Today is Thanksgiving Day in the States and that means that a good percentage of the population has the day off of work. Specifically, most students and teachers are left to their own devices for today and probably (at least) the day before and after for travel. While family, food, and giving thanks are all extremely important students should not simply spend the time being lazy. I’ve got one simple tip that can help students spend their free time a little bit more intelligently than they might spend it otherwise. One of the simple facts about the temporal location of … Continue reading →

My students are preparing for their big term paper. They are getting ready for that one last final thing before a long break between semesters is granted to them if they’ve been good boys and girls. They know that the term paper will cover the information in the entire book. They’ll have to write about a film and they’ll need to use all of that information to analyze it effectively. Little did they know that the teacher had something else in store for them… The class is large (more than 400 students) and due to that we don’t take attendance … Continue reading →

I’m teaching a 400+ student introductory course in film this semester and because of that I don’t get to personally meet many of my students. I lecture, show a film, and let my teaching assistants do the grading for this managerial nightmare. My teaching assistants act primarily as a buffer zone between me and questions I don’t need to answer 400+ times. The questions that get through to me are generally legitimate questions pertaining to actual problems in the course and, by semesters end, the litany of requests to be given free points despite a semester having been spent by … Continue reading →

Today I asked one of my former students (an acting student) about what he learned from me. This wasn’t an internet survey but a face to face question over lunch in a common area. His answers were surprising and I’d like to share them with you. You’re never entirely certain what your students are learning until you hear back from them. Today I heard back from one of them. The first thing was a general overall thing this student learned from college in general: Time Management. If you read my fatherhood blog here at families.com you’ll find that somewhat amusing. … Continue reading →

A student lied to me today. Actually, this particular student lied to me, to one of my teaching assistants, and to themselves. In a last ditch effort to salvage their grade for a course they’ve obviously never attended or done work for, this student tried to lie. I’ve never understood this compulsion to lie. I mean, I guess I “kind of” get it, but in my soul it just doesn’t make sense to me. Today I’m going to talk about honesty and success. Before my time as a graduate student/teacher I spent time working in a bank. As you may … Continue reading →

Earlier in the semester I was a substitute for one of my wife’s high school classes while she was spending time with our newborn son. My wife requires the students write a final research paper by the semester’s end so part of my job was to get them thinking about a suitable topic to write about. This situation forced me to think about how, exactly, one can prepare themselves to write. Writing, then, is my subject for today. I’ve spoken about note-taking before but it is extremely important when you are thinking about writing. It is even more important if … Continue reading →

I was talking to one of my cousins a while back and he was talking about how proud and impressed he was that I was trying to get my Ph.D. There were two things in his voice: 1) a level of disappointment in himself that he didn’t try for more schooling and 2) an assumption that I was going to make lots of money because of my advanced degree. This led to a valuable conversation where we cleared up our misconceptions. The question became: Is College a Must? My cousin was, at the time, driving a forklift for a soda … Continue reading →

Here is one of the most important things I’ve learned about teaching: it teaches you to learn. So, so simple but so, so true. I recently showed my students my notes for class one day. They were shocked. Pages and pages of notes. Most of my students just though that teachers were naturally smart or went to school so long that they just learned what they knew one day and simply regurgitated that information to their students. (Well, some do it that way.) At any rate, this is important information for students, not just teachers. I typically learn more teaching … Continue reading →