Conversation starter story: Tell me why I don't like Mondays
It’s mid-day on a Monday at the University of Montana, and the digital classroom is hot as a tin can in the desert sun. The e-machines, all 25 of them, hum like bees. You’d been out until well after midnight the night before, celebrating a friend’s birthday at the Old Post, and your mouth feels like you’ve eaten an entire jar of peanut butter without the help of bread, jam or milk. As you look at the students arrayed around you in an arc, you remember why you had promised yourself you would never, ever go out the night before you taught. You glance into the corner where Jimmy, against your expressed orders, checks his e-mail on computer #17. Sigh.
Although it’s still early in the semester, you’re already frustrated with this fresh crop of ENEX 101 writers you’ve been trying to incite into action. Despite setting a goal for each class, and providing students with plenty of “raw material”, and trying every one of the six strategies recommended in Margaret Lyday’s “Facilitating Class Discussion” essay, you can’t get these freshmen to open up. Class discussion has ground to a halt, if it ever really began, and you’ve become a talking head lecturing to a Stonehenge-like ring of statues.
It’s difficult to say what the problem is. Susan, her black-rimmed glasses set off against her pale face, looks as scared as a deer caught in the headlights of a tractor trailer truck doing 90. She hasn’t said a single word in 600 minutes of classroom instruction. Paul seems just plain shy, despite the fact his hulking, All-American physique dominates the classroom like a bad smell; when you call on him by name, he just shrugs his massive shoulders and says, “I dunno.” And Nadia, well, she sinks down so far in her chair you wonder why she doesn’t slide off when her head begins to nod and the low, sonorous hint of a snore descends from her face like a waterfall. It could just be the heat, which lies like a wool blanket over the entire room.
No, it hasn’t been a banner start to the semester. Once, during the ethnography inquiry, it was clear that not a single student had even read Soljas, never mind prepared a 250-word thought piece that would prepare them for the discussion. When you asked them what kind of honor was involved in dying in a gun battle on the seedy streets of inner city New Orleans (ironically inundated, you noted to yourself, by a flood of biblical proportions), no one uttered a peep after a full three minutes of silence. Finally, Julio blurted: “The Hollywood kind?”
Apart from Keener Kathy and Shallow Hal, who regularly offers his opinions on the weekly reading despite the fact it’s clear he hasn’t read it, the only student who has anything regular to say is Mighty Mouth Mike, who is always rapping with his neighbour or poking fun at Keener Kathy for speaking up. Look, there he is now, rolling his eyes and pointing at Lloyd, an engineering student, while he tells Jackie, no doubt, how he tripped Lloyd in the hall before class (which you saw).
You desperately want to engage them in a more active mode of learning, so they can apply concepts to different contexts and analyze and evaluate new results. So they can learn to WRITE, dammit. But you’re at your wit’s end. Why do these students refuse to open up and participate in a class discussion? What additional strategies might you employ to encourage them to prepare for class and to actively participate in discussions? And to what degree are you, as a teacher, obligated to ensure your students come prepared and participate?
You must find answers. Your sanity depends on it.
Although it’s still early in the semester, you’re already frustrated with this fresh crop of ENEX 101 writers you’ve been trying to incite into action. Despite setting a goal for each class, and providing students with plenty of “raw material”, and trying every one of the six strategies recommended in Margaret Lyday’s “Facilitating Class Discussion” essay, you can’t get these freshmen to open up. Class discussion has ground to a halt, if it ever really began, and you’ve become a talking head lecturing to a Stonehenge-like ring of statues.
It’s difficult to say what the problem is. Susan, her black-rimmed glasses set off against her pale face, looks as scared as a deer caught in the headlights of a tractor trailer truck doing 90. She hasn’t said a single word in 600 minutes of classroom instruction. Paul seems just plain shy, despite the fact his hulking, All-American physique dominates the classroom like a bad smell; when you call on him by name, he just shrugs his massive shoulders and says, “I dunno.” And Nadia, well, she sinks down so far in her chair you wonder why she doesn’t slide off when her head begins to nod and the low, sonorous hint of a snore descends from her face like a waterfall. It could just be the heat, which lies like a wool blanket over the entire room.
No, it hasn’t been a banner start to the semester. Once, during the ethnography inquiry, it was clear that not a single student had even read Soljas, never mind prepared a 250-word thought piece that would prepare them for the discussion. When you asked them what kind of honor was involved in dying in a gun battle on the seedy streets of inner city New Orleans (ironically inundated, you noted to yourself, by a flood of biblical proportions), no one uttered a peep after a full three minutes of silence. Finally, Julio blurted: “The Hollywood kind?”
Apart from Keener Kathy and Shallow Hal, who regularly offers his opinions on the weekly reading despite the fact it’s clear he hasn’t read it, the only student who has anything regular to say is Mighty Mouth Mike, who is always rapping with his neighbour or poking fun at Keener Kathy for speaking up. Look, there he is now, rolling his eyes and pointing at Lloyd, an engineering student, while he tells Jackie, no doubt, how he tripped Lloyd in the hall before class (which you saw).
