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FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES

DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAS MODERNAS


PROFESORADO DE INGLES
Asignatura: Discurso Escrito
Año Académico: 2023
(1er cuatrimestre)

Intensive Reading

Prof. Verónica Ojeda


Prof. Gabriela Ferreiro

Student: _______________________
- Schedule - 1st Term - 2023
WEEK

March, Introduction. Objectives. Reading habits. Getting to know groups. Whole


20th class discussion

27th What the Best College Teachers Do

April What the Best College Teachers Do


3rd
10th What the Best College Students Do

17th What the Best College Students Do

24th What the Best College Students Do


1st Assignment

May, Teaching from both Sides of the Desk


1st
8th
Teaching from both Sides of the Desk
Parcial#1
15th
Teaching from both Sides of the Desk
22nd
Freedom Writers

29th Freedom Writers


Recu#1
June, Freedom Writers
5th

To All The Girls I’ve Rejected


th
12
Parcial #2
19th To All The Girls I’ve Rejected

26th
Recu #2
To all the Girls I`ve Rejected
Revision. Extra Practice
July,
3rd Practice. Vocabulary. Sentence construction- Oral make-up exams

10th
Final considerations- Make up tests

1
WELCOME TO WRITTEN DISCOURSE!

Dear student;
Thank you for being here! It is my wish and duty to help you develop the right attitude
and abilities you need to interpret written discourse efficiently. Reading involves using
a number of strategies you already master and some others you will learn along this
course.
We need your active participation to achieve our goals. Teaching and learning are two-
way processes, involving responsibility, commitment and effort both from instructors
and from learners.
Thanx again. Looking forward to making the best of IDE!
Gaby & Vero

INTRODUCTORY GUIDE: READING

Breaking the ice...


1) When do you read? Do you enjoy reading? What kind of texts do you read?
2) Are these statements TRUE or FALSE?

____a) I don’t read what I find uninteresting.


____b) When I have to read for academic purposes I only try to find the answers to
fulfill a task.
____c) It is difficult to relate a piece of discourse to what I know about the topic.
____d) I need absolute silence to concentrate.
____e) I read aloud and pay attention to the pronunciation of words.
____f) I look up every unknown word in the dictionary.
____g) I cannot focus when I read because I have too many things in my mind.
____h)I cannot read pieces of discourse that include ideas that go against my values.
____i) I read different types of texts, such as newspaper articles, short stories, novels,
etc.
____j) I never read for pleasure, I only do it for academic purposes.
____k)I usually find out data about the authors of the texts I read.
____l) I think reading helps me learn vocabulary.
___m) When I read for academic purposes I need to take down notes, highlight
information I consider important or write summaries of the texts I read.

2
This term you will read a great deal about Education. One of the tasks you will do

along the term is Vocabulary Record and Research. This task will be considered an

assignment and you have to hand it in twice in the term. You should have a number of

Vocabulary Files in which you are going to keep a record of unknown words and

expressions. These files will have different categories (PEOPLE IN EDUCATION,

VERBS, INSTITUTIONS, IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS, ETC). You can register

words, their meanings and usage in a traditional way, such as dictionary entries or in a

more creative fashion, for example by making drawings or illustrations. By the end of

the term you should choose a number of terms and share your choice with your

classmates. Make the most of this learning experience. Enjoy!

3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16LgVE2cxDq2dRRKE4Dbmc8jfCXE5UMVq/view?usp=share_li
nk

WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE TEACHERS DO

by Ken Bain
HARVAR D U NI VER SIT Y PRESS - London, England - 2004

Before reading…

Group Discussion

1) What do you know about Ken Bain? Inspect his biography and share your findings
with your mates.
2) What´s an epilogue? You will read the epilogue from “What The Best College
Teachers Do.” What topics do you imagine the author will address?
3) Epilogue: What can we learn from them? Who do you think the words “we” and
“them” refer to? Now that you know the title of the epilogue you are better
equipped to polish and narrow down the list of topics suggested in 2).

WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE TEACHERS DO

Epilogue: WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THEM?

Can we learn from the insights of highly effective teachers?


We can, but we may have to learn a lot about “teaching with your mouth shut,” as Don
Finkel put it in the wonderful title to his book, recognizing that teaching is not just
delivering lectures but anything we might do that helps and encourages students to
learn—without doing them any major harm.1 That demands a fundamental conceptual shift in
what we mean by teaching. If you ask many academics how they define teaching, they will often
talk about “transmitting” knowledge, as if teaching is telling. That’s a comforting way of
thinking about it because it leaves us completely in control; if we tell them, we’ve taught
them. To benefit from what the best teachers do, however, we must embrace a different model,
one in which teaching occurs only when learning takes place. Most fundamentally, teaching in
this conception is creating those conditions in which most—if not all—of our students will
realize their potential to learn. That sounds like hard work, and it is a little scary because we
don’t have complete control over who we are, but it is highly rewarding and obtainable.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle we face is the notion that teaching
ability is somehow implanted at birth and that there is little we can do to change whether we
have it or not. Our subjects struggled to learn how to create the best learning environments.
When they failed to reach students, they used those failures to gain additional insights. Most
important, because they subscribed to the learning rather than the transmission model of
teaching, they realized that they had to think about ways to understand students’ learning.
That might include attention to how they explained something, but
it always focused more broadly on a rich internal conversation: What do I mean by
learning? How can I foster it? How can my students and I best understand and recognize its

4
progress (and set- backs)? How can I know whether my efforts help or hurt?
Carol Dweck’s work can apply here. Remember that she found that people who believe
intelligence is fixed often develop a sense of helplessness, while those who believe that it is
expandable with hard work are more likely to succeed. Professors who believe that teaching is
primarily transmitting knowledge may think that success depends on fixed personality traits
over which they have little control (“some people are just born good lecturers, but I’m
not”). Because others—like the people we studied—conceive of teaching as fostering learning,
they believe that if they understand their students and the nature and processes of learning
better, they can create more successful environments.
Part of being a good teacher (not all) is knowing that you always have something new to
learn—not so much about teaching techniques but about these particular students at this
particular time and their particular sets of aspirations, confusions, misconceptions, and
ignorance. To learn from the best teachers we must recognize that we can learn—and that we
will still have failures. We will not reach all students equally, but there is something to learn
about each one of them and about human learning in general.
Perhaps the second biggest obstacle is the simplistic notion that good teaching is just a matter of
technique. People who entertain that idea may have expected this book to provide them with a
few easy tricks that they could apply in their own classrooms. Such ideas make enormous
sense if you have a transmission model, but it makes no sense if you conceive of teaching as
creating good learning environments. The best teaching is often both an intellectual creation
and a performing art. It is both Rembrandt’s brush strokes and the genius of insight,
perspective, originality, comprehension, and empathy that makes a Dutch Master. In short, we
must struggle with the meaning of learning within our disciplines and how best to cultivate and
recognize it. For that task, we don’t need routine experts who know all the right procedures
but adaptive ones who can apply fundamental principles to all the situations and students they
are likely to encounter, recognizing when invention is both possible and necessary and that
there is no single “best way” to teach. If we are to benefit from the insights and practices of
out- standing teachers, we must move beyond the stage of “received knowers,” expecting
right answers—tricks of the trade—that we can employ blindly.
When John Sexton took the oath of office as the fifteenth president of New York
University in 2002, he called for a new kind of professor in the twenty-first century. “We must
recast our notion of what it means to accept the title of ‘professor,’” he argued. The
concept of the “tenured professor as an ultimate independent contractor” must give way
to the view that faculty members in the university embrace community responsibilities for
the “entire enterprise of learning, scholarship and teaching.”
As Sexton recognized, that new professor supports and requires a new kind of university.
Rather than thinking in terms of the traditional dichotomy of research and teaching, a
separation that often paralyzed higher education in the twentieth century, we can begin to
think of ourselves as a learning university concerned with the learning of both faculty
(research) and students (teaching) and the ways in which the learning of one can benefit the
other. The Learning University can sometimes mean that students participate in the research of
their professors, or that they engage in their own investigations, but more broadly it means the
creation of a community in which professors and students are engaged in rich intellectual
conversations in a collegial environment. It is reflective of an attitude about students and
their worth (whether those students are the ones Chad Richardson encountered in an open
admissions university or the highly select scholars who enroll at Harvard and NYU).
It is a recognition that efforts to foster learning in others can stimulate our own greater
understanding. It is a commitment on the part of the faculty to building and sustaining a
community of learners. At its core, such a community is defined by engagement, by com-

