Perhaps you have heard the apocryphal story about the aged professor who accidently drops his well-yellowed lecture notes and watches them disintegrate into dust. In the version I heard as a graduate student, he slumped to the floor and wept like Alexander the Great over his final conquest, finally being led from the room and into retirement.
When I heard that tale, I thought about one of my own history professors, “Dr. Charming,” who used the same lecture notes for our class that he had used for students of my father’s generation. After class one afternoon, I stopped to ask a question and saw that the pages of the loose-leaf notebook he used were yellowed, crinkled and spotted with age and coffee stains. Since the course was on ancient history and he was fairly curmudgeonly, I’m sure that he would joke that not much had happened to update the subject lately. As a point of fact, though, none of our supplemental readings were published more recently than 20 years previous to the course.
One of the challenges faculty members face as their careers develop is that of stagnation. Most have a core set of courses that are taught with frequency, and it makes sense to develop a fairly stable set of notes and assignments for such courses. Reinventing frequently taught courses is not always the best use of limited time and mental energy, especially when you have research to do, service to undertake, and, of course, families to raise.
There comes a point, however, when those notes become yellowed and the readings grow dated. There is nothing wrong with using older scholarship in many disciplines (in fact, we probably ought to engage in more ‘recovery readings” within our areas; so-called “chronological snobbery” is still snobbery). But when a class’s materials date from a time before the birth of the students who are enrolled in it, perhaps it’s time to update the materials.
How do you keep your class preparations fresh? Do you follow a system? How might department chairs encourage course updates?
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9 Responses to Fresh Preps
tuxthepenguin - February 23, 2010 at 4:35 pm
I’m hesitant to change much in a class I’ve taught a few times. I find a strategy that works to make the points I need to make, and don’t like to experiment. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.There are always a few rough edges, but mostly I try to update my examples to include current events, and to get rid of references that are old or losing relevance. Textbooks usually only go through minor revisions, so I figure why should I make major revisions.Our teaching is evaluated based on student teaching evaluations only. If you get a good number, you shouldn’t change anything. If you get a bad number, the chair might dig deeper, and if there are student complaints about the age of the material, ask us to update. I doubt most chairs would be willing to invest time encouraging updates if there are no complaints.
snwiedmann - February 24, 2010 at 7:18 am
If a department chair or head really wants to encourage faculty to keep their bread-and-butter courses fresh, give credit for such things in the annual evaluation and P&T process. Or, if you’re the negative sort, lower the evaluations of faculty who are still using the same textbook they were using 10 years ago.
haggard - February 24, 2010 at 8:03 am
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”i find it important to update my classes to keep myself interested and involved in the learning process. a bored teacher is a boring teacher.
11313934 - February 24, 2010 at 8:18 am
At a previous institution where I served as a library administrator I taught one section of a general education class on cuttent issues in science, technology and ethics. Just before I began my first term as a classroom teacher I bumped into an old French professor who was retiring that year. I told him I was going to have my classroom debut and he told me he was going to teach Le Misanthrope for something like the 35th time. I remember saying that would be a snap– just pull out the old notes and go for it. Then he told me something I have never forgotten. He said that the last thing he did each term after turning in his grades was throw away his notes. He said that Le Misanthrope was worth teaching becasue every time he read it he learned something new, and he had read it over 40 times. He told me that when he retired, the library couldn’t have his papers– because there were none. I tried to follow his rule during my seven years as an instructor and found out that teaching with a fresh start each year is hard, yet now I can’t imagine doing it any other way.
jruiz - February 24, 2010 at 9:54 am
“lower the evaluations of faculty who are still using the same textbook they were using 10 years ago.”Is that still possible? In my discipline they issue a new edition every 3 years, even if the only thing changed is the pagination.
saintmaur - February 24, 2010 at 3:15 pm
As a medievalist who likes technology, I am always looking for new on-line images, new texts and videos to include in my courses. These new resrouces often suggest differet emphases I might try with the aid of PowerPoint and various on line venues such as You Tube. It’s a great way to incrementally change courses without a complete revamp.
22086364 - February 25, 2010 at 11:59 am
Thank you, 1131934! My career is not as long or distinguished as your colleague’s, but I also try to teach my classes as if they were new and absolutely fresh for me, in order that they might be fresh for my students. I learned as much from observing dreadful teachers (who were often fine people) as great teachers when I was a student. Wonderful teachers, including one who was in his 40th year teaching when I had him, could make standard texts seem newly printed, while dreadful teachers seemed as if they were going through the motions. I strive to emulate the intellectual openness, curiosity, and sense of discovery I observed and felt with those fine teachers.Still, I must say that I learned from my “dreadful” teachers, as well. I was lucky enough that even those teachers who seemed able to make time stop at least knew that of which they spoke, could answer questions that might be posed to them, and treated students well. As I write, then, I wonder how “dreadful” they truly were. . .
director19 - February 25, 2010 at 2:32 pm
For those few who redo / update their lecture notes each time, thank you. Unfortunately, you are not the vast majority who are just too lazy and inept to really teach.Tenure has certainly played a huge part in this process: I don’t want to teach on mondays or thursdays or even teach if I don’t feel like it. And we wonder why he new generation of future “leaders” is a scary thought.How sad for us.
tuxthepenguin - February 25, 2010 at 5:18 pm
@director19Just curious, can you give some information about how tenured faculty get to choose when or even if they teach? I’d really like to know. My understanding, after reading my faculty handbook, is that I’d get fired if I refused to teach my classes. Please inform…