes well, chooses great illustrations, and clearly loves this stuff. He also cites “Sesame Street,” which is always a good thing.

In the comments section on “Rock Star,” Melissa (from Hawaii) doesn’t get one of the points Strogatz is making. A number of readers volunteer to help her out — all in a genial, gentle way. Gotta love those New York Times readers!

It’s OK, Melissa. I didn’t understand everything Strogatz said, either. Nor did I understand your question. In fact, I didn’t understand most of the explanations for your question, either.

I wanted to, of course. But the more I read, the more I found my mind slip-sliding away. It was as if my brain was Teflon (c). I loved the Strogatz columns, but they washed over me like a gentle rain. None of the material actually sank in. And I really tried. Honest.

And you know what? That’s OK, too. Strogatz has an over-riding main point about these columns, as best as I can tell. He wants to share his love of the elegant perfection that is mathematics. He wants to rescue it from the drugery of rote memorization and endless algebraic and geometry equations. And I get that. I really do.

I’ll read some more of his columns. I probably won’t understand them any better. But I’ll get swept up in his passion and enjoy the ride. I don’t have to master the mathematics. I just have to remember the journey.

Studies show that our students remember very little of the specifics of what we teach, especially in the classes that they believe don’t directly apply to their major (or what they consider their major at that particular point in time) or chosen profession. I can see it in many of their faces. They’re smiling at me and their minds are slip-sliding away.

But, if in the end, they remember that I loved this stuff, that I thought it was important, and I cared enough to share my enthusiasm, then maybe they’ll come back to it later, maybe it’ll matter to them at some point in the future when they’re a little more experienced, when they’ve had some time to reflect.

I’m good with that.

Call Out the Instigators …

Call out the instigators
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right

— “Something in the Air”    (Thunderclap Newman)

“Something in the Air” is one of my all-time favorite songs, a one-hit wonder of titanic proportions, right up there with “Scene Beyond Dreams” (The Call) and “In a Big Country” (Big Country). I love the sense of the apocalyptic … it captures a moment in time in the late 1960s when everything seemed to be a spearpoint in history. Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the landing on the moon, the assassinations, the riots, the end of the hippie era and the beginning of something unknowable, but inbued with infinite promise.

My musically VERY aware son Van has many times lamented that he wasn’t born at such an exciting era (the old Irish cautionary phrase, “May you be cursed to be born in interesting times” notwithstanding). I generally nod knowingly, sigh dramatically, and pat him on his young head. (This is where in a perfect world I’d take a long draw on my pipe and say something wise, except I don’t smoke and usually all I can think of during these teaching moments is an old limerick.)

Since I’ve been teaching the Introduction of Mass Communications JOU/FDM 1303, however, I’ve come to a very different understanding. Nearly ever week I have to update nearly every lecture. Stuff is happening at an extraordinary clip right now.

Something is in the air RIGHT NOW. It’s called technology. The digital, dig-able planet. Lots of good stuff. Lots of bad stuff. But mostly lots and lots of NEW stuff.  Like it or loathe it, fight it or ignore it, surrender to it and good gently into that good night or rage, rage against the dying of the light. It don’t matter. We’re on the crest of the wave.

I want to be one of the instigators. I want identify the good stuff, learn the good stuff, and incorporate it not just in my classes and my professional life but in my daily life. For years, I’ve resisted it (I don’t have the time, it costs too much money, I don’t need to know this).

No more.

The Revolution’s HERE.

Oh, for the gift to see ourselves …

One of the most helpful (and unnerving) aspects of the Summer Teaching Institute a few years ago was when Bob Baird videotaped each participant delivering a lecture, then played that lecture back for all of the Institute fellows to see.

Oh my …

Do I really leave most of my sentences incomplete? Do I really jump around with my topics like that? Is it the camera or that hideous jacket that makes me look so fat?

The video was a good catalyst for me to examine HOW I present material in the classroom. And I hope I’ve gotten better since then.

Meanwhile, I am one of the four subjects of film-maker David Licata’s latest documentary, “A Life’s Work.” David’s quest is to find out what drives the people who undertake mammoth tasks that they know they’ll never finish. My personal Herculian task is to digitize a copy of every piece of black gospel vinyl released between 1945 and 1970. To that end, I co-founded and help administer The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project here at Baylor University.

David filmed me while I conducting research in Chicago for my book on the influence of black sacred music on the Civil Rights Movement. Amid the interviews with gospel artists, Freedom Riders, activists and pastors, he caught me looking for rare gospel vinyl at a used record store in Hyde Park.

The documentary is probably still a year away from release, but he posted that three-minute clip on YouTube, if you’re interested:

Watching it, I had the same reaction: Oh my … again … when did I get so old (and chunky)? And worse, do I still ramble like that when I lecture?
So much of teaching IS the presentation. I can have great content and if I’m not engaging, compelling, interesting as someone who is conveying that information, then why should the students stay engaged?
The clip has made me aware — once again — that their attention is NOT a given. I have to earn it. I need to continually strive to have my words, demeanor, tone, even posture and body language match the enthusiasm I still feel for conveying what I believe is important, potentially life-changing information.
P.S. To see more of David’s work, check out
The photo above is image grab from an interview I’m doing with the Rev. Reuben Burton in Chicago.