5
mitment of faculty and students to sustaining the community and its conversations.
The call to reject the dichotomy of teaching and research and to define anew what it means
to be a professor has a certain moral dimension to it. It recognizes the inherent selfishness
of concentrating only on the learning of faculty members and the ethical obligation to the
development of our students, but it also has a practical quality. We cannot long sustain a learned
community that pits one generation’s achievements against the advancement of all others.
Yet we can’t just say to faculty, teach more and better. If we are truly interested in defining a
new university and a new professorate, we must recognize that there is something to know
about human learning. Both the research and the theoretical literature on learning and
teaching can inform how we design a course or any other educational experience. Disciplines
can benefit both from vigorous epistemological inquiries into what it means to know in the
field and from research on how people learn to think. Ultimately, that means that we benefit
from the best teachers by doing something that many of them didn’t. Not many of them did
systematic examinations of the learning literature; they developed their insights from
working with students. Yet the concepts they developed reflect well the conclusions of social
and cognitive psychologists, educational anthropologists, sociologists, and other researchers. We
must be willing to engage in the kind of reflection on experience that led our outstanding
teachers to their wisdom, but it seems foolish to ignore the rich and growing body of research
and theoretical work on learning. We wouldn’t tolerate it if our students announced that they
planned to stop studying in our disciplines and to draw all their conclusions from intuition
or whim.
To create a new kind of professor who understands both the discipline and how it might be
learned, we must change the way we develop young scholars and support existing ones. Dudley
Herschbach has suggested that every dissertation should contain a chapter on how to help other
people learn the subject of that study. Lee Shulman has proposed that departments require job
candidates to conduct a seminar on their teaching philosophies. 2 Colleges and universities can
establish departments or institutes that study and advance university learning, academic
entities whose faculty spend their time researching educational issues, thinking about their
implications for the university educational enterprise, and helping their colleagues in other
departments realize and benefit from the meaning of those studies.
A number of forces prevail against ever winning for teaching the kind of intellectual respect
bestowed upon the discovery of knowledge. For the last half century, much of the money for
higher education has come through grants for research. The most successful and prestigious
institutions have built their reputations with those dollars. In the rush to surpass the intellectual
achievements of other countries, we have gambled on the learning potential of only two or three
post-World War II generations of scholars, while often ignoring the needs of most of our
students. It is difficult to maintain a democratic society with such policies. We can’t even know
for sure that our traditional methods of assessing learning have actually identified the most
talented of potential scholars.
Yet there is a little secret that may still trump the antiteaching forces. Twice in the 1990s
Syracuse University surveyed faculty and administrators at many of the leading research
universities in the country, asking them what they thought about teaching and research.4 On
average, everybody along the line from professors, through department chairs, to deans,
provosts, and presidents thought that both teaching and research were equally important to
them, but everybody believed they put more stock in teaching than did the next person up the
line. Professors thought their colleagues valued it more than did the chair, the chair more than
the dean, and so forth. Presidents, provosts, and deans, meanwhile, believed that they cared far
more about teaching than did the average faculty member. So the secret is out: everyone
really does care about teaching, or at least says they do, or knows they should—even within the

6
research university. Now it’s time we did something about that little secret.

Task 1

1) What concepts are being discussed? List them.

Task 2

Answer the following questions:

1) Explain the concept of “teaching with your mouth shut.”


2) According to Carol Dweck, there are people who believe that intelligence is fixed.
Why?
3) When can successful environments be created?
4) Being a good teacher entails knowing that there is always something new to learn.
What does Ken Bain mean by this?
5) The best teaching encompasses two main actions. Account for them.

Task 3

Vocabulary building: match words with their definitions (pay attention to the way they are
used in the text)

Recast n. the head of certain university colleges, especially at Oxford or


Cambridge, and public schools.
Tenured n.a sudden desire or change of mind, especially one that is unusual or
unexplained.
Contractor v.to cause (someone or something) to fight or compete against (another
person or thing)
Collegial v.take risky action in the hope of a desired result.
/kəˈliːdʒɪəl/
Anew adj. relating to or involving shared responsibility, as among a group of
colleagues.
Pits against n. a person or firm that undertakes a contract to provide materials or
labour to perform a service or do a job.
Epistemological v.do or be better than; exceed
Whim adj. having or denoting a permanent academic post.
Surpass adj. relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its
methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief
and opinion.
Gambled on adv. in a new or different and typically more positive way.
Provost v. to change the form of something

What do they mean?

 Oath of office: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………


 It`s time we did something: ………………………………………………………………………………..

7
Task 4

Paraphrase these quotes. Remember you should keep their original meaning

1) The concept of the “tenured professor as an ultimate independent contractor”


must give way to the view that faculty members in the university embrace
community responsibilities for the “entire enterprise of learning, scholarship and
teaching.”
2) The Learning University can sometimes mean that students participate in the
research of their professors, or that they engage in their own investigations, but
more broadly it means the creation of a community in which professors and
students are engaged in rich intellectual conversations in a collegial environment.
3) It is a recognition that efforts to foster learning in others can stimulate our own
greater understanding.

----------------------------------------------- x --------------------------------------------------

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pW5GKEtxTdO63SvPm6AHiPX2tHhOQ5oD/view?usp=share_l
ink

WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE STUDENTS DO


by Ken Bain
THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2012

Group Work

Now it is your turn to design your own Study Guide. You can borrow ideas and
activities from this educational booklet, if you want!!!

Chapter 4 – Learning How to Embrace Failure

At some point in Chapter 4 Ken Bain poses two questions: But how and why did our subjects
(students) learn the value of admitting failure while so many others didn’t? And why did that
admission prove to be so significant?

