Too much fun.

Three years ago i, along with the founding director, conducted the freshman orientation for the first group of majors in global studies at my college.  Today i walked into the first meeting of their year-long, senior capstone seminar.  There are also many students in this seminar that were in my intro to global studies classes.  This is the first time in 26 years of teaching where i felt at home the instant i walked in the first day.

These people entered college so eager to understand their world.  Two and three years later they have learned so much in classes and in their experiences abroad.  They are wiser now, having been exposed to so many of the darker elements of globalization and empire.  But the miracle is, they have found no answers and they are just as eager now to understand, as they were then.  And they especially want to know what they can do.

i, and my co-teachers, will spend a year with them asking these questions and keeping them from answers.  If we succeed, they each will know what to do.

Let’s say you, a college student, wants to learn more about a subject covered in another class, or about something you read in a book over the summer, or something you did in your summer internship.  So you go to a prof and you ask if there is a course that covers that specific subject.

If he or she says no, sorry, or worse, tries to explain why it is not offered at this college, or even tries to get you interested in a different subject. RUN AWAY!  Do not, under any circumstances, take this professor.  Have NOTHING more to do with him.

The reaction you want is, yes, but in the meantime here are some resources for your own study, or no, but have you considered an Independent Study, or no, but let’s see if there is a course you could take at a nearby college but still receive credit here.  In essence, the reaction you want is, let’s make this happen.  Those are the only profs worth your time.

Remember you have to make this about YOUR learning.  If you don’t it will too often be about what is best for faculty.

Took me a long time to reconnect but i am back and i am more than ready.

i am frequently chided by students for not answering their questions.  It’s true, i usually respond to their queries with my own questions.  i think most come to understand why i do it, that it’s about their thinking and whatever answer–and question–that result.  So a former student asked me yesterday if a had any answers yet.

i laughed, thought for a minute, and then said “yes.”

i do have one answer and i have had this answer for as long as i can remember.  This will sound like a joke but i assure you it is not.  My one answer is:  There are no answers.

As part of an email discussion we are having about the mission statement of the new school of bidness, i stated the following:

It is my impression, and i could be off since i have very little first-hand knowledge of my colleagues’ classes, that most classes in the school are not student-centered.  Student-centered means that the specific questions and interests of our students are at the heart of the course, not just in a few assignments, but at the center.  If student-centered, we can lay out the principles of management, for example, but then we have to ask students to use these principles to manage something of their own choosing.  In other words, it is the questions of individual–or collective in teams–students that drive what we do with the material.  Our students are consumers of knowledge.  By the time college students are juniors, we should be moving them to producers of knowledge and the only way to do that is when students apply the material to their own questions and experiences.  The same way we do as scholars, just at a beginner level.

In the same email, talking about how we develop critical thinkers, i also said:

. . .my own students demonstrate that they do not know how to think critically.  This is the only school i have been associated with, for example, where students rarely ever ask why we assign the things we do, why it is important to learn these things.  i converse with my students all the time about this:  Do they ever ask a prof why the prof believes lecturing and giving exams is the way to learn?  They know it’s not, but they admit it rarely occurs to them to ask.  What the prof says, goes, this is what they say they’ve been taught.  This, of course, is also support for the fact that we are not student-centered.  They HAVE to ask those questions.  If students DID think critically, imagine how great our curricula would be?

My question is:  How can you have student-centered learning where there is no student, that is, where students are not really interested in learning, rather are interested in doing what we want them to well enough to contribute to their GPA and advance toward the degree?

i haven’t seen moves like this since. . .

We were told by a consultant this week that we should be running our academic departments like a business.  That was the absurdity of the week.  A business.

Where the academy is really doing poorly, that is where you will find us trying to run things like a business.  We have created very lucrative diploma mills and what happens between matriculation and commencement often doesn’t make sense unless you understand this.  But what incredible waste of potential!

Another thing:  if you have ever worked in large organizations–the ones we usually think of when we think of business–you soon learn they are not run very well.  If they were, we wouldn’t have tens-of-thousands of books written every year about how to run them.  Sure, in theory (the illusions we often teach) businesses are run very well.

Also in theory we all can be attractive, rich, and famous.  And play for the Red Sox.

i argue that the business of developing human potential cannot be run like a business.

Everyone, in business as well as education, talks about the importance of learning, of “lifelong learning.”  The problem is, learning does not conform.  It does not respect boundaries, tradition, titles, and scared cows.  It doesn’t respect authority, it often undermines legitimacy.  This is especially true of the kind of learning we need in the world today.  And it is why almost no learning takes place in traditional schools.

