Intentional teaching

First day of class, fall 2007. A First-Year Interest Group seminar, my first. I talked. Twenty freshman stared at me. I talked more. They took notes. And stared. Same the next session. And the next. It was awful. 

My problem: I had plenty to say, but hadn’t  planned out how to make them talk. To become critical thinkers, students need practice: They must talk. But these 18-year-olds, new to college, were too intimidated. 

I wanted to improve. The formal infrastructure supporting improving college instruction is sparse, so I read books about teaching. Colleagues and excellent high school teachers had good advice. I brought an outstanding instructor in and watched her techniques. I came to understand that focused, engaged discussion is key to learning critical thinking. It requires crafted prompts that focus students’ attention, but about which disagreement is reasonable. Students must trust they can make mistakes. Everyone needs to be involved, not just the already-confident. This goes for small seminars and large lecture classes, alike.

The students loved the class by the end. But I still wasn’t satisfied. I knew what to do but not, yet, how to do it.

In 2010, I taught the class again. This time, I asked Emma, one of the 2007 students, to help me. A senior by this point, she had taken 24 classes, with 30 teachers (including TAs). She was smart, observant, thoughtful, and had seen much more recent classroom teaching than I had. We found funds to pay her. It was the best use I’ve ever made of $500.

Emma was an “instructional coach,” observing weekly, taking notes and then debriefing with me for 20–30 minutes after each class.

Some of her advice: sum up regularly so that all students were on the same page; learn all the students’ names immediately; inform students that I would cold call, but it was OK if they didn’t want to speak. A subsequent class included five Hmong students who were, initially, very quiet. Two of the readings concerned Hmong culture, and Emma convinced me the Hmong students should present those papers. Suddenly, they were the experts in the room. The other students knew even less than I did about Hmong culture and practices; the Hmong students knew a lot, and the class dynamic changed.

Emma showed me that students have a wealth of knowledge about learning; their insights are gold dust. Emma’s key lesson was: In the eternal battle between rigor and engagement, professors are disposed to prefer rigor. But without engagement, no learning happens. My job is to structure, and foster, their learning, not simply to display my own.

In fall 2017, I created a class (LS300) intended to harness the classroom insights of students with diverse backgrounds, experiences and majors. We learn about, and practice, effective techniques for improving student engagement. We will match these students to instructors whom they can support in improving their pedagogical practice.

We owe it to our students, and to the public, to invest in becoming better teachers.

Harry Brighouse is the Mildred Fish Harnack Professor of Philosophy, Carol Dickson-Bascom Professor of the Humanities and is Director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW-Madison. He has been teaching here for 27 years.