To answer these questions, Bain introduces a number of notions:

 Fixed and Flexible Views of Life


 From Disenchantment to Success
 Blame and Credit
 Lifelong Learning
 Changing a Mindset
 Weathering Unusual Storms

8
To design your Study Guide we have copied & pasted Blame and Credit.

Blame and Credit

One more important factor often guides people to success, and probably influenced Tom.
A growing body of research finds that the way peopleattribute their successes and failures
will have a considerable influence on those achievements and shortcomings. Think of it
this way. When something goes wrong, who or what gets the blame? When everything
comes up roses, who or what gets the credit?
You could, for example, attribute your successes or setbacks to something that is within
you or to some outside force. You could decide that it is only a temporary condition or
something permanent, and you could believe that you have considerable influence over it
or none at all. In all, there are eight possible combinations, running from “it’s something
permanent about me over which I have no control” all the way to “it’s them but I
can change that.” Furthermore, any one of these combinations can be used to explain
either success or failure. How you decide to put those combinations together will shape
how well you deal with any setback.
If, for example, you usually blame your failures on something that permanently infests
your soul (“I flunked calculus because I’m just not good at math”), you’ll probably think
you have no control over that situation. You’ll give up and stop trying. And, guess what?
You’ll also never pass calculus. In contrast, if you say something like, “I don’t think I
studied the best way; I can do better if I get help from the tutoring center,” then you still
believe it’s you, not someone else, but your math ability can improve with the right
kind of effort. With that way of accounting for your setbacks, you most likely will keep
trying and will succeed.
How you explain your success will also matter. Which of these two possibilities will most
likely motivate you and bring good results?
In the first, you attribute your success to something external (luck), temporary, and over
which you have no control. In the second, you credit something you did (effort), still
temporary, but over which you have considerable influence. No one can find much
incentive in the first—why try if it is all luck?—but everyone can find it in the second.
In general, people who are highly successful in handling failure take responsibilities for
those shortcomings and triumphs, yet see either situation as highly changeable. Success
can evaporate, and failure can be overcome. Years ago, Albert Bandura, a psychologist at
Stanford, observed people trying to learn how to handle snakes. He noticed that in order
to use the techniques properly the snake-handling students needed to learn the right
procedures, but they also had to believe that they could use them appropriately. He
called that potent combination of belief and ability “self- efficacy.” You must know how
to do something, but you must also believe that you can. People who overcome failure
possess strong measures of self- efficacy.
How do the best students cultivate the perspectives that allow them to hold a
flexible view of intelligence, attribute their successes and failures properly, and maintain
a sense of self-efficacy? One central practice comes from what Paul Baker urged upon his
students: have a conversation with yourself. Know how you work. Understand what
moves you. A flexible view of intelligence and ability, Baker suggested, stands at the base
of how successful people handle failures. It allows them to attribute successes and
failures productively, work hard and properly at developing some new ability, and

9
believe that they can use their new-found powers.
Baker’s ideas escape the debate about whether intelligence remains fixed for life or can
be expanded, and most of our subjects managed to take the same route. The
distinction I’m making here becomes clear in the metaphors we use to discuss
intelligence. The old, rigid view of intellectual prowess was of a ladder with some people
fixed at the top from birth and others arrayed on the various rungs. The flexible
view that Carol Dweck came to prize still thought in terms of that ladder but believed
that people could climb up it. Baker’s ideas represent a different metaphor—a tree
with an almost countless number of branches—and it is that metaphor we most
frequently heard in the conversations with our subjects. Every fork and limb represents
someone unique, and the goal becomes not a mad race up the ladder of abilities
but the nourishing of those special perspectives within each individual. In this tree
every part feeds off every other part. This branch isn’t better than that one, only
different, and each one has the potential to grow in its own special way. That doesn’t
mean that there are no standards. But it does mean that people seek to meet those
criteria rather than compete with others, and it can mean that different people will
flourishin different ways.

In the old perspective, people can develop something psychologists call “contingent self-
worth,” which is simply the notion that your value as a person depends on where you
rank, on what rung you have achieved on the ladder. Melissa Kamins found such ideas
among young children who received a steady diet of personal praise and criticism, and as
a result built a fixed view of intelligence—even when that feedback was all positive. If
you believe that your value as a human being depends on how well you perform, and
you also think that fate has predetermined your ability to do something, you are headed
for trouble. Those ideas will influence how you react to failure.
If you have a sense of contingent self-worth, if your attitude toward yourself depends on
whether you “succeed” or “fail” in a certain domain in comparison with other people,
you may stop trying. Subconsciously youdecide that the best way to avoid losing is
to stay out of the game. If youplay, you may give up easily, and retreat into the kind of
behavior we saw earlier in Joe, David, and Karolyn. You could even sabotage your efforts,
blowing a chance to “win,” because you are quite convinced that you will ultimately lose.
You may want to withdraw, to give yourself an excuse (“I didn’t really try”) before tasting
the bitter fruits of defeat. As we shall see repeatedly, our best students flourished when
they abandoned such comparative thinking; when they looked inside themselves,
understood what appealed to them, and focused on what they wanted to do, not on how
they wanted to rank or look.
I asked each of the people I interviewed, “Are you highly competitive?” To a person,
they all answered, “Yes, but with myself, not with other people.” That answer speaks
volumes about a highly significant factor in their success. For them, as it was for
Susan Bobbitt Nolen’s task-oriented students, life was all about achieving a personal best
rather than merely winning a competition with someone else. A deep intention defined
the nature of their learning, sprang from an intrinsic interest while feeding that internal
motivation, and reflected their growth mindsets. Indeed, they believed in growth, and
looked both within themselves and at the works of the mind that others had created to
find nourishment for that development. They embraced “failures” as wonderful

10
opportunities to learn something rather than as judgments about their souls.

-------------------------------------------- X -----------------------------------------------------------

Extra material: Interested in knowing Ken Bain better? You can try any of the suggested
uploaded videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma5yEH7glp8&list=RDLVFFQLf7ZuCJs&index=2 UDC
Forum: What the Best College Teachers Do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFQLf7ZuCJs&list=RDLVFFQLf7ZuCJs&index=1 UDC
Forum: What the Best College Students Do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj9izcorKbc What will make a great teacher and


university of tomorrow?

11
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro

12
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro

13
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro

Audiovisual Discourse.
You need to watch the movie Freedom Writers. Before you actually watch it, look for information about this media product.
14
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro

15
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro
Hilary Swank stars in this story about a teacher in a racially divided school who gives her students what they’ve always needed - a
voice. Swank plays Erin Gruwell, the real-life teacher at Long Beach’s Wilson High who inspired her students to overcome the
gangs that divided them and the education system that forgot them. Based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary and supported
by a cast of first-time actors who drew from their actual experiences on the street, Gruwell teaches us all an important lesson
about tolerance and trust.

