Right Wing Nation

and Huston gets a gold star for his 50 Things New Teachers Need To Know (and many thanks to Joanne for the link). I’m not going to take issue with anything he said — just expand and comment, with a university-level perspective.

Okay, I will take issue with one very small thing: I don’t think these points are only for new teachers. I think any teacher would benefit from reading them.

I say “editing papers” because it’s more constructive than “grading papers.” Written assignments should be graded like this: Read through them and mark the first five grammatical/mechanical errors. Grade the paper based on that much: the style, voice, organization, and, of course, how far you got in the paper before you found five errors. If five errors appeared within the first half page, make them do it over before you give it a grade.

Absolutely. If the student couldn’t take the time to proofread it, I can’t take the time to read it.

Fewer projects, more writing. Projects don’t teach nearly as much as we’d like to think they do, and they need more practice writing, anyway.

I agree. University faculty in many disciplines don’t like assigning papers because they’re a pain in the 4ss to read and grade, and others don’t like them because grading is subjective. Some don’t like them because the writing is so bad — but that’s an argument for more writing, not less. Create a rubric for yourself, including as much detail as you can, so you’ll apply the same standards to all of your students. We assigned a report as half of the final project (the other half was a presentation). It also acted as a final bar on cheating; after all, if you didn’t do the analyses, you probably can’t explain or talk about them.

Resist the urge to try to edit every error in every paper: there just aren’t enough hours in the day. For this reason, short assignments are better than long ones, most of the time. They need drilling, not marathons.

If I may depart here, I prefer a mixture of shorter and longer assignments, with different assessment goals. Shorter, more frequent assignments are good for assessing skills as students (ostensibly) learn them. Longer, more complex assignments are good for assessing how well students can integrate what they have learned. And that leads us to:

Avoid group work. They’ll usually just copy or play around. Or both. People who insist that students need practice “cooperating” and “working with others” are wrong. They already know how to manipulate such systems and blend in. They need practice being focused and responsible. If you do give group work, please make sure that each individual has a specific product or element of the whole for which to be responsible and graded on.

Well, yes and no. Certainly, you have to be careful with group work. If we’re tackling something new and complex, I like to throw students together into pairs, so they can talk through the problems with each other. But the real advantage of group work is that you can give much more complex, integrated assignments. However, there are caveats, and the major one is slackers.

At the very least, form groups at the beginning of the semester, and keep those students together in the same groups until the end of the semester. Students may tolerate slackers the first time they do a project, but they’re far less likely to do so in successive assignments.

If you’re assigning group work, keep your finger firmly on the pulse of those groups. You should know there are problems brewing before students come to your office to complain, and you should step in and do something to head off those problems.

Finally, come up with some system so that the members of groups can fairly distribute credit for work (if you’re interested, email me, and I’ll tell you what we did).

But yes, Huston is right. Group work for its own sake is just a stupid trend that serves no pedagogical purpose in the classroom.

A quick turn-around time on returning graded work is a must. If this means grading some assignments on completion (which is OK sometimes, if the nature of the assignment is such that simply doing it necessitates doing it right), so be it. Some assignments can be graded on every other question, etc. As I said before, keep writing assignments short. If students get work back in a timely manner, they’re more likely to care about it. If an assignment comes back after about two weeks and they don’t even remember it anymore, it’s worthless. Only return assignments that a) they’ll need to study, or b) they put a lot of effort into (or should have). Not all work is worth keeping track of.

Which is related to this:

Most students will need very frequent grade updates to stay at all motivated.

Absolutely and absolutely. Students should always have a very accurate idea of how well they are doing, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. “Feedback” is not “You’re getting a C- now,” nor is, “You got 4 Bs and 2Cs on the assignments, and a C+ on the test.”