All of the learning that got us where we are today completely undermined the status quo over time.  So i am very skeptical when people talk about learning.  It might be what they want, but they aren’t willing to accept its consequences.

One thing i have learned in all these years of attending graduations, most commencement speeches aren’t worth my attention.  This one is.  By a kindergarten teacher.

OK, it’s summer. . .i’m over my depression, happy for the graduates (happy that now their educations will really “commence”), getting back into shape, reading a lot of great stuff, looking forward to my 10 days here as well as voyages to Nebraska and Seattle, and already plotting for the non-graduates.

i think i’m also over my annual need-to-inject-as-much-chaos-as-possible-into-my-life.  Loft in the jewelry district?  Two siamese?  A miniature dachshund?  One of each?

i really don’t know what i have against peace and harmony.

b.e. rightly took me to task for my post yesterday on honors. Thanks to b.e. and conventionallearner and gngr423 we have some dialogue happenin’ here!

There was no context for my post, so b.e. makes an excellent point. i should have provided the background for my remark, that yesterday i had to attend the “honors convocation” at my college. All i heard for the entire 75 minutes was how these students are the best and brightest and that they have made the most of their college experience. And this is based almost entirely on grades.

All i could think about were the incredible people in my classes this semester who were not the best and brightest in the eyes of the college and who evidently had not made the best of their college experience. Because students, generally, buy into this, my students might even agree which is one of those things that keeps me up at night. Thus b.e., while you are thinking of the honor students, i was thinking of the dis-honorable.

i certainly don’t lump students together. i am both. i think i have mentioned here that my first semester of college resulted in four F’s and one A (the A was in vocal music where i merely had to show up each class and then at the semester-end concert). Three-and-a-half years later i had a whopping 1.67 GPA! i couldn’t graduate since you had to have a 2.0, so i left college with no degree. When i returned, after five years of working full time, i received all As. i am both an honors student and a dismal academic failure. i have seen both sides and that, more than anything, helped me understand what grades really mean and how a concept like “honors” is destructive, at best.

At my school, about 8-10% of the student body are brought in as “liberal arts honors” students. Most of those getting honors yesterday were from that group. The 20-credit course they have to take their first two years is organized very differently than for the other 90%. They get smaller classes, discussion-based seminars instead of lectures, and the best teachers. In the next two years they get special honors classes no other students can take. But a question i have is: Are they truly the best and brightest, or is this self-fulfilling prophecy?

It isn’t just limiting for those dis-honorable students, however, and this is another part of my point in yesterday’s post. My classes are about challenging the way things are and why they are that way. “Do you want your questions answered or your answers questioned?” Honors students, generally, have been most successful at this system. One of the very last things they want to do is question that system. Taking my classes is agony for them and they can make it agony for those non-honors folks who are ready to explore alternative possibilities. After all, honors is about doing what is expected, what you have been told to do by someone in authority.

So they avoid my classes and continue to believe that what made them successful here will make them successful once they leave here. They have been granted special status here, why wouldn’t they expect special status out there?

It’s not the people, b.e., it’s the idea of honors that corrupts and causes us to focus on some things, thereby missing other things that are just as important. i would argue more important given the challenges of our times.

Thanks, b.e., for your challenge.

Now i know why the three sections of OrgTheory were so good this semester.  i didn’t have one student among the 42 that graduated with honors!

It’s time for a hard look at what i am doing in the classroom. One class asked me, after their final, what i learned from them.

i had three sections of OrgTheory this semester that had tremendous potential. All three ended up doing very well but none came close to realizing their full potential. The section that did the best of the three, struggled all semester and then did a tremendous amount of work in the last 10 days. A good result, but it pales in comparison to what they could have done if they had not waited until panic set in.

So my answer to the question was that i am afraid i learned that seniors at this college are just too far gone to expect that they can take responsibility for their education.  It has been so long since i had a student that really pushed me.  They don’t know what it means and they spend most of their time during the semester trying to avoid that responsibility and the hard work that goes with it.  It’s not them, it’s the culture here.  So i have to rethink everything to see if i can find a balance.

And just when i think that is the way to go, i’m contacted by a couple of folks who talk about how much the course has changed the way they see the world. They want recommendations so they can continue studying, even though they are graduating.

Sigh. i guess i will take a week or two off to gain perspective and then i’ll revisit the question.

Met with global studies 101 for the last time today.  i won’t teach that now for at least another year.  It’s bad enough having to let go of this class.

