developing an effective teacher persona
So now I am suddenly wondering if I have an effective teacher persona. I've been teaching strictly online for nearly six years now, and it occurs to me I have no idea how I come across.
When I was teaching conventional classes, I found that being easygoing meant no respect and a lot of late material to grade at the end of the semester, so I became meaner and more vindictive, which had the astonishing effect of making the students like me better.
You know, I have found that with online classes, accepting late work at all leads to an exponential jump in the amount of work involved, and doesn't serve any useful pedagogical goal, so I do not accept any late work at all.
What I make sure to do is send out lots of communication so there's no question what's expected and when it is expected.
Now, how that works with WAD is twofold: One, the assignment on Why Writing Sucks tricks the students into thinking I'm going to go easy on formatting and deadlines, and they are quite surprised to find out how dogmatic I am.
Next, all that opening-up of writer, reader, named and unnamed purpose tends to cause students to question what's going on with my communications, to the point of them reading stuff into my advice and instructions that's quite bizarre.
Which I guess is a good thing.
When I was teaching conventional classes, I found that being easygoing meant no respect and a lot of late material to grade at the end of the semester, so I became meaner and more vindictive, which had the astonishing effect of making the students like me better.
You know, I have found that with online classes, accepting late work at all leads to an exponential jump in the amount of work involved, and doesn't serve any useful pedagogical goal, so I do not accept any late work at all.
What I make sure to do is send out lots of communication so there's no question what's expected and when it is expected.
Now, how that works with WAD is twofold: One, the assignment on Why Writing Sucks tricks the students into thinking I'm going to go easy on formatting and deadlines, and they are quite surprised to find out how dogmatic I am.
Next, all that opening-up of writer, reader, named and unnamed purpose tends to cause students to question what's going on with my communications, to the point of them reading stuff into my advice and instructions that's quite bizarre.
Which I guess is a good thing.
Labels: effectiveness, online classes, persona, sucks
posted by Postmillennial Pete's Pointy Perineum at
7:58 PM
4 Comments:
Hey Chris,
When your online students read stuff into your communications, how do you clarify things? It's so easy to be misread even WITH body language; when your students have no access to your body language, it seems like the opportunities for misreadings of communication escalate exponentially.
This semester I taught a couple of online courses. Whenever students sent emails that were aggressive or even accusatory (about grades) and I tried even humbly to address the aggression or to respond to the accusations--which usually resulted from miscommunications that I felt I could easily correct to resolve the tension--I received the greatest backlash. In other words, the response that promoted critical thought about the exchange provoked the strongest resistance. Meanwhile, whenever I didn't explain my reasoning or address their reasoning, the tensions ended.
I strongly believe that at the core of most classroom conflict is the call for critical thinking--regardless of the teacher's body language or overall persona. Here's a relevant passage from Halx and Reybold's "A Pedagogy of Force: Faculty Perspectives of Critical Thinking Capacity in Students":
"If learning requires effort, then critical thinking requires absolute exertion. In 1941, Mortimer Adler noted that learning is painful. He also cautioned that thinking is 'fatiguing not refreshing.' Kroll (1992) suggests that students are often more comfortable with 'ignorant certainty' than they are with 'intellectual confusion.' When students first begin to think critically, they often experience discomfort because critical thinking calls for students to reflect; set aside their established assumptions; and consider other, sometimes counter, perspectives. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, students too often enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
Whenever we try to work against the grain of students' "ignorant certainty," we meet opposition, especially if that "ignorant certainty" is about grades. Students don't feel certain about the course material, but they're ignorantly certain that their efforts should equate with a higher grade. Meanwhile, they aggressively reject the "painful" effort of honest evaluation.
I often find that my students have scared me away from taking the critical approach in individual exchanges, both online and in person. They exhaust my good will with their hostility. It's a shame. I almost daily contemplate getting out of this profession-- because I'm getting too scared of the hostility to promote critical thinking in the face of that hostility.
. . .it seems like the opportunities for misreadings of communication escalate exponentially.
In a way, but over the years I have developed a very stripped-down syntax that doesn't leave much to the imagination.
With WAD, the students are trying harder to read stuff into this, which means the results are, well, more creative!
In other words, the response that promoted critical thought about the exchange provoked the strongest resistance.
It has been my policy not to come to the attention of the ninety and the nine by being unfair, so I look at the resentful communication and try to honestly assess if there was an omission on my part. Often, the instructions were not clear, so the FIRST thing I do is go back and edit the instructions. Over the years this has resulted in assignment instructions that are rather like legal boilerplate--they contain information on just about any question or miscommunication that could possibly arise.
If a student has a legitimate grievance (or has some horrific event occur [I cut them off after nine dead grandparents]), I go back and fix things.
If the student has simply not done the work, or if the requested data is in the assignment, I deal with the matter differently.
Back to critical thinking, though, I find that commanding them to think critically doesn't work. What works better, in my view, is to show an example of seriously flawed critical thinking, which is the student's prompt to go in and do better inference and deduction.
Chris,
Back to critical thinking, though, I find that commanding them to think critically doesn't work.
I don't know. I find that commanding them to think critically works just as well as telling them to enjoy my class.
What works better, in my view, is to show an example of seriously flawed critical thinking, which is the student's prompt to go in and do better inference and deduction.
Really? That works for you? I haven't had much luck with it. In my experience either they recognize the problem immediately, in which case they don't learn anything, or they consider it too hard and throw up their hands.
But then, my typical approach, to keep them in process with their own critical thinking/writing, doesn't work that well either. I try to motivate them to stay in process by making the process as much fun as possible. But that's sort of like trying to make a kid laugh by making funny faces at him when he's sitting on a hot stove.
Ultimately I think critical thinking is a conditioned lifestyle choice, sort of like polygamy, or being a Republican. If you've been conditioned to avoid critical thinking at all costs, because good people don't act like that, because critical thinkers don't get into heaven or the country club, you're going to have a million defenses against any kind of pressure to think critically. You're going to notice those pressures sneaking up on you from a mile away, and have your walls buttressed against them.
That's why I try to smuggle critical thinking past their defenses with fun, with silliness, with seemingly harmless role play, etc.
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