I
What I am about to propose is considered incomprehensibly unfeminine. If I implement it I may see my enrollments decline and the quality of my student evaluations sink. But what I would like to do in all my classes is get up and lecture, assign a midterm, a paper, and a final, and leave things at that. The reason for this is that I really do not want to know what the students think – it is too depressing – and I would like the courses to resemble, at least to some degree, what is in the texts we are reading. To break the monotony of a straight lecture, I could assign formal oral presentations and critique them heavily. This sort of military-style discipline is in fact what my students need, and it would make them comfortable. The reasons I do not normally do it are that:
1. We have official teaching methods and strategies in my department, which do not include these, and I am already the most intellectually demanding professor many students have encountered so far;
2. Before tenure I had freshman courses and needed high student evaluations, and I learned early on that women only get these from freshmen here by being maternal, as a result of which I formed some Bad Habits;
3. We need to produce more student credit hours at higher levels, and more degrees at all levels. We cannot afford to have people drop courses, fail them, or leave programs.
However, I am at my wits’ end. I may implement my the fantasy plan outlined above no matter what. Contrary to popular opinion, it may work. If it does not, I can do somethig else.
What motivates all of this is I am teaching an interdisciplinary senior course that can be taken for graduate credit. There are several different people teaching different topics under this course number and I seem to be the only one who does not say, “Oh, but I do not want to make the students buy books. Acquiring these would be expensive for them, and reading would be time consuming.” They give them little xeroxed readings and chat. I can do this but when I get home at night I feel literally as though I have been nursing a litter of kittens, not living the life of an adult human.
If I just lectured at the level I consider appropriate for a university, it would not matter whether students did the readings or not. Those who did would speak, and I would teach to them. The others could buy their papers and I would report them, whereupon they would be expelled – or not, as the University wished. I would not have to care. They could also fail the midterm and final. I would be untouchable and untouched. I would not come home so tired at the end of each day and I would finish my own book.
II
Here are two amusing conversations from the past few weeks:
1. Student A [a junior, not doing well]: I think I have finally figured out your class.
Z: Oh, good.
A: Yes. You are just like Dr. W [a person very different from me].
Z: Oh?
A: Yes. Exactly like him, you believe that books contain not only stories, but ideas. Indeed, you both believe that there are some books which contain more than one idea!
Z: Yes. We both believe exactly that. Carry on.
2. Z [to Student B]: And how are you doing? Is any of this making sense?
Student B [a freshman, transferred into a junior course because freshman courses were too easy]: Yes. I do not think I will have any problems. This is just like Bible study.
Z: Oh?
Student B: Yes. The Bible was written by multiple authors, in multiple languages, at a time and a place very different from our own. There are a number of translation issues to consider, and there are additional texts which might have been included, but which have not been. Some portions of the Bible are historical, others are poetic; some may have been divinely inspired; others may not have. The texts may or may not all be relevant to current conditions. Many are written in highly allegorical, or at least allusive styles. This textual situation gives rise to a number of questions about interpretation, and about the nature of writing and reading. As if that were not already enough, many people and entities have appropriated Biblical texts to ends of their own. This may or may not be problematic, but it must be acknowledged. These are the sorts of questions you have raised so far in relation to the secular texts we are studying in this class, and I feel quite at home.
Z (out loud): You are indeed at home. Carry on.
Z (silently): Are you planning to go to graduate school?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I hope you can teach the course the way you want to. You are one of the few female professors who has a real independence of mind, from what I can tell. So, I wish you all the best with it.
Graz, Jennifer! It’s just a question of baring my teeth and doing it. Independence of mind, *yes* and it causes me trouble. The worst of said trouble is, of course, thinking there is something wrong with *me* (hence “da” blog, of course, the antidote).
The Student B’s are so few, huh? And so fun. Though they sometimes take an odd turn at an unexpected point (which may or may not be a problem). At least they can think…
Let us know how the new game plan works out, if you try it.
You can get today’s students to do more work, but you have to organize it in ways they understand. I found Rebecca Nathan’s book, My Freshman Year, very helpful in figuring this out.
SB – Thanks for the book reference, it is interesting. But I’m not interested in getting students to do more work, and frankly, I am *tired* of “organizing it in ways they understand” … it turns flaky for numerous reasons (believe me, I am alternative and modern), and one thing I find they *do* grasp is tradition.
I am also interested in *not* discovering that they want the Jena 6 to burn in the electric chair, or me to convert to Christianity. And I do tire of having to teach basic literacy skills in senior seminars – although that is not the students’ fault.
On Nathan’s book: did she really did not know these things about what student life is like, and why they schedule and prioritize things as they do? That’s wild. I would actually like to know a little less about some students’ thoughts than I do … but I could not imagine having to go undercover in the dorms to discover basic things about their lives and motivations.
The other thing is … dorms, what dorms? Very many of my students do not have that kind of money. In terms of access to time and resources for getting homework done and things like that, the dorm dwellers and the Greeks tend to have the *best* of situations, comparatively speaking.
Yes, it’s not about getting them to do MORE work, rather than getting them to do THE work at hand –