I feel, regardless of terminology, the concept that a student (or anyone for that matter) can build on and grow their skills is vitally important. I reject the “empty vessel” model of teaching wherein instructors “pour” knowledge into a student. I also feel that it is unfair (and potentially discriminatory) to assume that there is a limit to…[Read more]

Thank you for bringing up Friere; I took a pedagogy course at the Grad Center with Ira Shor and he introduced me to Friere’s wonderful theories about teaching!

I feel like I already responded to this quote, but apparently not! In any case, I agree that people may learn from their failures but I don’t want to “buy into” a mentality that poses failure as “necessary” in some way. I honestly believe that students live up or down to our expectations as educators, and if we see failure in a class as a…[Read more]

I agree.  I’ve often heard/read the statement that “some students need to fail to learn” and I am still not 100% sure if that is true and/or helpful.  I teach at BMCC and for my students, like yours, the stakes can be very high when it comes to failing a class or multiple classes.  I assign very few failing grades but I inevitably do land up gi…[Read more]

As to anti-racist pedagogy, for a course I teach about every two years, I recently jettisoned a textbook I had used many times previously (excellent, but it had gotten ridiculously expensive; I had always allowed students to skip the latest edition and use a cheaper older version of the book, nut those used copies were becoming harder to find). It…[Read more]

“Grit” is clearly a great tool, or resource, to call upon, to support a growth mindset, to not let failure get you down but experienced as a learning opportunity, the “not yet” framework. But it may obscure the materials conditions of students lives that make it difficult to live by the motto “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again”,…[Read more]

Since there were times during the pandemic when I recorded introductory videos — and even short lectures — I am used to making these kinds of things and not too uncomfortable with it. In an intro video, I want to keep a fairly informal affect (though I tend to introduce myself to students as Professor and using my surname, not my first name) and…[Read more]

Since the pandemic, I have continued to post a welcome video on Blackboard and send a welcome email before the course begins, and I’ve also made sure to post and include on syllabi info on additional campus services (health & wellness, counseling, food pantry, etc.) whereas before the pandemic I included accessibility, tutoring, but fewer other…[Read more]

I did my undergraduate degree at a private art school in a large city several hours away from where I grew up, thanks to generous need-based financial aid, some merit scholarship, college work-study jobs, and a more or less manageable student loan (it seemed daunting at the time). I had just turned 18, lived in a dorm for a few months then with…[Read more]

I agree that giving students some latitude in research papers, writing assignments, and the like to choose a topic they really care about and want to learn more about, improves motivation. (Can make it harder to grade a set of papers all on disparate topics, though!) I try to frame these as opportunities not only to demonstrate what they already…[Read more]

Like many others posting to this board, I try “icebreaker” activities that help me learn the students names and their interests (and each others’ names and what they have in common). Since I teach media studies, my “getting to know” you questions tend to involve your favorite movie, TV show, favorite when you were a kid, preferred source of news,…[Read more]

How to shift from ‘I don’t want to to this’ to ‘I want to do this.’ Someone else mentioned that having a sense of humor helps; it does help me get over it if I find myself avoiding or procrastinating on a task, to be able to recognize that the task isn’t so big or scary after all and laugh a little at my resistance to it. In graduate school, one…[Read more]

I have little doubt that a broad general education curriculum including courses outside a major field of study is important. A filmmaking student, for example, might not immediately see the value of the math and science they must take, but I would think that it they turn up to be useful when doing carpentry to build a set, doing budgets for a…[Read more]

I have always favored in writing assignments, having students write drafts, get feedback (and perhaps a low-stakes grade), and revise (for a higher stake grade). But in larger classes, it sometimes just isn’t practical to require this. In classes where I have multiple low-stakes grading opportunities (anything — quizzes, discussion board, very…[Read more]

I always mix low-stakes and high-stake assignments, and I design quizzes or very short writing assignments as building blocks of a midterm, final, or longer paper. I call the low-stakes assignments “rehearsals” or “practice” or “warm ups” in advance of the higher-stake graded assignment. In a recent course, for an assessment, I tracked closely…[Read more]

Great reminder. Especially when teaching large classes with significant writing assignments, giving thorough feedback can be very time consuming; I might even find myself giving much more thorough feedback when I start grading, and burning out, giving less, to those on the bottom of the stack. Giving myself an assignment, so to speak, regarding…[Read more]

When I was teaching for the very first time many years ago, I recall that I was afraid of making a mistake in front of my students. But it was tiresome to be nervous and so vigilant all the time, and I learned that one could use mistakes productively. Something as seemingly trivial as a typo on a Powerpoint slide can be recognized and corrected in…[Read more]

As an academic advisor, to create a growth-mindset learning environment, I would make sure by the end of the advisement session, the student leaves knowing all the information needed to succeed in their major. Whether it is what pre-req they would need, for a certain program or recommended a program that would benefit the student (ASAP, SEEK,…[Read more]