Skip to main content

When your audience doesn't want to be there

Since the presidential campaign began, there have been references to 'Professor Obama', often said sarcastically or in a way that suggests that this is not a compliment. I won't go on a tirade about those who seem to think it's a bad thing for politicians to be smart and well-informed about the actual substance of public policy issues. I just wanted to point out that there are many times when the way Obama talks to Congress reminds me of the way I talk to my students but it's more about style than substance. I don't mean this as an insult (nor do I mean to compare my rhetorical abilities to Obama's!); it's more just an observation about how we choose to deal with an audience that doesn't want to be there. As a teacher, I'm usually talking to people (students) who may or may not actually want to be sitting there listening to me, and who may or may not be remotely interested in what I have to say, but they are somewhat compelled to be there and listen to me anyway. Some teachers get annoyed by this; some ignore it; some try desperately to change it. My personal approach is just to recognize it and be upfront about it, and I see Obama doing the same thing with Congress. Sometimes he makes jokes about it; for example, during the State of the Union, at one point Obama said, "I'd like to begin monthly meetings with both Democratic and Republican leadership. I know you can't wait." And I thought: that's exactly what I would say to my students! Other times, it's just being blunt; Obama does this all the time when he tells people that change will not be easy or that Democrats AND Republicans need to stop playing politics and make some compromises.

It's probably a sad commentary about Washington that the analogy that comes to my mind most often is that Congress acts like a bunch of my students who would rather make excuses than do the work they are supposed to do to earn the grade they want. But given that that is how they act, I wonder if Professor Obama will be able to manage them...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

This is about getting through, not re-inventing your course

As someone who has worked hard to build a lot of interactivity into my courses, I have never been interested in teaching fully online courses, in part because I have felt that the level of engaged interaction could never match that of a face-to-face class (not that there aren't some exceptional online courses out there; I just have a strong preference for the in-person connection). But the current situation is not really about building online courses that are 'just as good' as our face-to-face courses; it is about getting through this particular moment without compromising our students' learning too much. So if you are used to a lot of interaction in your F2F class, here are some options for adapting that interaction for a virtual environment: [NOTE: SDSU is a Zoom/mostly Blackboard campus so that's how I've written this but I am pretty sure that other systems have similar functionality] If you use clickers in class to break up what is otherwise mostly lect...

Designing effective courses means thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order)

I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare  for the possibility of still teaching remotely. Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed ...

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...