Reading
the book about introverts (see previous post), I was reminded of my experience
teaching college classes in philosophy. It’s something I never did fulltime,
and there were years when I didn’t do it at all, but still, over time, it was
an experience in which I learned and grew along with my students, and I’ve been
thinking about how it was that a “shy” person might lead a class and do it
well.
As
a graduate student, my first “teaching” experience was as an assistant
responsible for helping professors grade papers written by students in their
large lecture classes. Those of us grading papers worked alone and almost never
had direct contact with students whose papers we graded. We worked behind the
scenes, which you can see is often the perfect introvert position. One
incident, however, stands out in my memory.
A
student wrote to the professor to complain about her grade, certain that the
reason she had received less than an A (I believe the grade assigned was B+)
was that the graduate student grading her paper didn’t agree with her conclusion. The
professor, a quiet man whose policy was to give all his students, graduate and
undergraduate, minimum advice and maximum autonomy didn’t tell me what to say
but asked me to write a response to the student’s written complaint. It
was a delicate situation and the first serious challenge to what little
“authority” my position held.
My written reply assured the student that she had
been graded on the quality of her argument alone, with no reference to my
opinions on the subject. The problem was that the example she
had chosen for support undermined rather than supported her
conclusion. The rest of her argument was excellent, as was her articulation of
it. I reminded her that all her other work for the class had been A work and
said there was no reason to believe it would not be excellent for the rest of
the semester. I predicted an A for the course for her, based on her overall
performance up to that point.
The
next time the lecture class met, I had butterflies in my stomach. How had the
student taken my explanation of her grade? Would she pursue her complaint?
Would the professor be happy with the way I had handled the situation? The
incident had a very happy ending. The professor could not have been more
pleased, and the student, attentive in the front row, looked happy and
confident. Her major was pre-law, so my explanation had satisfied her, and I
think she learned something from that one B+.
From
grading I went on to leading small discussion sections that met once a
week. In the large lecture hall,
there was no time for questions, so discussion sections were set up to
compensate and to give students an opportunity to converse on the week’s topics.
Finally,
I had the opportunity to “teach my own classes,” as we grad students put it—and
as it really was. At large universities, undergraduate classes offered in
smaller than huge lecture sections are often taught by advanced graduate
students. (Course listings that say “Staff” rather than having a particular
professor’s name attached will usually be taught by an adjunct (temporary;
term) faculty member, a postdoctoral fellow, or an advanced graduate student.
Some will be disappointing, others excellent, but this is true of classes
taught by senior faculty, also, isn’t it?) At this level, we were given an
opportunity to choose our own textbooks and write our own syllabi. Courses I
taught at this level were intro to philosophy; intro to ethics; philosophy and
public policy; and introduction to logic. Logic gave me the most initial
anxiety. Public policy was the class I most enjoyed.
Logic?
Me?
Oh, the shock when that assignment was handed down! The first time I’d signed
up for logic as an undergraduate, I’d dropped it halfway through the
semester—the only class I ever dropped in my entire academic career! I managed
to get through it on my second try, with a different professor (it’s amazing
how a subject as apparently cut-and-dried can be so different from one
professor to another, depending on their particular interests in the subject),
but can still recall the many nights I went to bed metaphorically banging my
head against the wall to understand “only if.” “If “ was no problem; “if only”
was no problem; “if and only if” was a piece of cake; but “only if” gave my
brain fits. Will you believe that understanding came to me in a dream?
Well, they say that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it. My
best day in logic class was when one of the male students skeptically asked me
if I was “sure” about an argument form I’d told the class was a fallacy. I
remember how good it felt not to have a sudden sick feeling at the
student’s challenge but to be able to say calmly, “Don’t take my word for it.
Do the truth table.” There is no arguing with truth tables! In fact, this is
one of the joys of “arguments” in formal logic: they are like mathematical
demonstrations. A friend from a country that had been torn by civil war told me
that following the conflict all the philosophy students wanted to work in
formal logic, because arguments about “the good life” were just too
frightening, and they didn’t want to end up in prison.
So
you can see right away that philosophy and public policy would have been
avoided like the plague by students in my friend’s native country. Here in the
U.S., at the university where I taught, however, the subject held a lot of
interest. How did I teach it? In order that everyone in class have a common
background vocabulary and principles with which to work—and because it was,
after all, an undergraduate class in philosophy--we spent the first
half of the semester reading John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. Many of my students
were not thrilled with this work. A couple of them, dragging through what to
them was archaic language, asked jokingly one day if we could read the work “in
translation,” and from then on I asked that all students come to class with a
written list of the numbered paragraphs assigned for that day, along with a
one-sentence summary of each paragraph. The results were excellent. The
students were fully capable of understanding the ideas but had to think about them, not just
let their eyes skitter down the page. Sometimes there would be a paragraph that
a lot of people had trouble with, but the trouble was obvious from the sentence
summaries, and we could address the confusion together. Discussions were good,
too. There was disagreement and argument, but it was focused, thanks to the common
reading.
In
the second half of the semester, we took a new and different direction. The
class divided into groups (three? four? five? I no longer remember), and for
the remaining weeks each group would work as a team. Each team was to imagine
itself as a village or town council, and each individual was to give himself or
herself a specific character. Characters and towns were to be imagined in
detail: How old are you? Are you single, married, childless or a parent?
What kind of work do you do? What are your personal beliefs? What is the
population of your town? Describe its economic base, demographics, and history.
What is important to the citizens of this place? Then a proposal was
brought before each town council: Should the town have a public,
tax-supported day care facility? Within each group, members were to argue for
their positions in character, and at the end of the semester each group would
present its conclusion and rationale for the conclusion.
The
group exercise half of the class was a huge success. As an
introvert myself, I’d seldom been comfortable working in groups—preferred to
work on my own—but I’d realized that many students relished working together,
and the class was for their benefit, not mine. There must have been introverts
as well as extroverts in the class, but—and maybe it was the size of the groups
or the fact that they’d already had weeks together in the same room—everyone
seemed to find a comfort zone in which to work. They enjoyed having an
opportunity to bring imagination into play, and they appreciated getting to
know one another in the process. When it came time for final presentations,
those were very impressive. Each group, as I’d hoped it would, had taken on a
unique,well-rounded identity, and the conclusion each group reached was
consistent with that identity.
I’ve
read that citizen groups, at whatever level, can more easily come to agreement
on a practical question than on a question of principle. Certainly my students,
in their roles as town council members, appealed to principles in part, but
they also paid attention to the real needs of their respective towns. And when
there was argument over principle, they had—thanks to Locke—a common vocabulary
and background against which to frame their disagreement.
Introverts
had the initial comfort of working alone and subsequent opportunity to voice
their thoughts in the safety of a group smaller than the entire classroom,
while extroverts had a chance to energize the group process and to shine as
presenters. I don’t recall anyone who was unhappy with the class.
I’m
thinking back on classroom teaching because getting up in front of a roomful of
people is a challenge for an introvert, and it’s interesting for me to think
back on my experiences in light of insights provided by Susan Cain’s book, Quiet:
The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. One reason I think I
grew confident at the front a classroom was that the authority of my position
meant I didn’t have to compete with extroverts for attention. It was my
class.
And one of the strengths I believe I brought to the classroom was I was a good
listener, not just a star performer. I could see when someone didn’t understand
something or had a thought to share, even when that student might be sitting
quietly, and I could help the students hear each other, too, not just try to
out-shout each other.
Later
teaching as an adjunct was both similar to and different from my teaching as a
graduate student, but that I’ll save for Part II.