You desperately want to engage them in a more active mode of learning, so they can apply concepts to different contexts and analyze and evaluate new results. So they can learn to WRITE, dammit. But you’re at your wit’s end. Why do these students refuse to open up and participate in a class discussion? What additional strategies might you employ to encourage them to prepare for class and to actively participate in discussions? And to what degree are you, as a teacher, obligated to ensure your students come prepared and participate?
You must find answers. Your sanity depends on it.
posted by Jeff Gailus at 3:46 PM
4 Comments:
Getting the students to be active participants in class is certainly a trick, and often those four or five trusty talkers create the illusion of good class discussion when in fact it's good discussion with just the four or five regulars. How to get everyone to engage? I think that it's key to foster a comfortable social environment in the classroom - the students need to feel free to say anything and take risks, and I think a preliminary step toward achieving this comfort level is to help them get to know one another on a personal level early in the semester, ideally, but also throughout the semester. In my room I borrowed someone's idea (Michael's?) from TA Camp to have everyone share something with the class that we'll never forget about them. You're the national log rolling champion? You really have a pair of twin brothers named Mike and Ike? You and your friends and your friend's mother made up an elaborate lie to get flown to New York to be on the Jenny Jones show? We also did the "stupid human trick" get-to-know-one-another thing, and both of these allowed people to share and see sides of one another that make them more human, more likeable, and more comfortable in the classroom. Laughing together early in the semester makes it easier to be serious together later in the semester, I think. And sometimes the awkward silence is best left to ripen for a bit until a student fills the void just to end the silence, and hopefully other students follow the lead.
And, of course, some days will be better than others -- Old Post or no Old Post. I'm still trying to figure out how to get the perpectually silent ones to speak up -- one thing that seems true in my class is that those who seem unwilling to address the entire class are pretty talkative in small groups. A bit of humor can help a bit, and I've found that the students who I run into outside of class or who get to class early and end up talking informally with me and one another end up talking more in class, too.
I guess it doesn't hurt to mention the participation side of the grade every couple of weeks, too. Over and out.
My students generally don't have a problem opening up in class--but, as Jeremy mentioned, those four or five who enjoy talking may be presenting merely the illusion of good discussion. However, even those who are not so loquacious have something to say when I call them by name. I have a couple of students who are very, very quiet, though, and I'm still working to draw them out (and thus far have not been terribly successful). Any suggestions?
One thing that helped me this past week was allowing the discussion to become a more casual conversation--we began by reading an essay by David James Duncan, and from there went to talk about recurring dreams, earthquakes, favorite drinks (hmm, is this a topic that should be avoided in a freshman class discussion?), and the upcoming football game. Some might argue that discussing such subjects is of little use, but I think that these conversations help, as Jeremy said, to foster a comfortable social environment in the classroom. Then the challenge for the teacher is to turn those conversations into more directed discussions with a goal/desired outcome; I'm still working out the best way to segue from one to the other. Discussing even light-hearted topics allows me to get to know my students that much better; knowing more about them gives me more connecting points with them--and more specific things to ask about during class! And having those connecting points creates two-way respect: As I get to know them, I come to respect them more, and as I encourage and respond to their comments in the classroom, they come to respect me more, too (at least I hope so!). This developing of trust has been a slow, but mostly steady, process.
POSTED BY JESSIE SOBEY
sophomore year in college i had took a course that i had no interest in. for the first few weeks, i regressed to a comfortable silence and sort of drifted off in the back corner. admittedly, i was slowly becoming more intrigued by the class material and discussions---but, i felt awkward about offering any input. i think my professor must have noticed something, perhaps a quiet yearning to participate. during one class, he addressed me as "professor sobey" and encouraged me to speak. i did, not just because of the way he addressed me, but because he eased my reluctance. from then on, at least until i particpated on my own terms, he addressed me this way and called on me at least once in every class.
i try to do this with my own quiet students. i've noticed that the ones who seem shy are really just waiting for a prompt or question. it is as if they want to be called on---because they aren't as assertive as most of their peers. they need a little push, or, they need to feel that their opinion matters. the fact that someone cares about what they think or have to say is a strong motivator---aside from interesting discussion and exercises.
I talk about reality shows for the first five minutes of class. They love this. Even the shiest girl in my class thinks that this is a conversation she can enter into, and after we get this pointless jabber out of the way, she (and others like her) are more likely to speak up and I'm more likely to call on her out of the blue. It's simply an ice-breaker, but it works. There seems to be no self-consciousness when they talk about what was on TV the night before, and I actually enjoy it too. It creates a level of discourse that is very shallow, but it helps everybody "get along."
I stole the idea from Brady Udall, who starts every class with up to a half hour of random conversation topics.
The students who are predisposed to speak up still do, and the ones who are more uncomfortable feel included. The social environment that people have discussed is vital to having a talkative classroom.
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