For every given assignment, quiz, or exam, students should know exactly where they missed points, so they know what they need to work on. If you don’t let students keep exams (and there are excellent reasons not to), then meet with your students, show them their exam, and tell them exactly what they got wrong. If you assign papers, then your feedback should be highly detailed, so John knows exactly why he got a C+, and not a B- or B.

If you post grades on the web, add a drill down, so students can click on an assignment, then on any given item on that assignment, to see exactly what they missed and got correct.

As much as possible, provide written directions for your assignments to students. Oral directions alone are worthless, and just putting them on the board isn’t much better. Students today seem to work best when they have individual copies of instructions, especially if they can keep them. Also, you’ll be surprised by how many students will understand directions better if you simply explain them directly to them, one on one. Even if you only repeat exactly what you just said to the whole class, some kids will “get it” better.

There are teachers who only give oral directions? Sheesh, no wonder education is so fu . . . er, never mind.

The only thing I can add is that the more places students can get to the directions (and print them, preferably), the better. Oh, there is one more. Keep your directions clear, straightforward, and to the point. Add no additional discussion, do not use ten-dollar words, sentences with idiotically long subjects, or needlessly complex syntax. If you think you’re the reincarnation of William Faulkner, you probably shouldn’t be writing directions. Or assignments. Or test questions.

PC Myth #1: “Don’t worry about the smart kids. They’ll take care of themselves.” If I had a nickel for every time I heard this lie in college, I’d be able to supplement my income enough now to live like my friends in real estate did a few years ago. The problem with this line, and a lot of other popular thinking like it, is that so many teachers subscribe to it now that the smart kids have almost nobody left rooting for them. Their intelligence often gets wasted in our schools, with so few of us willing to challenge and expand it. Please, do not ignore the smartest kids (even though they may be among your most annoying students).

Teach to the center of the curve, but encourage your top students. Make sure they feel welcome to come to your office, and have extra, more complex, work for them to do, if they’re interested (and many of them will be). The cream of the crop to not take care of themselves. They get bored, and in some cases, stop coming to class, stop doing the work, and fail.

“Honors class” inflation is adding to this problem, by the way. But that’s another article.

PC Myth #4: “Students must be able to relate to content to understand or care about it.” How condescending! They’re not here to be pandered to, to have their warped, manufactured view of the world reinforced. They’re here to expand their horizons. That means intellectual humility borne of introspection brought on by exposure to challenging new ideas. Shock and awe, baby.

I really can’t add to this. The only reason I included it was because it’s such an excellent point. And “relevance” is such a stupid concept, when you think about it. Do you have to be dying of lupus (or for that matter, be a Catholic living in the Deep South) to appreciate Flannery O’Connor?

The last five minutes of every class should look like this: a quick review of that day’s content (either by calling on a few kids to answer simple questions about what was done that day, or quick written answers done on scratch paper and handed directly to you as they leave), a reminder about that day’s homework (you should also check at the door that they have this written down somewhere, preferably with a time set aside to work on it), and have them help you pick up the room by checking around their own areas for any garbage or materials that need to be put away.

Picking up the room may or may not be doable (it’s kind of hard to imagine in a lecture hall with 240 students), but yes, every class should end in a recap, and those reminders are important. I do have something to add, though.

The first five (or ten) minutes of class should be a quick review or summary of what was done in the last class, and should segue into whatever previously covered skills connect to what you will do that day. If you do this at the beginning and end of each class, you connect them smoothly for your students.

Mentoring is the ultimate teaching. Model the kind of adult you want your students to become: carry books around with you, don’t swear, discuss world events, etc.

Absolutely. If you want your students to see you as a professional (not to mention be treated as a professional), then act like one, in the classroom, in your office, in the halls, every minute you’re on campus. And:

The perfect balance between professional and approachable behavior is impossible. In general, lean towards more professional.

Yes. I blogged on this some time back. You aren’t their peer. You aren’t their friend. You aren’t their clergyman or counselor. You’re the instructor. Don’t ever forget it, because they won’t.