On Coherence

Q: Sometimes courses feel arbitrary, like students are learning things that don't connect. What can a teacher do so that at the end of the course students can answer in a few sentences what they learned? Is that possible? Is it desirable?


Jack: If my students are anything like I was at their age - and I'm sure most of them are - they have all long since forgotten most of the details of our course content. They will remember that we studied the Ottoman Empire in Intro to Modern World History, for instance, but they will have no recollection of Suleyman (Suleyman the Magnificent, at that). And can I blame them? I can't remember when to use the imperfect tense in Spanish. I can't remember what I had for dinner a week ago. I can't even remember the names of some of my family members.

Knowing that my students would forget at least two-thirds of the details, I tried to first structure my courses so that there was a theme (or at least no more than a few major themes). This was pretty difficult, because it meant even more filtering of the material by me (meaning even more room for brainwashing if I so chose), it meant leaving a lot of cool things out of the curriculum (or just not emphasizing them), and it meant spending a lot of time trying to figure out what story I could tell about certain periods of history. Ultimately, for World History, it was a story about the rise of a more global world and the consequences that new globalism brought for powerful and less-powerful nations.

After coming up with that story, I then had to frame every unit in those terms. Why are we looking at this period? Why are we reading about these people? Why are we discussing this region? For my more concrete students (always a little difficult for me to relate with), I had the students keep a section of their notebooks for tracking our story. Then, at the end of each quarter, we would wrap up what we had covered up to that point. Have we seen the rise of a more global world? Does this represent a distinct historical departure? What, up to this point, have the consequences of globalization been? What evidence can you use to support your opinion?

It was much easier to do that sort of framing in a world history class - where there is far far too much to teach - than in an American history course, which though daunting, represents significantly less material. Still, there are distinct storylines to American history. On the first day I handed out questions that Mike and I had developed - five or six questions about themes in American history - and had the kids put those questions at the front of their notebooks. After each period, we would return to those questions. How does the Populist Era begin to answer the question about how government works and whom it is for? How does it begin to answer the question about who Americans are?

In the end, students remembered those discussions and were able, by and large, to sprinkle their opinions with historical evidence. And the sprinkling was important, because if all they could do at the end of the course was make a vague statement about what they learned, there would be no power behind the learning. But I found that when students bought into an idea as being true, examples to support that idea came pretty naturally to them.

In terms of other subjects that I've taught, I've thought about how I can build the same storylines. What does a collection of literature say cumulatively? How do certain authors speak to each other?

Moses may feel differently, but Bill Bryson's history of science (A Short History of Nearly Everything) is so powerful because he identifies connections in science and explores science thematically, always reminding his reader how some aspects of the natural world work with other aspects. I don't know much about geology, but I do know that the Earth's core is connected pretty fundamentally to the Earth's crust and that rocks aren't always rocks; I could support statements like that by discussing the conveyor belt at the bottom of the ocean. I don't know much about molecules, but I do know that everything in this world is composed of molecules, which as far as I can tell, are not alive.

People and rocks are both made of molecules. Holy Toledo.


Moses: Holy Toledo indeed. Try this on for size: the only atoms created by the Big Bang were hydrogen and a little bit of helium. All other atoms were created by the nuclear fusion in the hearts of stars and then distributed (i.e. blown to smithereens) across the universe when that star supernova'ed. That carbon that makes you up? Star stuff. The oxygen you breathe? Same thing.

I started teaching because I loved science, and I wanted to share that love with people who would listen. I enjoyed working with younger people but really, for me, it was about the content. As I taught in those first three years, I began to see how much I loved getting to connect with the kids. Sometimes that connection was in geometry or geology or some other class, sometimes it was as an advisor, sometimes it came from going to the JV basketball game after school...more likely it never came in a singular moment but a combination of all those experiences.

I feel like, somewhere in my third year of teaching, I had a realization that felt like getting the joke of teaching: that it wasn't about the content, that the content was just my backstage pass that allowed me access to working with kids. And so, when I set goals, they're rarely about the content. I hope that my classes give my students insight into who they are - as learners, as young adults - and I hope it leaves them feeling that if they want to learn more about anything, they picked up some tools in my class.