Discussion
a) This film is part of the sub genre of classroom/transformation films. Find out information about other films that belong to the
same genre.
b) What is peculiar about Erin Gruwell?
c) How would you describe this teacher?
d) Compare/contrast Erin Gruwell to Frank McCourt in Teacher Man.
e) Which elements of Freedom Writers did you find most interesting or significant?
f) What forms of self-expression are shown in the film?
g) Focus on the language used in some of the scenes. What is peculiar about it? What is the director’s intention in doing this?
What did script writers take into consideration?
h) Think of two questions you would ask Erin Gruwell about this experience in her teaching career.

To All The Girls I’ve Rejected (TEXT 4)


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
by Jennifer Delahunty
Before reading…
TASK 1
Activating background knowledge. Classroom discussion.
What did you do when you wanted to enter college? Remember the steps you followed? Try to narrate what you did.
What do you know about college education in the rest of Latin America? What do you know about entering college in Europe and
North America, esp. in the US?
TASK 2
METACOGNITIVE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT:
Getting ready. Before reading, you need to learn about a few concepts. How is this task so important for comprehension?
Look for info about:
 What an essay is
 College admission in the US/College fees in the US
 SAT/GPA
 Affirmative Action/ The quota system/Reverse Discrimination
 Community Service in the US/Voluntarism
 Kenyon College in Ohio, US
 Demography (meaning)
 College degrees in the US
Be ready to present the info you found out to the rest of the class.
TASK 3
In groups, gather the info and take a few minutes to organize it and be ready to explain to all your classmates the information you
are assigned.
TASK 4
METACOGNITIVE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
What sources of information did you use? How many sources of information did you use? What did you do with the information,
(did you print it, did you take down notes of main ideas…) How did you organize the info? What goals/purposes did you have
when reading?
While reading…

16
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro
TASK 5

Point of view: Who is the author? Where is the text from?

To All the Girls I’ve Rejected


By JENNIFER DELAHUNTY BRITZ, Dean of Admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College
Gambier, Ohio
A native of Minnesota, Jennifer Delahunty attended Carleton College and the University of Arizona, where she earned both a
bachelor’s degree in history and a master of fine arts in writing. She has worked in higher education since 1982 in a number of
capacities, including fourteen years as a consultant to dozens of private colleges around the country. Jennifer came to Kenyon as
the dean of admissions and financial aid in 2003 and became the associate dean of West Coast admissions in December 2014.
Jennifer has played a leading role in the movement to restore humane values to the admissions process. A founding member of the
Education Conservancy, she is quoted frequently in the national press on admissions-related issues. She edited an anthology of
essays aimed at parents navigating the admissions process, written by parents who have been there before. “I’m Going to College,
Not You: Surviving the College Search with Your Child” was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2010. Her op-eds and articles
have appeared in the New York Times and other publications.
http://www.kenyon.edu/directories/campus-directory/biography/jennifer-britz/
The Education Conservancy (EC) is a non-profit organization committed to improving college admission processes for students,
colleges and high schools. By harnessing the research, ideas, leadership and imagination of thoughtful educators, EC delivers
appropriate advice, advocacy and services. In a short period of time EC has established its presence and enlisted significant
interest and support nationwide.
TASK 6
The title. Read the title and try to answer these questions.
What kind of text do you think you will encounter? Why has the writer used the noun “girls” instead of “kids” or “boys”? What do
you believe the word “rejected” refers to?
Gender inequality/discrimination- college-college admission-qualifications- female/male (adj.)
Jennifer Delahaunty is dean of admissions at Kenyon College. Watch this two-minute video to see Deans of Admission in action
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=college+admissions+inside+the+decision+room

TASK 7
To All the Girls I’ve Rejected
By JENNIFER DELAHUNTY BRITZ, Gambier, Ohio
A FEW days ago, I watched my daughter Madalyn open a thin envelope from one of the five colleges to which she had applied.
“Why?” was what she was obviously asking herself as she handed me the letter saying she was waitlisted.
Why, indeed? She had taken the toughest courses in her high school and had done well, sat through several Saturday mornings
taking SAT’s and the like, participated in the requisite number of extracurricular activities, written a heartfelt and well-phrased
essay and even taken the extra step of touring the campus.
She had not, however, been named a National Merit finalist, dug a well for a village in Africa, or climbed to the top of Mount
Rainier. She is a smart, well-meaning, hard-working teenage girl, but in this day and age of swollen applicant pools that are
decidedly female, that wasn’t enough. The fat acceptance envelope is simply more elusive for today’s accomplished young
women.
I know this well. At my own college these days, we have three applicants for every one we can admit. Just three years ago, it was
two to one. Though Kenyon was a men’s college until 1969, more than 55 percent of our applicants are female, a proportion that
is steadily increasing. My staff and I carefully read these young women’s essays about their passion for poetry, their desire to
discover vaccines and their conviction that they can make the world a better place.
I was once one of those girls applying to college, but that was 30 years ago, when applying to college was only a tad more
difficult than signing up for a membership at the Y. Today, it’s a complicated and prolonged dance that begins early, and for
young women, there is little margin for error: A grade of C in Algebra II/Trig? Off to the waitlist you go.
Rest assured that admissions officers are not cavalier in making their decisions. Last week, the 10 officers at my college sat
around a table, 12 hours every day, deliberating the applications of hundreds of talented young men and women. While gulping
down coffee and poring over statistics, we heard about a young woman from Kentucky we were not yet ready to admit outright.
She was the leader/president/editor/captain/lead actress in every activity in her school. She had taken six advanced placement
courses and had been selected for a prestigious state leadership program. In her free time, this whirlwind of achievement had
accumulated more than 300 hours of community service in four different organizations.

17
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro
Few of us sitting around the table were as talented and as directed at age 17 as this young woman. Unfortunately, her test scores
and grade point average placed her in the middle of our pool. We had to have a debate before we decided to swallow the middling
scores and write “admit” next to her name.
Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any, hesitation to admit. The reality is that because young men are
rarer, they’re more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male
applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2016, only 42
percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.
We have told today’s young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards
for admission to today’s most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How’s that for an unintended consequence of the
women’s liberation movement?
The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of
talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a “tipping point,” where 60 percent or
more of their enrolled students are female, you’ll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers.
Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a
residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find
your campus attractive.
What are the consequences of young men discovering that even if they do less, they have more options? And what messages are
we sending young women that they must, nearly 35 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more
accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation’s top colleges? These are questions that admissions officers like me
grapple with.
In the meantime, I’m sending out waitlist and rejection letters for nearly 3,000 students. Unfortunately, a majority of them will be
female, young women just like my daughter. I will linger over letters, remembering individual students I’ve met, essays I loved,
accomplishments I’ve admired. I know all too well that parents will ache when their talented daughters read the letters and will
feel a bolt of anger at the college admissions officers who didn’t recognize how special their daughters are.
Yes, of course, these talented young women will all find fine places to attend college — Maddie has four acceptance letters in
hand — but it doesn’t dilute the disappointment they will feel when they receive a rejection or waitlist offer.
I admire the brilliant successes of our daughters. To parents and the students getting thin envelopes, I apologize for the
demographic realities.

