{"id":2231,"date":"2014-03-13T07:23:26","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T11:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/?p=2231"},"modified":"2014-03-13T09:24:35","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T13:24:35","slug":"my-student-asked-me-a-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/my-student-asked-me-a-question\/","title":{"rendered":"My student asked me a question"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think of this post as a sequel to “The Reverend Asked Me A Question<\/a>.” It’s even more poignant for me, if that’s possible, because there’s a certain fresh and meta quality to the question of “how did you think about teaching our class when you were teaching our class?” when it’s asked by a sophomore just one year after the class, a sophomore who’s now trying to do something of the same thing in another schooling context. <\/em><\/p>\n

The exchange was so powerful for me that I asked the student for permission to reproduce the emails here. She has graciously consented. I’ll have a few bits of commentary along the way, but mostly I’m letting the conversation stand on its own. I think my answer to her question may illuminate some of my practices as a teacher. If so, and anyone finds that useful, that’s great. Yet for me the even greater value is emotional, or spiritual–hard to know the difference, perhaps. It’s a little window onto the heart of one part of one teacher, and even more poignantly, a window onto the heart of a student who has gone up one more meta-level, one she ascended by herself with some bread for the journey she found–helped to make–a year ago in a very special class I was very lucky to be part of.<\/em><\/p>\n

Her name is Brooke Baugher. She was one-half of the “meta team” in “From Memex to YouTube: Cognition, Learning, and the Internet,” a course I taught last spring (2013) at Virginia Tech. The course was cross-listed as a 400-level Honors Seminar as well as a 500-level graduate course in the Preparing the Future Professoriate program. We had two freshmen, one sophomore with senior-level credits earned, and two engineering graduate students. It was a truly extraordinary, transformative experience for me. You had to be there and I wish you had been–but you may (probably will) get some of the flavor of it by looking at the project the meta-team (Brooke and Nathaniel Settle) made<\/a>. The course description? They wrote it, once the course was done. Or rather, they wrote them, as the course could be described in many aligned yet distinct ways. Here’s one: “4 Months. 30 Classes. 17 Readings. 6 Learners. One Mission: Take The Deep Dive.<\/a>” Please note that five students were enrolled in this class, but when these two students did a headcount, they counted six. You see? Ah. Oh, and by the way, the essay on this page is one of the most brilliant pieces of student work I’ve ever encountered. Analysis, synthesis, demonstration, performance: it’s all there. I’ll leave that exploration as an exercise for the reader.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

For further context, here’s the syllabus<\/a>. And here’s the class motherblog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

And now here’s the exchange, which begins with this email from Brooke:<\/em><\/p>\n

Mar. 5, 2014<\/h2>\n

Subject: haaaalllppppp<\/h2>\n
\n

Hi Dr. C!<\/p>\n

So I am TAing (of sorts) for a class that I took last year. I talked about it a lot in our class; I’m not sure if you remember it, but I ranted about pink time a couple times.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Brief background: it’s a project where the professor cancels class three days out of a semester, and the students are encouraged to go learn about whatever they want. Then, the next class we come back and talk about all of the projects, make connections, etc.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
So I am in charge of trying to improve out of class engagement, and I am using social media. So I have a twitter account, and we have a facebook page. BUT. I am having so much difficulty getting the students to participate and ask questions between each other outside of class that isn’t a requirement.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I just have one question for you: how in the world did you make us so involved?! I am hitting a wall with what else I can do to increase this. Any advice that you have would be super greatly appreciated.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Miss you!<\/div>\n

Brooke \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It took me awhile to answer, as the question stirred me to the core. Eventually I regained my gumption and took the leap.<\/em><\/p>\n

March 11, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hi Brooke,<\/p>\n

I miss you too. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

You’ve asked me just about the hardest question you could ask. Any
\nanswer I can imagine would probably seem either silly or overly simple
\nor crazily complex. But maybe that’s just me being self-conscious. I
\nstruggle with that.<\/p>\n

What I always try to do, whenever I teach, is to arrange the class as
\na shared project. We’re making a movie together. We’re making a record
\ntogether. We’re building a house together. The whole meta-team idea
\nwas an extreme version of something I now recognize I’d been doing for
\ndecades. The idea of the course as a series of meetings, all
\nself-contained, has always been boring to the point of hysteria for
\nme. I’d have a similar reaction (have had, in fact) to a PowerPoint
\npresentation full of inane and obvious bullet points and nothing
\nelse–no images, no video, no sound, nothing out of the ordinary. Same
\nthing. All inert lists.<\/p>\n

