Teaching Tip #10: Classroom Conflict, Classroom Climate

You may have seen the YouTube video of the Milwaukee student who was forcibly removed from a classroom by campus security after a dispute with the professor about a test question that escalated into abusive language and refusal to leave the classroom when asked.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-KFA1U8iOw While it is unlikely that you will experience a situation [...]

Teaching Tips #9: Spring Semester Funk

Does this definition ring a bell? “Spring Semester Funk: physically and mentally exhausted, annoyed with colleagues, can’t stand to hear another talk, students working their last good nerve, and hopelessly behind on writing and research.”  (from The Monday Motivator e-newsletter by Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD) Probably due to our winter disruptions, this year’s Spring Semester [...]

How Do You Write? Let Me Count the Ways

Thanks to MU librarian Marcia Dursi for steering me to the “How I Write” page at Stanford University.  For eight years, Hilton Obenzinger,  associate director of the Honors Writing Program at Stanford’s writing center, has been inviting professors across the disciplines to come talk about their writing process.  The site includes a video of political [...]

Teaching Tip #8: Helping students use their brains

In honor of Brain Awareness week, this week’s teaching tip asks the question:  how is what you do in the classroom affecting your students’ brains? Learning is a physical act.  Some neural connections become stronger and others weaken or disappear as new experiences literally shape the brain.  In The Art of Changing the Brain, biologist [...]

How Many of Your Students Really Belong in a Four-Year College?

A listserv post pointed me to Charles Murray’s somewhat hardhearted answer in the Wall Street Journal.  According to Murray, you need an IQ of at least 115 to do well in college, so really only 25% of the population has the aptitude.  Yet more than 45% of high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges.

3 Qualities of an Outstanding Teacher

I saw this post on a writing program listserv and thought the insight transferred well beyond composition.  It’s not enough to know your field and know how to draw students into the class; you have to be able to figure out where their learning is breaking down: I saw the NYT article as proposing that [...]

Teaching Tip #7: Passively Failing Students

At some point, you meet the “passively failing” student.  He or she attends class sporadically, does not seem engaged when they do show up, does not complete assignments and generally makes you wonder why they don’t just drop the course.  How can we understand such students? Is there anything we can do? Buskist & Howard [...]

March 4 Is National Grammar Day

Every dog has its day.  So too does every independent clause. And it’s today–National Grammar Day! Join Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, and the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar for a celebration that’s mostly self-promotion but also features links to blogs and some teaching materials.