Funny thing: this morning I was thinking about a class I took in college nearly 40 years ago--a Restoration drama seminar that met one hour a week, outdoors if the weather was nice--and as I pictured our small group sitting on green benches on a vast green lawn, I clearly saw a mask across my face.
Which is ridiculous, of course. I wouldn't have been wearing a mask in that class--no one would have been wearing a mask on my small college campus in 1983! But somehow the pandemic has invaded my memories and edited them to honor our mask mandate.
What about the future? Do I see myself wearing a mask to teach next semester? Yes--but a vaccine could change all that. As I look back on the dumpster fire this semester has become, I keep telling myself next semester will be different, and I hope it's true but I'm not confident.
One thing will definitely be different: I have to find new ways to encourage class participation. I've used various methods to engage students in class discussion, but putting a check-mark next to names of students who speak so I can reward them with participation points has never been part of my modus operandi. But now that's exactly what I'm considering. I have to do something different to make students open their mouths.
The worst aspect of this semester's classes has been my students' overwhelming unwillingness to speak in class, whether face-to-face or on Zoom. I'm a little hampered in the face-to-face classes because social distancing means students who sit in the back are so far away that what I can see of their faces is a blur, so for the first time in my teaching career I've utterly failed to learn many of my students' names.
And if back-row students are blurry in person, they're practically invisible when we're on Zoom, where they can press mute and walk away. At some point in nearly every Zoom session I put my students into small groups to discuss a question and report back, but I've been told that some students simply disappear, leaving the more diligent students to do all the work.
But next semester will be different! Someone suggested making the students put name tags on their desks until learn their names, but if I can't see their faces clearly, there's no chance I'll be able to read their name tags. Since we'll still be required to assign seats next semester, I'll have to devote some serious time to memorizing the seating chart, or maybe keep a copy of it nearby so I can consult it and call out names when my questions are met with silence.
And suddenly I'm picturing myself as my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Davis, with her giant pouf of white hair, her jeweled cat-eye glasses, and her dainty hanky tucked into the sleeve of her dress. I fear that next semester I will become Mrs. Davis, a persnickety pedant armed with a seating chart and ruler to slap on the desk when my students won't respond.
But I'll be wearing a mask! A mask mandate powerful enough to edit my memories won't let me bare my face in class even in my dreams.
2 comments:
I do a lot of cold-calling. I like to do it in a nice predictable fashion, where I go from back of the class to front or from last name on the roster to first name on the roster.
In my non-math class, I combine cold calling with either homework questions or small group work or desk work so that they have something written down that they can just read out when they're cold-called.
Sometimes a person will try to get away with "I don't know" early on, but it's really important not to let them do that. Once a couple people have tried it and failed, people stop trying to say "I don't know."
This reminds me of something a student told me last spring semester. She was in a small upper-level literature class where I periodically required students to read scholarly articles, and I told them that I would call on each of them to direct us to a specific passage to discuss as a class. This works well with a small group, and at the end of the semester this student told me that she has always been afraid to share her ideas in class because she feared they weren't "good enough," but sharing ideas became a requirement, she found out that she could do it without dying and she gained confidence. Now I need to translate this method into my bigger classes.
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