TASK 8

Pair work. Discuss: What is the central idea in the text? How can you respond to it?

TASK 9

Whole class discussion. What is Delahunty’s main claim?


Take-home assignment
TASK 10
Reread the essay and apply the note-taking technique next to each paragraph. Which is/are the paragraph(s) that carry the author’s
main claim? Explain how you found out the most important idea appears in that/those paragraphs.
TASK 11
How is the main idea justified? Look for the supporting ideas and explain what kind of info they include.
TASK 12
Look up unknown words/concepts. Organize it/them in a vocabulary web or use your vocabulary notebooks to register the entries.
TASK 13
Group work. In small groups, discuss the answers to the questions in the take-home assignment section.
How similar/different were your answers?
TASK 14
Pair/Group work. Answer and Guess the question- game. You will be given a question about the text. Write down the answer to
the question paraphrasing as much as you can but do not tell anyone the question you got. Then read the answer to your
classmates who have to guess what question you answered. Good luck!

18
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro
Post reading tasks
Language focus: Vocabulary building, Affixation & Sentence construction: paraphrasing

Task 15

Exchange vocabulary notebooks and compare/contrast the words you registered.

INVERSION: Paraphrase the following idea.


Par. 8: “Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any, hesitation to admit.”

TASK 16
Vocabulary Development: suffixes
Fill in the chart. In some cases, there is no form for the third column
Noun Verb Person/adjective
Application
Admit
Reject
Accomplished

hesitation
enroll
achiever
apologetic
success
Accept
complicated
Qualified
desperation
disappointed

Task 17
Pick up three of the items in the chart. Skim the text and find the forms used by the author. Paraphrase the three ideas you found.
See if you can use vocabulary from the chart.
e.g. “we have three applicants for every one we can admit”
Paraphrased version: There are three applications for each admission we can offer.

19
UNMDP-FH-DLM-Profesorado de Inglés- Asignatura: DISCURSO ESCRITO primer cuatrimestre. INTENSIVE READING.
Prof. Verónica B. Ojeda y Gabriela M. Ferreiro
TASK 18
Match these idiomatic expressions to the corresponding explanations
The world is your oyster critical moment
A tipping point a little bit
A tad you can reach every goal you have
To grapple with contemplate
To linger over deal with, struggle

Take-home assignment
TASK 19
Write an informative summary of the article. DRAFT ONE. Follow these guidelines:
Note: Remember that even though the author may not have presented her ideas in this suggested order, sometimes it is necessar y
to rearrange the information to clarify it in a condensed form.
SOURCE/POINT OF VIEW Who is the author? What is the title?
PURPOSE Why did the author write the essay?
CENTRAL IDEA. What is the main claim? What does this mean? How is this idea related to other main points?
MESSAGE Restate the purpose, the communicative value of the essay.
TASK 20
Peer-assessment/feedback. Exchange summaries with a classmate and give him or her as much feedback as you can. Here there
is a checklist you should hand in to the summary writer.
Summary writing-Peer-assessment checklist

1) Has the writer paraphrased? YES/NO PARTIALLY


2) Is it clear that it is a summary of somebody else’s text? YES/NO PARTIALLY
3) Is the central idea clearly developed? YES/NO PARTIALLY
4) Is the main idea supported? YES/NO PARTIALLY
Comments:
TASK 21
Teacher assessment//Writing community. Write an informative summary of the article. DRAFT TWO. Once you have received
your peer-feedback, write a second draft of your summary and upload it to the Google Document you have been invited to
participate in.
TASK 22
Going back to bases.
Class discussion. Now that you have an informed opinion of how the admission system works in most colleges in the US. What is
your opinion about it? What do you think about the Argentinean Higher Education admission policies at State Universities?
METACOGNITIVE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
What reading strategies have you learnt in the last two weeks? What tasks did you find the most useful ones? Can you explain
why?

20
Teaching from Both
Sides of the Desk
by Nancy Hanna Nicastro

t the risk of sounding immodest, after several years

A of teaching at a small liberal arts college, I inadver-


tently found myself in the position of being an
award-winning teacher. Colleagues sought my advice. Students clamored to get
into my courses. How had this happened? I was just minding my own business,
teaching my courses as best as I could, and then—bam—I had the title of “expert”
bestowed upon me. “What is your philosophy of teaching?” colleagues would ask.
My philosophy of teaching! It had not occurred to me that I needed to have a
formal, clearly defined philosophy of teaching. Like many new teachers, trial and
error was really all that I had time for in the first couple of years—I was just happy
to be 10 minutes ahead of my students. This, however, did not seem like a satis-
factory response from an “award-winning teacher.” Apparently, I was doing some-
thing right. I began to think more deliberately about exactly what was driving my
approach to teaching. Although I frequently sought feedback and advice about
effective teaching, and I continuously monitored my own course preparations and
classroom experiences for ways to improve, I have come to realize that the foun-
dation of my philosophy of teaching developed without my awareness, when I was
sitting on the other side of the desk—as a student.
I often reflect upon my own undergraduate experiences when I consider what

Nancy Hanna Nicastro received her Ph.D. in devel o p m e n tal psy ch o l o gy from Purdue
University in 1994. She is currently teaching at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. Her pri-
mary academic focus is on providing engaging and challenging learning experiences for her stu-
dents. Other academic interests include peer relationships and identity development during ado-
lescence and young adulthood, and the role of culture and individual experience in defining the
transition to adulthood.

FA LL 2 00 5 TH OU G HT & AC T I O N 57
makes an effective course. From which teachers did I learn the most? W hich
courses were most compelling? What information can I still recall from that four-
year period of my life? These are questions I ask myself as I structure my courses.
They do not have easy answers. If I really concentrate, I can recall random isolat-
ed facts from various courses. I remember that carbon's atomic numbers are 666;
that if you pith a frog's brain it can still swim—for a while; that Kierkegaard some-
how managed to reconcile existentialism with Christianity; and that you don't
mess with Medea. Obviously, these facts came from very different courses. What

In retrospect, it seems that I remember particular bits


of information and courses because of the methods
used by the professors who taught them.

were the common elements that made these courses memorable?

n retrospect, it seems that I remember particular bits of information and cours-


I es because of the methods used by the professors who taught them. In some
cases, the sheer enthusiasm of the professor made the material seem more inter-
esting and more valuable, encouraging us to study harder. I remember my
Introduction to Philosophy professor, who became visibly excited when lecturing
on Aristotle, even at 8 a.m.! I wanted to find out what was so great about Aristotle.
In other cases, the hands-on methods made the courses memorable—as hard as I
may try, I can’t forget witnessing the slow demise of the pithed frog. Expectations
for active participation in other courses really made the material come to life. For
example, Shakespeare became much more comprehensible when each of us was
assigned a character’s part and we read the plays aloud. It also didn’t hurt that our
clever literature professor, recognizing our caffeine needs at that early hour,
renamed the course “Breakfast with Shakespeare” and held class in the cafeteria.
Finally, class discussions and assignments that encouraged thoughtful analysis of
the personal relevance of class material made it much easier to remember. I still
remember one of my assignments from my freshman Introductory Psychology
course: to apply the various theories that we had studied to our own personal
development (perhaps why I became a psych major?).
It is obvious to me that my retention of some of the content of my undergrad-
uate courses can be credited to professors’ enthusiasm and active teaching meth-
ods. But what about courses that I felt had changed my life? I can think of sever-