So in that sense, the material IS arbitrary. I still love teaching physics and astronomy specifically because I love the material, and the feedback that I hear from the kids convinces me that my own love helps to open them up to all the other stuff I'm trying to do. The skills that they learn in a science class can be very narrowly defined - calculating how a ball falls through the air, learning why we know the universe is expanding, etc. - or broadly - how can I pose and answer a question? Does 'science' add legitimacy to the things I hear? How do I react when I am challenged? I think both are valuable, but that's just because I think science is awesome. Imagining a student who doesn't agree, though, I hope that my class would still be worthwhile because of the broader goals.

I think, as Jack said, the important part is to be clear in your goals and to keep coming back to them. Keep coming back to them explicitly, telling the kids what you're trying to do and reminding them as you/they do it, and keep coming back to it implicitly in your own planning and reflection. I think it's OK if the few sentences they write at the end of the course are different than what you'd hoped they'd write, as long as they reflect some growth, some well-founded confidence, some thoughtfulness, some excitement for learning. [Allow me to say, though, as disclaimers, that in spite of all this I am still always racing to fit in more content, and that even though I have the advantage of teaching almost all seniors in electives, they still so rarely make progress in the ways that I'd hoped...]


Douglas: Having students understand how things connect to each other is more than desirable, it’s the main goal of teaching. I used a pedagogical framework called Understanding by Design, which makes a distinction between simply teaching knowledge and fostering intellectual depth. Basically, students need to understand how the ideas and concepts in your course connect. When they do, they understand the big picture and that in turn gives a context to understand the specifics of ideas and concepts.

So the main goal of teaching is helping students make these connections and helping them understand “the big picture.” I used “essential questions,” foundational queries that run through every unit of a course. For example, in my modern world history class, “Global Interdependence,” an essential question was, “Who do we care for? How do we identify ourselves?” Another was, “Does global interdependence help or harm people?” These issues ran through each unit of the course: industrialism, nationalism, imperialism, Communism, the Cold War etc., so it was easy to understand how nationalism or Communism were related to issues of group identity. Even when we talked about current events, like oil dependency and conflict in the Middle East, the same essential questions came up.

Having these thematic questions run through a course help students connect ideas and understand history: understanding factories in 19^th century Britain helps them understand the issue of sweatshops in Southeast Asia today. Most of my former students say they remember the major themes of the course because of the essential questions and through that, some (and I say some), of the historical details.

The cool thing about essential questions is that in addition to helping them understand content, they connect to students’ everyday lives. For example, the essential themes of science: observation, hypothesizing, testing and measurement of error, are all things we do all the time. Once kids understand that their schoolwork connects to everyday life, their educations take on more relevance and meaning. Having ideas and concepts within a context of the big picture helps them continue their own inquiry and learning long after your course has ended.

Mike: Perhaps this question can be read a little differently: "should your course have a thesis statement?" We teach out students that good academic writing is meaningless without one. Are our classes the same?

A class with a thesis statement will function like any other piece of academic writing. It will make arguments. It will provide a variety of ways to support the thesis, perhaps from differing perspectives. The thesis statement of my American Lit class was "reading American Literature will teach you more about who you are and who you are not." The final project for the course asked the students to teach me who they were, using figures from the literature as guideposts. Perhaps the thesis statement of my Postmodern American Lit class (taught here in China to Chinese graduate students) is, "Postmodernism is a threat to the CPC because it will teach you who you are." Obviously I like identity as a theme.

I've taught courses with a stated thesis that has served as the spine for the entire course. I've taught others that have only the course title offering cohesion ("Oral English", for example, which is about as broad as a title can be). Jack and I taught our U.S. History course paying careful attention to a few "essential questions", which was somewhere inbetween these poles.

I preferred teaching the courses with thesis statements. I had an easier time organizing the classes, and I saw more opportunities to help the students hone their critical thinking skills. But I've been in situations where a thesis statement would not have helped the
students.

Perhaps this question will have different answers based on subject matter and circumstance.

On Failure

Q: How much failure is acceptable? How much can you chalk up to "being a first year teacher" and what needs to be viewed as simply bad practice? How do you know the difference? What should one expect from one's self during the first year in the classroom?


