Whenever it snows, I inevitably joke that the decision to close the school (whether a college campus or public school system) usually has less to do with the forecast, and more to do with recent history. For example, a week ago when a big snow storm was dead certain to hit Connecticut during the day, and so everything you can think of closed preemptively. Naturally, no snow came until about 2pm, and things never really got that bad–the storm turned away from most of the state.
When that happened, I knew that when the next storm hit, come hell or high water that class would be in session–and indeed, yesterday, there was quite a bit of snow, but everything ran on time until evening classes.
I really don’t think it’s true that such decisions are made by overreacting to the mistakes (or at least the loud criticisms) of the previous decision. For one, I’ve known people at various institutions who’ve been responsible for making that call, and they’ always struck me as both responsible and slightly indifferent to criticism.
If the pattern of overreacting to mistakes struck me as familiar, it’s because I’m notorious for doing it myself. (If only there was a provocative term for this behavior . . . ) One class has too little reading, or doesn’t do the reading as assigned? Then the next one gets nothing but 1000-page novels, with reading checks every class. Too much writing one semester? A dramatic re-centering on other kinds of assignments the next. Students didn’t really respond in one section to an author I love? How ’bout a single-author course on that very writer?
I’ll overcorrect within a semester, too–too much/too little group work, or too many comments/too few comments on papers, etc. One of the consequences of all this is that my courses are almost never the same from one semester to the next, such that every class is almost a new prep.
(Edited to Add This Paragraph:) Today was a perfect example. We’d missed last Wednesday because of the snow, but that was ok, because I’d followed Natalie’s advice about scheduling catch-up days. I’d already figured out how to get everything covered in time. Then, I decided there was a bunch of handouts that just *had* to go in today’s class, so we spent the day on those instead of covering last class’s reading. Man.
This practice is–what’s the word?–sub-optimal. Responding to criticism, including self-criticism, and correcting mistakes is an important part of growth, but surely part of improving as a teacher is the ability see the course steadily and to see it whole. That’s one of the things I want to work on: Finding ways to tinker without committing to a gut-level rehab every single time.
How do you revise courses or make in-semester adjustments? How do you know when a big change in practice is really warranted.
Image by Flickr user Paul Frederiksen / Creative Commons licensed
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