58 TH E NEA HI G HE R EDU C ATI ON JOU RNA L


T E ACH IN G FROM BOT H S IDE S OF T HE DE SK

al courses that seemed incredibly life-altering at the time that I took them, but
from which I can recall very little content. Surely they had content! How could
they have been so important if I can remember so little from them? It was in those
classes that I learned how to think. I learned not simply to accept information at
face value, but to evaluate it and determine the degree to which it is true or use-
ful. I learned to ask questions and to seek answers on my own, to respect the views
of others and to express and support my own. I learned that the world does not
operate in black-and-white, but in shades of gray, and that what is accepted as

I learned to ask questions and to seek answers on my


own, to respect the views of others and to express
and support my own.

truth today may not be so when new research findings modify or contradict it.
This is a hard pill to swallow when you are 19, 20, 21 years old. Just when you
think you have it all figured out, the rules change. For this reason, I think it was
also vitally important that the professors who taught those courses allowed their
students to see them as more than experts in their fields of study. They allowed us
to know them not only as scholars who struggled with contradictions within their
disciplines, but also as human beings with families and mortgages, hobbies and
habits. They allowed us to see how they reconciled the diverse areas of their lives.
They inadvertently served as role models for putting all of the pieces together and
struggling with the contradictions of life outside of the classroom as well as inside.
In essence, their scholarly lives were not separate from other aspects of their
lives—who they were in the classroom was who they were.

ow does this translate into my philosophy of teaching? I mean, we don’t pith


H frogs in psychology, and the cafeteria is far too crowded to be an appropri-
ate location for a class meeting. Nonetheless, I have taken the basic principles that
seemed effective to me when I was a student and have tried to apply them as a
teacher. Of course, now that I’m on the other side of the desk, I have some addi-
tional insights as well. I can understand the value of assignments that I had to
complete that seemed pointless at the time. Armed with this reflection, I devel-
oped a philosophy of teaching that revolves around five basic principles. Although
I teach psychology, I believe these principles can be applied to any discipline, as
they were extracted from my experiences as a student in multiple disciplines.

FA LL 2 00 5 TH OU G HT & AC T I O N 59
P R I N C I P LE # 1 : B E A P PROAC H A B LE

I n my experience, the first step toward inspiring students to take responsibility


for their own learning is to create a positive rapport so they will come to you
when they have problems or questions. This is especially important for students in
their first semester of college. I remember how intimidated I was by some of my
undergraduate—and even graduate—professors. I would not have dreamed of
approaching them outside of class, and the thought of asking a question in class
was even a little scary. I don’t think they intended to be unapproachable (at least
most of them). I do think that it didn’t occur to them that being approachable was
an important aspect of teaching.
What makes a professor seem appro a chable to students? I have asked this ques-
tion of some of my students over the years, and I alw ays get similar responses:
They know your name. They recognize that you have a life outside of the
classroom. They don’t make you feel stupid when you ask a question. They remem-
ber how it felt to be a student. They are friendly. Some of these things may not
seem like essential elements of good teaching, but the fact of the matter is that a
student cannot effectively learn from someone when they are afraid to ask a ques-
tion. With all of these things in mind, I make extra efforts to be approachable,
both in and out of the classroom.
Fi r s t , I try to learn all of my students’ names early in the semester. I won’t pretend
that it’s easy—there are a lot of them. I forew a rn them that it will probably take me
seve ral weeks to get their names right. I also state explicitly that my success or failure
at remembering their names is not an indicator of my feelings about them or their class
performance—there are simply a lot of them. I ask them not to be offended if I can’t
remember their names, and to correct me if I ca ll them the wrong name. How does all
of this make me approachable? Fi r s t , it helps me to learn their names. Second, it allows
them to see me making efforts—and mistakes—at “mastering the material.” I do not
presume that my performance on memorizing their names will be perfect, and if I’m
willing to learn from my mistakes, maybe my students will too!
Sometimes approachability is proactive. If I notice a change in a student’s
attendance, demeanor, or performance, I will ask him or her about it. For example,
I had one student who came to class every day, sat near the front, appeared to be
paying attention, participated in class activities, but then performed very poorly on
the first exam. Instead of waiting for her, I approached her after class. It turned
out that English was her second language, and she was having difficulty with some
of the terminology on the exams. After that, she came by my office regularly to
discuss questions about class material.

60 TH E NEA HI G HE R EDU C ATI ON JOU RNA L


T E ACH IN G FROM BOT H S IDE S OF T HE DE SK

O ne of my goals in the cl a s s ro omis to create an atmosph e re of respect between


m yself and my students as well as among the students. I want them to feel
c om f o rtable expressing their views. This is not alw ays easy. Let’s face it—sometimes
students do say things that invite ridicule from their classmates. Sometimes it is dif-
ficult even as the pro fessor not to ro ll my eyes and make a snide comment. This is
where re m e m b e ring my own college experiences comes in handy. For some stu-
dents, it takes a lot courage to speak out in class at all. As the professor, I believe it
is my job to ack n owledge and affirm students’ efforts, even if their comments are

One of my goals within the classroom is to create an


atmosphere of respect between myself and my
students as well as among the students.

off base. The big ch a llenge is to let them know that their re s p onses are off base
without making them feel inept. This takes practice. I usually start out with som e-
thing like, “That’s a really interesting point/question.” Then I connect it in som e
tangential way to what we are studyi n g, then bring the focus back to the topic at
hand. This method usually encourages student participation and helps them feel
“safe” in appro a ching both me and their fe ll ow students.

PRINCIPLE #2: USE ACTIVE LEARNING METHODS


A N D E M P H A S I Z E P E R S O N A L R E L E VA N C E

s I discussed earlier, I learned the most in my undergraduate courses in


A which professors used active learning methods and made the relevance of the
course material to my life clear. Likewise, I have found that my own students ben-
efit when I employ these methods.
Why an active classroom? Can’t I get the same results from lecturing? My
short answer is no. It’s not that presentations have no place in the classroom. I fre-
quently present material in lecture format—for some information, there is simply
no other way. But, whenever possible, I interrupt my presentations to ask the stu-
dents questions, or to ask them to provide examples of the concepts we are dis-
cussing. Sometimes, I provide a brief overview of material and then ask students
to work in groups to develop an application of it. This transformation from “pas-
sive absorber of information” to “active constructor” promotes mastery of course
material regardless of the content. First, it allows me to see whether students are

FA LL 2 00 5 TH OU G HT & AC T I O N 61
actually understanding the material rather than simply remembering it. Second, it
allows the students to be more responsible for their own learning, which tends to
motivate them. They are more likely to come to class having read and thought
about the material, which allows us to use class time more effectively. Finally, it
keeps them from becoming bored and “shutting down,” which often occurs during
long presentations, even on the most fascinating topics.
Perhaps as important as using active methods is making the information per-
sonally meaningful to the students. It is easier to remember things if we can give

I learned the most in my undergraduate courses when


professors used active learning methods and made the
relevance of the course material to my life clear.

them significance in the context of our own lives. Fortunately for me, psychology
lends itself to this kind of analysis. But this might not work in all disciplines.
When the course material doesn’t lend itself to personal meaning or significance,
emphasizing the relevance of the material to things outside of the classroom can be
effective. This might be done by focusing on how course concepts relate to current
events, everyday life, or issues in one’s field. Seeing the practical, if not personal rel-
evance of course material can go a long way toward motivating students.

