Disciplinary vs. General Teaching Workshops

It’s rare during the semester that I read the weekly cover story in the New York Times Magazine from start to finish, but I did just that a few weeks ago. In “Building a Better Teacher, ” Elizabeth Green describes Doug Lemov’s work as a consultant hired by school districts facing decreasing test scores, distressed teachers, dissatisfied administrators, and disgruntled students. Lemov has developed a national reputation as someone able to noticeably improve learning in such districts, which has led to the recent publication of his book, Teach Like a Champion: Forty-Nine Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. Many who teach at the college level might choose to ignore a discussion about teaching strategies for elementary, middle, or high school students, but I found much of what the article had to say about Lemov’s work to be compelling. I not only read the entire article in one sitting but ordered his book immediately.

As director of my university’s first/second-year rhetoric and writing program, I lead at least two workshops each semester for adjunct faculty teaching our courses. In these workshops, I try to balance things so we cover issues that have arisen throughout the semester that I feel a need to address (such as administrative changes in course content) with topics that our adjuncts want us to discuss in more detail (such as ways of incorporating new technologies into our classes). No matter what appears on a specific agenda, everything on it centers on the teaching of rhetoric and composition in general and our courses in particular. After reading about Lemov, I’ve begun to wonder if we should change that, at least now and then.

Throughout my graduate school education, my years as an adjunct, and my time both before and after earning tenure, I have attended and facilitated a lot of teaching workshops, and almost all of them were discipline-focused. Even when we attempted interdisciplinarity, the workshops still maintained a disciplinary air. There was the one on ways of bringing disability studies into the humanities classroom and another on how queer theory could inform our work teaching writing, for example. Though I have not read all of Lemov’s book at this time (and I could plan a future, more detailed review if that interests Prof. Hacker readers), I find many of his ideas to be so simple that they can be put to use in any sort of classroom yet so important because they remind us what the foundational principles of good teaching are.

Here’s an example that has stuck with me for weeks. In the New York Times article, Lemov mentions a simple piece of advice he was given early in his teaching career: stand still when giving directions. As the article puts it, “In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.” I thought of that point recently when I observed the teaching of one of our new adjunct faculty members. As she described the small-group activity she wanted them to complete, she was also passing back graded homework. She had to repeat instructions twice for half the class while the other half started working. She appeared a little flustered, though things smoothed out easily. As we talked afterward, I described this article to her and related the point about standing still. She looked at me and said, “That’s brilliant. The start of each class always feels rushed, and maybe it’s because I’m trying to do too much at once. I never thought of that.”

And I never would have thought to have given her such a specific piece of advice if I hadn’t read this article and started thinking about the kinds of teaching workshops I’ve been attending and leading over the years. I started to wish that I had the opportunity (or was aware of the opportunity) to participate in more general, broad-based teaching workshops. I’ve done the disciplinary thing for years; something new could definitely push me in productive ways. Of course, there is no one type of teaching workshop that will work in all situations. Sometimes, we have to focus not only on our particular disciplines but also on minutia within specific courses such as when a university changes its general education requirements. But, in my career at least, disciplinary teaching practices have dominated my training, and I’ve started to look at changing that.

What about you? What kinds of workshops do you find valuable and in what situations? Please let us know in the comments. It might spark further posts about ways to improve teaching for numerous students across levels and disciplines.

(Photo by Flickr user Ray_chel and licensed through Creative Commons)