Releasing the angels …

“Somewhere I heard a story about Michaelangelo’s pushing of a huge piece of rock down a street. A curious neighbor sitting lazily on the porch of his house called to him and inquired why he labored so over an old piece of stone. Michelangelo is reported to have answered, “Because there is an an angel in that rock that wants to come out.” This story comes to mind when I think about the gifts or talents given to each of us. Every person has the task of releasing angels by shaping and transfiguring the raw materials that lie about him so that they become houses and machinery and pictures and bridges. How we do this — how we ‘build the earth,’ to use Teilhard de Chardin’s phrase — is determined by the discovery and the use of our gifts.” — Elizabeth O’Connor, Eighth Day of Creation: Gifts and Creativity

The Book of Revelation talks about the angels of nations and churches. Walter Wink says that every individual church has an individual angel, one who is robust or frail, according to the faith of that particular congregation.

I don’t know anything about “guardian angels,” but I do know we all have a divine spark of creativity in us, one bestowed on us by the Great Creator. And I am grateful for that.

Teaching, then, is “releasing the angel” in each student … finding just the right combination of outside reading/experience, interaction, praise, guidance, encouragement, and — occasionally — correction for each student.

I am becoming increasingly convinced the “old” model of standing in front of the class and lecturing from my (relatively) vast storehouse (or outhouse) of knowledge may not be the best way to release their angels.

Studies have long shown that what students figure out for themselves they retain long after a standard lecture. I believe that.

Finding a better way to involve classes of 15 or more in that process of self-discovery — of self-teaching — is my dilemma.

The Community of Teaching

“You know what community is,” Doops said, his voice rising with impatience. “It’s a bunch of folks getting along for some reason. Something holds them together. Generally something bad … Nobody needs nobody when they’re happy. But it just happens. We don’t make it. We don’t make community any more than we make souls. It’s created.” — Will D. Campbell, The Glad River

OK, this much I know:

1. Learning takes place better when there is community within the classroom (and sometimes out)

2. Will D. Campbell (and others) say that community can be created

3. Community, it seems to me, is best created when all constituents have a say, when they all feel invested in the process

4. How then can best can I create community? Students are NOT all equally interested/invested in every class. They’re NOT all equally skilled.

5. If — as I’ve been told — one of the best ways to create community is to foster daily dialogue in class, the (unspoken) assumption is that everybody in the class can contribute to the new topics and concepts and skill sets that few (if any) of them yet have in the average class.

6. And yes, I get it. That’s MY problem. To dis-assemble to the material in such a way so that everybody, including the kid who arrives late and sleeps in the back of the room during every stinkin’ class, has something pertinent to offer so that the other kids in the class are engaged.

7. But knowing what the problem/challenge is and morphing the material I know from 40 years experience into that kind of interactive give-and-take, the kind that leaves them with more useable information at the end of class than when they began seems to me to be a VERY tall order. And one that doesn’t necessarily involve technology — but might.

8. I clearly have a long way to go.

You are the song

Conductor Christian Thielemann
Conductor Christian Thielemann

Itay Talgram’s brilliant “How to Lead Like a Great Conductor” (TED) works on a couple of levels for an old dog like me. There is most certainly a joy that comes from enabling other people’s stories to be heard, at the same time, in a “classroom concert.” But I’ve rarely built that possibility into a lecture in the past. Perhaps it is ego — my rationale has always been that there’s simply too much material to cover and too little time for any “digressions.”  And, depending on the class, that may be true:

1. My Intro to Mass Comm class has 300 kids. Not a good setting for that sort of thing. Plus my evaluations have been (if I may be so immodest) really good

2. My small advanced writing/workshop classes. Most of the time, the kids do all of the heavy lifting of assessing and commenting on each other’s work … I only speak at the end if there is an additional point or two to be made. Again, the reviews have always been great.

3. My Magazine and Feature Writing class. I’ve been very disappointed with the response/production/engagement  in two of the last three semesters. So disappointed, in fact, that this is the class I’ve replaced with the ATL Fellowship. The evaluations have been good, but not as good as the others. More importantly, I’M not happy with how I’m teaching it. (Lecture with Power Points, no textbook, lots of writing, lots of personal stories of what NOT to do.) It has worked for 20 years. It ain’t working (in my mind) as well now.

So, if the “project” part of the ATL class is to both improve your own teaching AND share how that can be done (theoretically using the new technologies that DO engage kids now), then it seems logical that that’s the class I should target.

Well, drat.

I really want, as Talgram says, to be able to create the process and the conditions in this little world that maximize the potential for success in each student. The great directors, he seems to be saying, have somehow created the process/conditions in such a way that the musicians have just enough framework to allow them the freedom to “own” the music (save for that one hapless trumpet player) and guide themselves.

That’s a tall order. It appears I’ll need to revamp that class. But then, identifying the problem is part of the battle.

 I guess my goals are to now identify WHAT I can do to create a successful partnership, WHICH technologies will facilitate that, and HOW the HELL I’m going to be able to do that in such a way that I can share it as the ATL project at the end of the Spring semester.

I may start with baby steps, working on something a little easier at first.

Like World Peace.