PRINCIPLE #3 : ENCOURAG E P RIMARY SO URCE


READING AND CRITICAL THINKING

ssignments that require primary source reading and critical thinking are
A often a sore spot with students. When I was a student, I hated reading pri-
mary source empirical studies in psychology. Truth be told, it is still not one of my
more preferred scholarly activities. However, from this side of the desk, I under-
stand its importance in learning to evaluate information for myself. As an educa-
tor, I believe my primary responsibility is to provide students with the skills they
need to think for themselves. I don’t believe that they can develop these skills sim-
ply by reading textbooks in which much of the analysis of primary sources has
already been done. Critical thinking skills develop by struggling with the informa-
tion that is available on a topic, evaluating its validity and reliability, and coming
to one’s own conclusions. Reading primary sources is one way to enhance the
development of these skills.

62 TH E NEA HI G HE R EDU C ATI ON JOU RNA L


T E ACH IN G FROM BOT H S IDE S OF T HE DE SK

Once again, in psychology it is easy to incorporate primary source readings


into the broad goal of encouraging critical thinking. I encourage students to ques-
tion the research behind what they are learning. Were the methods sound? Was
the sample representative? Did the researchers overgeneralize their conclusions?
What were the limitations of the research? When students struggle with primary
source readings it gives them practice with critical thinking. It also gives them a
sense of competence when they can successfully understand—even though their
understanding is often limited—a research report.
The many controversies within the field of psycholog y provide numerous
opportunities for critical thinking, and I am certain that this can be applied to
other fields of study as well. Students can be challenged to review various perspec-
tives on an issue, evaluate the information that supports each view, and then devel-
op their own conclusions. The ultimate goal, of course, is to help students devel-
op the skills necessary to support their own conclusions, based on their own analy-
sis of the information, rather than on what their professors think or what their
textbook author says. Although students may complain about these assignments
(often loudly), these skills will be both personally and practically relevant to every
aspect of their lives in the future.

PRINCIPLE #4: CHALLENGE STUDENTS BOTH


I N T ELLE C T UA LLY A N D P ER S O NA LLY

W hen I graduated from high school, I remember feeling so important and


accomplished. I felt like I had all of the answers, I knew who I was and
where I was going, and I had a pretty strong sense of my own attitudes and values.
Then, I went away to college.

FA LL 2 00 5 TH OU G HT & AC T I O N 63
It wasn’t as if I had not been exposed to dive r s i ty before coll e g e,but I did grow up
in a rather homogeneous community and my parents were pre t ty inv o lved and protec-
tive. I had encountered people with different life experiences and values before attending
college, but I hadn’t re a lly gotten to know them. And I certainly had not spent signifi-
cant amounts of time with them. And forget about professors! Before I attended col-
lege, I think I knew maybe two people who had advanced degrees. It was a little scary
being exposed to all of these new people, attitudes, ideas, and experiences. It was also
exciting, and, in retrospect, critical to my own intellectual and personal development.

Students can review various perspectives on an issue,


evaluate the information that supports each view,
and then develop their own conclusions.

I discussed earlier having taken some courses that I felt had been life-altering
experiences. One of those courses was existentialism, which exposed me to an
entirely new way of thinking about the human condition. Not only did this course
challenge my intellect, but this new way of thinking forced me to reevaluate my
attitudes and values in its light. I was fortunate to have had a professor who
encouraged personal reflection and was available for questions and discussions.
Taking this course challenged my world view and made me crave more philoso-
phy. How can I do this for my students?

F irst, it is important to recognize that, developmentally, traditional college-


aged students are “ripe” for this kind of experience. In many cases, they are on
their own for the first time. When they come into the classroom, they bring their
own world views, shaped by years of experience in a family with a particular value
system and way of understanding the world. The key here is that each of them
brings slightly different world views. Being exposed to one another begins the
process of intellectual and personal challenge.
In providing this intellectual challenge, I rely on a couple of basic principles.
The first is that in the classroom we respect one another’s points of view to allow
for the free exchange of ideas. Second, I encourage students to question their own
assumptions about human behavior, especially their own behavior, and to keep an
open mind about the research and theories that we are studying even if they seem
inconsistent with their personal experiences. Throughout the term, students real-
ize, many for the first time, that their personal understanding of the world is not

64 TH E NEA HI G HE R EDU C ATI ON JOU RNA L


T E ACH IN G FROM BOT H S IDE S OF T HE DE SK

universal. This ideally increases their interest in the topic being studied. Finally, I
try to structure assignments at appropriate levels of challenge for each course.
With every student having different levels of preparedness, I find setting the bar
high enough, but not too high, to be the biggest challenge of effective teaching (but
the details of that would fill another essay entirely).

W hat about challenging students personally? I remember that a requirement


for one of my undergraduate child psychology courses was a placement

The first principle is that in the classroom we respect


one another’s points of view to allow
for the free exchange of ideas.

experience at a state-run home for children. Each of us was to spend time with an
assigned child every week, to keep a journal of our experiences, and to draw con-
nections between what we were seeing in our placements and what we were study-
ing in class. Not only was this a fantastic way to bring course material to life, but
I remember finding it a personal challenge as well. I was kind of shy, and it was a
big deal for me to go to this place, talk to “real” grown-ups about their work, and
to be exposed to a child with behavior problems.
When possible, I try to include similar kinds of experiences for my students. In my
child development courses, I have placed students with Head St a rt and with Boys and
G i rls Clubs of America. In my adulthood and aging courses, I have placed students
with nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Students are often apprehensive when
they begin these assignments. By the end of the term, however, they unanimously
praise these experiences as sources of both intellectual and personal enrichment.
Again, I am fortunate that psychology lends itself to these kinds of experi-
ences. But any kind of service-learning activity can achieve the same outcomes.
For example, a colleague in the economics department had her advanced account-
ing students provide assistance with tax forms to needy people in the community.
The only limit to providing the kinds of experiences that will challenge students
both intellectually and personally is our own creativity.