Jack: Lots of failure is acceptable. It has to be for two reasons. First, if you don't accept major amounts of failure, you're going to be totally miserable all year and perhaps quit teaching. Some new teachers (like me for my first semester as a teacher) don't know enough to see that they're failing in major ways, and that can be a good thing. At the end of the year, or earlier, you recognize how far short you fell in so many areas, and you make corrections and move on.

You also, however, have to recognize the failures and not simply plough confidently ahead. No first year teacher is a good teacher. No second year teacher is a very good teacher. No third year teacher is a great teacher. And that's important to recognize.

In short, there has to be a balance, a delicate one at that, between recognizing failure and accepting it. For me, the best way of thinking about it was to do the best I could and not be critical of myself until the end of the marking period. In the break between quarters, I'd spend a lot of time thinking about what went wrong, what didn't work like I thought it would, and what succeeded. And then, I'd adjust my plans for the next quarter, trying to write into myoutline for lessons reminders about what I needed to change; of course, by the time I had written them down, I understood them well enough to not need a reminder.

At the end of my first year teaching, I thought I had done pretty well. At the end of my second year teaching, I looked back at my first year and thought it had been average. At the end of my third year, that first year looked pretty weak. But that meant that where I was my third year was a lot closer to my vision of good teaching, and that felt great.


Douglas: Before anything, you need to establish a clear sense of what you think effective teaching is. Get out a sheet a paper and elucidate four or five principles of what makes good teaching toyou. It may be timely feedback, positive discipline, creating a safe learning environment, cultivating curiosity, developing logical reasoning… whatever combination ofcharacteristics good teaching is, write it down. As you go through your career, you’ll probably hone your principles but the point your first year is to simply have them.

If you’ve been intentional about what you think good teaching is, my guess is that you’ll be pretty effective. Your first year, and indeed the rest of your teaching career, is a laboratory to see which techniques and methods work towards promoting your teaching goals. The key is: be consistent on your principles, adjust your practices to fit. Pay attention to what didn’t work. Those failures and how you deal with them are essential to being a good teacher. After all, rare are the days that absolutely everything goes right in a class. So recognizing what’s not working and figuring out how to save it an important skill you’ll learn too.

The only first-year teacher that I would consider an actual failure is one who didn’t know whatshe/he was trying to accomplish and wasn’t paying attention to see if her/his practices were effective or not. Those people probably aren’t really trying. If you’ve articulated what you think good teaching is and been mindful to see if practices work, I believe that (1) you’ll have a real sense of accomplishment by year’s end and (2) you’ll have been actually pretty effective.


Moses: Feeling like a failure comes from caring about the job that you're trying to do, and from doubting the job that you just did. I also think good teachers are the ones who do both of those, that the teachers who don't open themselves up to feeling like a failure who are the bad ones. So how do good teachers survive? It seems like a cruel paradox.

There is no absolute answer to the first original question - how many units of failure are OK and how many aren't. I think the questions later in the list (what can you expect of yourself, how do you tell good failures from bad) are the real ones: how you take the inevitable failures and allow them to turn you into a better teacher?

The answer, for me, lies in structures. By structures, I mean regular elements of your profession as a teacher that give you some check against reality. Those can be internal: in my first year, I got huge mileage out of daily journal writings because by putting my day, experience, and thoughts down onto the page, I was able to step back and see a little more clearly. Or they can be external: now I do almost all of my processing by talking to my peers about teaching. I need some structures to hold me accountable and to ground me. I also loved the suggestion of trying to lay your priorities out clearly...I just did that for the first time this year and am finding that it makes success feel much more manageable.

Lastly, I think some of that grounding can and must come from the kids. I wrestle with that a lot, because I don't think you can trust their comments entirely: they want different things or sometimes see them narrowly or still have some growing up to do. In some fundamental way, though, I trust them: if they say I'm boring, then I probably am. Grains of salt all over the place...but taking feedback from the kids and honestly considering it is another way I can feel like I'm making progress as a teacher, turning my failures into successes.

The specter and possibility of teaching never goes away: I don't think I feel failure much less now (as a 6th year teacher) then I did as a first year teacher. But I think today failure is a pockmark instead of a crater in my self-image: that I have some more perspective about who I am as a teacher. Being open-hearted and -minded, thoughtful about your practice is no small task, but I think it's my answer to many of the questions asked.