Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

Although Commencement was last weekend, I've still been immersed in teaching. For starters, last Wednesday was SDSU's Course and Curriculum Design Institute's One Day in May symposium. The theme this year was 'Learning to Write, Writing to Learn' and I gave a presentation on my experience with SWoRD . FYI, my slides are available on slideshare (or the CDI wiki ), and writing everything up is at the top of my summer blogging schedule. The short version is that it was a very bumpy semester and I'm not ready to recommend anyone else try it, at least not if you have other peer review options available to you... I've also been getting ready for the AEA's National Conference on Teaching Economics and Research in Economic Education . I'll be participating in a panel on Team-Based Learning in the 3pm session on Wednesday, and another panel on teaching large classes in the 3:15pm session on Thursday (the full program can be found here ). If you're ...

I attended Commencement today. I haven't gone every year; I have to admit that I have often thought of it as a chore, something I am obligated to do as part of my job, rather than something I look forward to. But as I sat there today, I found myself inspired, rejuvenated, and I felt somewhat ashamed that I had been dreading it. First, as I watched many of my students walk across and get their diplomas (well, diploma holders), and as I listened to their families cheering for them, I felt proud to have been part of their education, to have played some small role in helping them arrive at this day. Not all of them did great in my classes but today, I was full of optimism that they will go out into the world and do good things. And as I watched the graduates interact with their families, particularly as I heard several different languages being spoken by those families, I was reminded how many of my students are the first in their families to graduate from college and I was humbled. I...

This has nothing to do with teaching but I just had to share Jon's Stewart's response to Ben Stein 's idiotic defense of Strauss-Kahn (starts at about 3:02): Thanks to Stein, we get Stewart listing off several sex-offending economists and what has to be the best worst quote about the profession ever: "Economists are the rapiest profession going... Turns out the invisible hand of the market is very f***ing touchy-feely!" Not sure if I'm laughing or crying...

My last post made an analogy between kids and classes, noting that every kid/class is different for reasons that may have nothing to do with the parents/instructor. Personally, I definitely need the reminder of how much that goes on with my classes is outside my control. But part of the reason it's so easy to forget is that at the same time, instructors clearly can make a difference. To return to the parents/kids analogy: even when children in the same family are quite different from each other, there are often still behavioral similarities across families that are clearly a result of parenting. For example, in Family A, the older boy is out-going and loud while the younger girl is relatively quiet and shy, but when one of the parents says, "It's time for bed," both children whine and drag their feet, or ignore the parents entirely, continuing to play and run around. In Family B, the younger boy is the gregarious one while the older boy is artistic and sensitive, bu...