Part of what i love about 101 is the chance to work with first and second year students.  This college does such a thorough job of beating students down after a couple of years, freshmen and sophomores really are different people.  Compared to seniors, it takes so little to wake them up and then you just sit back and listen as their worlds get larger and more complex.

Next year it’s all seniors.  Yes, i will have global studies seniors for the first time and i can’t wait for capstone (not to mention that i will teaching it with one of my former students).  But i am really going to miss the kids.

Only the coolest professors get to tell everyone how relieved they are that the year is almost over.  It’s just us dorks that are sad that we have worked with some of our students for the last time.  It is hard for us to walk away from the relationships we’ve built with our student colleagues.

In June, i will fully embrace the time i have to read and think and write.  But right now, it’s tough to be a dork.

i know, let’s make grades even more important than learning.

i know that the primary reason there has been so much demonstrated learning this semester is that i have been able to get them to focus on learning and performance, not grades.

And now that classes have ended, when we finally have to deal with them, the tension is rising, and understandings that have taken a semester for them to develop, are starting to go out the window for some.

Grades kill.  Learning.

It’s never too late and things change in an instant.  All three sections are on an upswing.  The class is driving them nuts, they’re engaged.  All it takes is for them to care about doing well and doing it together.

One more class. . .i have spent two semesters with some of these folks.  i need a reminder:
Let go.

. . .yea we know….we felt like you were taking us in a circle.

i was having an IM conversation with a group of students working on their final project.  They are coming up with fair understandings, but they could be much better, go deeper.  i want them to think critically about the issues.

They ask me questions, they want “straight answers.”  If i told them they were looking to the “teacher” for the answer, they wouldn’t agree.  And i think they’d be right, these students have moved beyond that, but the issues they are looking at are very complex, they do want some kind of affirmation.   They want to know they are heading in the right direction, they want lines that point so they can follow.

What i try to do is bring them back to the questions.  Are they asking good ones?  How can they ask better ones?  You ask a critical question, you get information and you often gain insight.  But instead of heading off in the direction to which the insight points, you come back to the questions because the insight will often result in a better, or a completely new, question.  Most people are too impatient to ask questions, they want answers.  They would rather get going and follow the line.  The questioning stops far too soon for true understanding.

So yes, i am taking them in a circle, but think of it as a spiral, not a rut.

At least two of my sections are getting so close to using what they have learned to really understand the systems they are researching, but they just can’t quite get there yet.  It’s ok, they have a couple of weeks left.  But it is so agonizing when they are this close, i get so excited for them, wanting them to see.  i have to fight the urge to help them, i can only keep them focused on applying the analytical tools i have given them and trust the process.  They are using them, they will see.

A few years ago i was relating this to a colleague, how hard it was for me not to say something that will help them.   He said, “Sit on your hands.”  Huh?  “It may not stop the urge, but it will remind you how important it is not to act on it.”  It works.

But you’d think, after so many years beating on the ego and suppressing desire, this would be easier.

i walked into the first section of the day, the 10am class.  i sat down and they were looking at me so i said, “i guess i need to say, ‘Show me critical thinking.’”  Without any hesitation, one of them said, “I’m not going to take that shit from you today!”  To which i replied, “Where were you in February?”

And it was all uphill from there.

Here is a clue as to what is wrong with higher education in this country: We take things that are a way of life (e.g., critical thinking, teamwork, communication, integrity) and turn them into “competencies.” We think it is too hard to build character, so we try to make people competent.

And for that, parents pay us close to $40,000 a year per student.

In Spring 2009 i am co-teaching a seminar on the significant role con artists and swindlers have played in business and American society. i think we’ll start the class with this one.

A student asked me in class why i write my name with no caps.  i thought i had written a post about that, but i guess not, i couldn’t find it.  But i told them.  And the response was, “Wow!  We got a  straight answer!”  Now that was funny!

i know one of their frustrations is that i don’t give them answers.  As long as they look to me as the “prof,” i really can’t.  One of the major lessons of the class is unlearning their reliance on the authority figure.  As juniors and seniors in college, they need to start relying on, and believing in, themselves.  At this point in the semester, many understand why i don’t give them answers and they can now understand my reticence within the context of the larger objectives of the class.

Two straight answers in one day!  i’m lightheaded.

All three sections are in full stride and building momentum. All three classrooms are exciting places right now. They haven’t resolved all their issues, like all organizations they never will. But they are trying, they’re focused, they care about their projects and what they are doing together. Now when they think about applying what they have learned, they know exactly what that means. And each day, i disappear a bit more. Can you understand how startling that is? How wonderful?