Over time, inert lists have come to be expected by many students,
\nmaybe even most students. They actually come to prefer it, very often.
\nInert lists make everything so much more manageable. Stuff in stacks.
\nI didn’t want stuff in stacks. I wanted art or mystery or eureka or
\ngames or symphonies or laboratories or studios.<\/p>\n

So when I teach, I try to convey, in every way I can imagine, that
\nthis is not going to be an experience of stuff in stacks. And every
\ntime I sense a student is going along with the idea of
\nno-stuff-in-stacks, I try to reward that right away with attention and
\ncommitment and equal blends of zaniness and intensity. When one
\nfishes, there’s an art to landing the fish: the line has to be taut,
\nbut not so taut that it snaps or the fish gets away somehow. It takes
\na lot of patient back-and-forth and an art of the line as subtle as
\nhow a violinist holds her bow to make the strings sing. (Not to worry:
\nI’m a catch-and-release kind of fisherman, though I do eat fish, I
\nwill confess.)<\/p>\n

What’s never worked, in my experience, is making 90% of the experience
\nstuff-in-stacks and making 10% “freedom to learn,” because the 90%
\njust overwhelms the 10%. Truth to tell, “stuff-in-stacks” can
\noverwhelm “freedom to learn” even at the 5% level. Stuff-in-stacks is
\na poison and it doesn’t take much to kill the learning.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if any of that is helpful. All I can say this morning is
\nthat I try as hard as I can to help nudge the class forward in its
\njourney, its project, its writing-itself-into-being. I try as hard as
\nI can to let the class nudge me forward, too, because I’m also in it
\nfor the learning. And I try to do this with an absolute minimum, as
\nclose to zero as I can make it, of stuff-in-stacks. This is one of the
\nreasons I love the internet. The web, at least so far, is full of what
\nWalt Whitman calls “barbaric yawps.” These yawps can be like throwing
\na window wide open in the early spring, just before it’s really warm
\nenough to do so, but just when you really want to because the stale
\ninside winter air is just too stifling. So we shiver some, and we take
\nin the cold air, and we smell some of the mud and early growth of
\njust-spring, and our brains clear and our hearts beat faster for just
\na little while. And sometimes that’s enough to get everyone over the
\nschool-as-stuff-in-stacks hump and we can get another magic moment and
\nrecapture that feeling of determined yes.<\/p>\n

I don’t mind syllabi or semesters. I kind of like final exams. I love
\nprojects and highly refined and purposeful zaniness. When creative
\nthinking and critical thinking marry and have a child, the child’s
\nname is joy–it’s the same child born to Cupid and Psyche in the old
\ntale by Apuleius.<\/p>\n

You’re working very hard to push a huge rock up a steep hill. When I
\nteach, I have the opportunity to frame the whole encounter very
\ndifferently. You don’t have that opportunity. But you do have
\nextraordinary shining eyes and a heart for adventure and a mind for
\nkeen insight. So I’d say you should talk with the students, heart to
\nheart, and tell them what your dreams are for this experience, and
\nthen see if anyone responds. If anyone does, then find a way to
\ncelebrate that, and keep on hoping that the response will catch on.<\/p>\n

Remember: shining eyes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dr. C.<\/p>\n

P.S. Would you mind if I put this whole exchange up on my blog? Your
\nquestion is so powerful and beautiful, and my answer comes from the
\nheart and might also be of some use to other folks. If you’d rather
\nnot, I think I will put my answer up there anyway, with just enough
\ncontext (no identifiable items though) to explain why I’m writing
\nthis. It would be very powerful to have both up there, though, if
\nyou’re willing.<\/p>\n

Did I tell you already how much I miss you–and our class? I learned
\nso very much. We had us a time.<\/p>\n

And then Brooke responded:<\/em><\/p>\n

March 12, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hi!<\/p>\n

I have much more to respond, but I just have a few minutes as of now-I’m heading in for my first job interview, yikes!<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t mind at all if you shared this on your blog! But thank you so much, that definitely helps. I’m gonna keep working with what I’ve got, it seems like some of then are growing keen to the conversation, so we will see!<\/p>\n

You should come back and visit us!<\/p>\n

Brooke \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Yes, I should. I hope to someday. <\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you, Brooke. Thank you, vtclis13. Thank you, all the dear people unnamed here who made all of this possible and, against some odds, more likely. My teachers, my friends, my colleagues.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think of this post as a sequel to “The Reverend Asked Me A Question.” It’s even more poignant for me, if that’s possible, because there’s a certain fresh and meta quality to the question of “how did you think … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bHwM-zZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2231"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2234,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions\/2234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}