PRINCIPLE #5: TEACH FROM WHO YOU ARE

T his, for me, is the proverbial bottom line of my teaching philosophy. As I dis-
cussed earlier, in my own undergraduate experience, the professors from

FA LL 2 00 5 TH OU G HT & AC T I O N 65
whom I learned the most, those who challenged me, those who inspired me, those
who made me hungry for more, all had one thing in common: they taught from
who they were. They were real people with real lives, real strengths and weakness-
es, real vulnerabilities. My existentialism professor shared with us that he had an
existential crisis every time he taught the course. My child development professor
asked me to dog sit when she was on vacation—she lived in an actual house, with
a husband, and a dog, a washer and dryer, and tortellini in the cabinets. My ethics
teacher got visibly angry in class and seemed to take it personally when students

Who knew that these professors, who tortured us on a


daily basis with their required readings and assign-
ments, were real people?

were ill-prepared. My anatomy professor sometimes had to bring his young son to
lab because of lack of other child care options. Who knew? Who knew that these
professors, who tortured us on a daily basis with their required readings and
assignments, were real people? What a difference it made to me to know that.

ow do I incorporate this into my classroom? To be honest, I don’t know how


H to keep this out of the classroom. My interpersonal style drives my teaching
style. I am rather informal. I frequently use humor. Every example of a course con-
cept that I provide comes from my personal experiences or the experiences of peo-
ple I know. Don’t get me wrong—I do not divulge inappropriate personal infor-
mation to my students. But I am a person before I am a college professor, and I
think that students appreciate knowing that. If am having a particularly bad day, I
do not pretend otherwise. I often commiserate with students about the horrible
parking conditions on campus or the terrible commuter traffic. If something excit-
ing happens in my life, I will share that with them as well. For example, it was dif-
ficult for me to hide my excitement—or my ring, for that matter—when I got
engaged last spring. In the few minutes before class begins, I routinely ask students
about issues or events that are important in their lives. I believe that all of these
informal exchanges are important for developing rapport and mutual respect and
for allowing students to see that I am person just like them. It reminds them that
I once sat in their desks, and it produces an affinity between us. Why should this
matter?
It is certainly not necessary for students to like a professor in order to learn

66 TH E NEA HI G HE R EDU C ATI ON JOU RNA L


T E ACH IN G FROM BOT H S IDE S OF T HE DE SK

from her or him, but, in my experience, likeability goes a long way. Students are
more motivated to attempt and complete difficult assignments if they do not want
to disappoint their professors, even if their interest in the topic or assignment is
limited. This can produce a snowball effect. I have had students tell me at the end
of a semester that they were initially uninterested in my course, but that they made
efforts because they liked me, trusted my judgment in providing them with useful
assignments, or appreciated my classroom style. Through their efforts, they found
that they had interests and capabilities in the discipline of which they were not

It is certainly not necessary for students to like a


professor in order to learn from her or him, but, in my
experience, it sure goes a long way.

formerly aware. This led to further motivation and additional efforts on their part,
resulting in increased competence. In the best of circumstances, this cycle becomes
self-perpetuating. Students begin to take the initiative for further study them-
selves, often asking questions and engaging in activities that are beyond the scope
of what is required in the course. What more could a professor ask for?

F inally, it is important to keep in mind that, like it or not, professors are role
models. As I discussed earlier, I remember being impressed when I was a stu-
dent by professors who seemed to have figured out how to balance all of the
aspects of their lives. I remember thinking, “Wow, she has everything that I want
to have—a successful career, a family, diverse interests, a nice home.” Having such
professors as examples, and seeing that they had lives outside of academe, made my
life goals seem attainable.
In spite of my remembering my professors as role models, I am always sur-
prised to find that my own students view me in the same light. About five years
after I started teaching, a student who had been a freshman during my first year
of teaching came back to the college to visit. She was a graduate student in devel-
opmental psychology. She told me how I had inspired her throughout her under-
graduate career, ever since her introductory psychology course, to pursue this goal.
Similarly, just a few weeks ago, one of my current students, who had been strug-
gling with some personal family circumstances, came by to discuss the final paper.
When I asked her how everything was going, she said that she often asks herself,
“What would Dr. Hanna do in this situation?” What a revelation both of these

FA LL 2 00 5 TH OU G HT & AC T I O N 67
experiences were to me! To know that I have made connections with students in
ways that inspire them both intellectually and personally affirms for me the effec-
tiveness and value of teaching from who I am.
As time goes on, I am hopeful that I will be able to continue to apply the five
principles of teaching successfully, and that my colleagues across disciplines might
find these principles useful in their own course preparations. I would also strong-
ly recommend to all professors that you reflect upon your own philosophies of
teaching. You will find it extremely valuable in delineating what is important to
you as an educator and in helping to clearly define your course objectives. And you
never know when you might suddenly be endowed with the title “award-winning
teacher” and asked “What is your philosophy of teaching?”

68 TH E NEA HI G HE R EDU C ATI ON JOU RNA L


METACOGNITIVE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

You need to find out information about what you do when you read, i.e. the strategies
you use, the ideas that come to your mind as you approach a text. The purpose of this
task is to help you find out the way in which you read. Please answer these questions
immediately reading the text for the first time.
1) Did you read the questions you had to answer before your first reading?
2) Did you look up information about the topic/author to see if that information helped
you understand the text more clearly?
3) Did you look up words you did not know when you read the text for the very first
time?
Mention what you have learned about yourself as a reader through this text.

ORAL SKILLS DEVELOPMENT: task 1


You will have to record the answer to a question. The objective of this activity is to help
you develop your speaking skills.

Once you read the question you are given you will have a few minutes to organize ideas
and to take down notes of key words or phrases.
The following is a suggested way of organizing your ideas. Remember organization is
required for your speech to be clear.
a) Give a general introductory comment to your answer.
b) State the main point, that is to say, answer the question properly.
c) Support your claim(s) with examples or evidence from the text.
d) Restate the main point. Paraphrase your main claim(s) i.e. express the same idea
with different words.

Once you have recorded, listen to your speech. What’s your first impression of your
performance?
Listen to your speech again and answer these questions.
a) Did you follow the suggested organizational scheme?
b) Did you state your main claim clearly? Did you support it? How?
c) Were you fluent?
d) As you re-listen to yourself can you identify areas that need improvement?

Grammar? Pronunciation? Vocabulary?


e) Why? What can you do to improve?

Second Recording.
Give yourself a second try. Before you rerecord your answer use your first recording as
a learning experience. Go over your self-assessment guide and collect data that can help
you come up with an improved speech.
Accuracy
Ideas Content & Fluency Pronunciation (grammatical
analysis correctness)

Organization: Very Good Too fast Intelligible Very good

Very Good
Good Good Fluent Natural Good
Poor
Accurate
Intro? OK Not very fluent Spanish-like
Conclusion? Some mistakes
Artificial
Poor Choppy discourse Many mistakes
Mispronunciations
Clarity:
Needs elaboration
Clear
Partially clear
Unclear Problems with:
Off- focus: The
question is not
being answered Agreement
Tone of voice
Examples are: Tenses
Loud
Relevant Use of specific Articles
vocabulary:
Irrelevant Appropriate Word order
Yes/ /No
Enough Wrong forms
Low
insufficient Vocabulary

Parallelism

Patterns

Sentence
construction

Vocabulary

Further Comments:

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