They look to me less and less and, as a result, i can step up more and more. But this time, instead of pointing them in a direction, i am helping them go in the direction THEY chose. Before, my comments would stop them. In their minds, stunted by years of being told what to think, what to do, they thought, “He doesn’t like what we’re doing, so what the hell does he want?” They never could find that, so they got frustrated. Now they chose the general direction and most of them are excited about the trip, and the excitement builds.

They are leading, i am following. Now that things are in the right order, learning has taken over. For all of us.

By the end of the semester, the teacher has to become irrelevant, meaningless, worthless. It is the thing that ensures that they can integrate what they have learned into their lives. They no longer need me. They can do it themselves.

What a horrible phrase, an utterly revolting image. Student on a leash. But i’m not so sure that image is very far from what’s meant by the phrase.

This morning i overheard a professor speak of a “favorite” student, i hear this all the time, faculty singing the praises of this student or that student. In far too many cases the favorites are students who do exactly what the teacher wants. It is so twisted. That’s one reason so many students try to do everything they can to please the teacher. It’s not about learning, it’s about obedience and favor, conformity and ego. It’s sick.

My responsibility is to try to reach each student where she or he is, provided the student wants to be reached. Some don’t and as adults, that is THEIR choice, not mine. No judgments, no good or bad or better or worse students. To think that way makes it about me, my preferences, and not the student. Another example of education as upside-down and backwards.

Schools do education upside-down and backwards.

The only way you’ll ever learn a thing
Is to admit that you know absolutely nothing. - The Raconteurs, Old Enough

So today all three sections of OT had to present a proposal about their projects, solidify their assessment and accountability systems, etc. The section that i was convinced was going to end up having to revert to a standard final finally accepted the challenge, embraced chaos, and did a tremendous amount to work in 48 hours. Collaboratively.

Two sections down, one to go. The one who had been working most effectively most of the semester has been heading in the wrong direction. A few desperately want to break out of their passivity and commit to organizing themselves, but a few others are desperately holding on to their student-ness.

i am sure i have discussed this before here, but it is so incredible to me when a class finally steps up and does the hard work together. The energy had changed 180 degrees, there was no way to keep people from talking. They knew they had stepped up, they didn’t need me to tell them. And there was confidence. In accepting the challenge and living through the chaos, they finally saw what i have been talking about all semester. How easy things become when you commit to each other. They have been obsessing all semester about how they can develop evidence to show me what they have learned. In doing this hard work together, they now see that the evidence comes automatically, after the fact, and as a result of their collaboration.

That’s heaven.

Hell is living through the semester until they do. And there are sections that never do or, like last semester, half-heartedly try too late. But what makes this hellish is that there is absolutely nothing i can do, or say, or give them to read that will encourage them to do this. Me trying to force it is not possible, any force on my part pretty much ensures it won’t happen because it reinforces the very dynamic they have to break out of, fear of the teacher. i have 18 pages of comments from former students who have lived through this and overcome it, telling them what they need to do to make this happen. i make this one of their first reading assignments, but that makes no difference either.

So i sit on my hands, making my faces all semester, living through hell. But when it finally does happen, there is no feeling like it. For them, or for me.

i had a brief conversation with a student about another class she is taking:

I really am enjoying the class, he is such a good teacher.

What makes him a good teacher?

He really loves [his subject], it’s so obvious in the way he talks about it.

Do you love the subject?

No.

i tried to understand why this is considered good teaching and about the best i can figure is that it is much better to be entertained than bored senseless. i couldn’t agree more, but i ache knowing that we set our standards for good teaching so low.

i fully understand why, when you are given the opportunity to create your own system of assessment, you try to create one that will give you the grade you want, regardless of the actual performance attained. It’s another indication of just how twisted things are in institutional education. But the purpose of assessment within a system is to a) tell you where you are now, and b) tell you how far you have to go to attain your objectives, realize your vision.  This means, of course, that you have to do it continuously.

This reminds me of a classic Sufi story:

The Announcement

The Wise Man stood up in the marketplace and started to address the crowd.
“O people! Do you want knowledge without difficulties, accomplishment without effort, progress without sacrifice?”
Very soon a large crowd gathered, everyone shouting: “Yes, yes!”
“Excellent!” said the sage. “I only wanted to know. You may rely upon me to tell you all about it if I ever discover any such thing.” (adapted from Idries Shah)