On a warm Sunday in early June, I was watching my 6-year-old son play in the driveway. He had pulled an old plastic sled out of the garage and filled it up with water from our rain barrel. Talking as he played, half to himself and half to me, he kicked the sled and noticed the water racing back and forth as the sled wobbled.
"Hey," he said. "It looks like waves. Or the tide coming in."
Kneeling down, he started slowly rocking the sled back and forth, watching the miniature waves. Then he picked up a small stick and put it in the water, seeing how it would react. I suggested he try different-sized sticks, which he did, and then he added a metal washer, which of course promptly sank. When a large stick got snagged on the bottom of the sled, he added more water until it floated clear.
Later, as we were eating lunch together, I asked my son if he knew what made waves in the oceans, or what caused the tides to go in and out. He didn't, and now he wanted to know. Trying to explain where the wind comes from or the gravitational pull of the moon to a 6-year-old taxed my small store of scientific knowledge to the limit, but I think he got the idea, and—most important—he seemed quite interested in my explanations.
I couldn't help but imagine what a contrast it would have been for him to have been sitting in a classroom, looking at a blackboard, while a teacher explained the concept of gravity to him, and used the tides as an example of how gravity operated in the world. There he would have been one more bored kid in a classroom; sitting in the backyard, his own water experiments having stirred his curiosity, he had become the ideal pupil.
I sometimes think that the goal of every teacher is, or should be, to figure out how to replicate in the classroom what I encountered by chance in my driveway that afternoon. My son stumbled upon a phenomenon that caught his interest, investigated it with every tool he could think of, and then—when his knowledge and initiative had taken him as far as he could go—received some welcome guidance and additional information from a teacher.
By contrast, most of us walk into the classrooms with our heads full of our specialties and tell our students what we think they should hear, whatever their interests may be. If they're not interested, as far as we're concerned, that's their problem.
As much as I think many faculty members would love to shift away from that well-worn model of teaching, and try to incorporate some learning-by-doing, the devil lies in the details. How do you break out of your normal routines and transform your classroom?
This month I want to pass along one routine-busting suggestion that has always worked for me. Over the past dozen years in which I have been reading and writing about college teaching, I have discovered that one of the best ways to effect change can be to attend a conference or workshop on teaching. I have been to several dozen of them now—in roles ranging from fee-paying registrant to keynote speaker—and can say with absolute honesty that I have never come away from a teaching conference or workshop without a renewed sense of zeal for my profession, a fresh burst of energy, and some great ideas.
Conferences devoted to teaching come in many forms, including both the general and the discipline- or topic-specific. Many of the larger disciplinary conferences (such as the Modern Language Association or the American Historical Association) will also have panels or sections on teaching that provide at least a glimpse of the more sustained conversations you will find at a full conference.
A few months ago I asked readers of The Chronicle to send me suggestions for teaching conferences they would recommend to others, and received more replies than I can list here. So I have selected four programs that look to offer an excellent opportunity to rethink your classroom practices, focus your attention on important pedagogical issues, and renew your zest for teaching. Three of the four come at the end of the academic year; the first takes place in October, with the early registration deadline coming up in just a few days, on September 19.
Reconsidering academic integrity. The International Center for Academic Integrity, housed at Clemson University, will hold its annual conference in Toronto from October 14-16. The topic will be "Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Revisiting and Reviving the Fundamental Values of Integrity."
Teddi Fishman, director of the center, explained to me in an e-mail that the theme was "meant to bring attention to our (academe's) responsibility to revive and revisit the idea of integrity, in the hope that the next generation of leaders—the ones who are in our classes now—will be prepared to make wiser, more ethical, choices."
Fishman hopes that participants will return to their home institutions with three things: "a better understanding of the scope of academic integrity concerns, an expanded 'toolkit' of approaches to use in their own institutional settings, and connections with colleagues from a huge range of institutional settings."
Teaching the liberal arts. Skip forward to May of 2012 for the next conference, which takes place each year in Georgia at Oxford College of Emory University, and offers what seems an ideal mix of listening and working time. Jeffery Galle, director of Oxford's Center for Academic Excellence, described for me the unique program structure of the Institute for Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts.
"We host this four-day conference (Tuesday to Friday) each spring," Galle said, "and we invite scholars to lead individual two-day sessions. The structure of this institute is designed to give participants an 'immersion' experience in a particular pedagogy for the Tuesday/Wednesday with a view to producing something useful (a course idea, a unit, perhaps a syllabus) by the end of the two days. Then participants will select a second two-day for the Thursday/Friday session. On Friday afternoon we all gather for a wine reception where participants can recount and discuss their experiences."
The 2011 conference featured more than 70 participants from 20 institutions. Workshop leaders included Anthony Ciccone, who directs the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Interested faculty can contact Galle through the Oxford institute's Web site, where they can also find the complete video for Ciccone's 2011 keynote speech.
Involving undergraduates in research. William Campbell, president of the Council on Undergraduate Research, sent me a notice about its next national conference, the 2012 version of which will take place in late June at the College of New Jersey.
According to the conference Web site, the event "will bring together faculty, administrators, policy makers, representatives of funding agencies and other stakeholders with an interest in doing and promoting undergraduate research." It will feature more than 100 workshops, presentations by representatives of funding agencies, social interactions, and poster presentations.
Campbell described the conference in more informal terms for me: "Faculty who are genuinely excited about both their teaching and their research present how they engage their students in their scholarly work."
Last month in this space I wrote about a federally financed program that encourages collaborative research between faculty members and undergraduates. This conference seems like an ideal place to get ideas for that, to learn about applying for such grants, or to present research projects you have already done with undergraduates.
Learning from the best. Finally, consider making a substantial commitment to revitalizing your teaching by attending Ken Bain's long-running summer institute What the Best College Teachers Do, which will be held in New Jersey (popular state for teaching conferences, apparently) from June 20-22.
Based on Bain's popular book of the same title, the institute features workshops with college faculty members who have demonstrated remarkable results in helping their students learn. Bain spent 15 years searching for, interviewing, and studying outstanding teachers at the college level, and the institute's faculty include some of the subjects of his research.
"The institute," Bain wrote to me, "will help faculty develop a deeper understanding of how and why people learn, and as a result, they will be able to use that understanding to fashion courses that engage students deeply. Many of the past participants have talked about how the institute substantially transformed their thinking and practice and the courses they create."
A dozen years ago, when I had the privilege of working for three years as Ken's understudy at Northwestern University's Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, I attended this event every year. The ideas about teaching and learning that I gleaned from it are still shaping my classroom design and practices today.
Whichever of these conferences works best with your schedule (and budget), or whether you discover others on your own, consider taking a few days out of your year to step away from your classroom to gain a new perspective on it, and shake up your pedagogical routines.
