Discussion is an opportunity for students to practice communicating with each other and weighing judgments or proposed actions together, as they must if they are going to be citizens of a democracy. So discussion might be the single most important skill a student can learn in college.
Reading is hard. It requires greater focus and concentration and attention than looking at photos or memes. The dopamine hits that bombard TikTok users are hard to come by in books. What does BookTok have to teach us about motivating students to read?
There's something to be said for being the kind of educator that authoritarians want to ban, if you can afford the risk.
By teaching students to pick apart and become conscious of the structures and conventions of scholarly writing, we can help them to absorb those conventions and replicate them.
When I first heard the term "student-centered teaching," I recognized it as an apt description of what I had been doing instinctively. In general, it means shifting your focus from the content you're teaching to what your students are learning.
After 8 years of teaching Latin, Greek, Roman civilization, and other topics in the classical world, I’ve moved on to work as a curriculum designer and faculty development facilitator for a small nonprofit, The Citizens Campaign. I’m on a team of former practitioners of government and politics who
From Rape to Revolution
I think it's bizarre that professors don't get continuing education in pedagogy, so I'm writing a blog about it for my colleagues in Classics and the humanities.
Aristotle described a broad education as one of the distinguishing characteristics of a free person but also of a free and independent mind, hence “liberal" education. Citizens in a democracy need education to free their mind.
The core principles of feminist pedagogy are radically inclusive and democratic: An insistence that education be applicable to real struggles to liberate; An effort to make classroom spaces more egalitarian or democratic; and The validation of lived experience as a source of knowledge
Highlander was all about empowering marginalized, oppressed people to realize how much they actually already knew, to find solidarity with others around them, and to use their knowledge to bring about social change together.
Reading a peer's work triggers many students to recognize improvements that they could make in their own. In fact, giving feedback might actually support more learning and growth than getting feedback.
To be helpful, feedback should focus on helping students to improve their work, not on evaluating them. And it should connect back to expectations that were clear from the start.
Dewey was not just concerned with adapting education to meet the moment of the Industrial Revolution, but in realizing the democratic ideals of the United States.
Despite being suspended and banned from campus or even denied their degrees in some cases, the students in those encampments got a better education than many of their classmates, in the ways that matter.
Formative assessment is dialogic in nature, a conversation where student and instructor communicate back and forth about beliefs, strategies, expectations, and judgments. Both the student and the instructor get feedback that will help them do better.
It's important for instructors to get to know the learners in the room, because the learners' prior knowledge and goals play a huge role in determining what they'll learn, and how much they'll learn, and how quickly. Everyone in the room will learn a lot more if the class becomes a community.
In my mind, there are three great ways to use mind maps in the classroom: 1) mastering a lot of new information in an intro class; 2) going beyond rote learning; or 3) planning an essay, paper, project, or complex assignment, especially in a group
When I delved into scholarship on supporting first-gen college students, I thought about Marius and the Roman "new man" trope. They turned a potential deficit into an asset, and a core aspect of their identity.
By teaching students to pick apart and become conscious of the structures and conventions of scholarly writing, we can help them to absorb those conventions and replicate them.
