I never quite believe how long and how hard my husband is willing to work on pieces of junk—old relics that have long given up the ghost. One time it was an old milk truck without brakes and multiple loose parts that flew­­ off when it careened around corners the few times it actually ran. Another time it was a $25 motorcycle. We have two 45 year-old, huge and rusty Allis Chalmers Crawlers—one runs, sort of, the other is for spare parts. Most recently it’s a 1963 International Scout that came with a snow plow that I’ve dubbed POS (piece of, you know, the s word). For starters, POS has almost no body parts; no windshield, dash, windows, doors, or roof. A few parts like fenders have been cobbled together from cast-off pieces of sheet metal.

Recently I worked with a group of faculty who teach cohort groups. Students start this professional program as a group and they move, lockstep, through the curriculum. So, the same students are together for every class. We talked some about the assets and liabilities of this kind of cohort association for teachers.

I am busily preparing for my online interview with adult educator Patricia Cranton. (See http://www.magnapubs.com/calendar/192.html for information about this March 25 Magna Online Seminar.) We’re going to be talking about transformative learning, but I’m trying to make sure that I’m conversant with all of her current research interests. She is into so many interesting areas! This morning I’m reading some of her work on teacher authenticity.

I love reading pedagogical literature. You never know what you will happen onto next. This afternoon I found an article in Pedagogy (it’s a pedagogical periodical in the field of English) written by a group of graduate students describing their experiences in a required professional development seminar on teaching literature. The article is full of insights, many wise beyond the limited teaching experience of the group, but I was particularly taken with how they described one of their assignments, which asked them to write (with annotated bibliography) a philosophy of teaching.

As usual, I’m working on a book. At the present moment I’m trying to write a positive and constructive chapter on those institutionally mandated student ratings. Believe me, it’s a struggle. Ratings are so misused and so misunderstood. Institutions use instruments created by political processes. Frequently they contain items unrelated to the research identified components of instruction that can be linked to learning outcomes. Administrators rank faculty and imagine that a teacher with a 6.12 overall score deserves a higher raise than someone with a 6.00 score. And faculty believe all manner of myths: that ratings measure popularity and that the easy course wins high scores, for starters.

Robert Tauber and Cathy Mester say in their book, Acting Lessons for Teachers, that if you do an ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) search on the word “enthusiasm” and combine it with “teaching” 716,000 citations come up. I didn’t try it so I can’t verify the claim, but as they note that’s a “staggering” number of citations that attests to the importance of enthusiasm in teaching.

“If we want to be co-learners and co-teachers with students, if we want to mess their lived experiences with our disciplinary expertise, if we want to construct a classroom environment that legitimizes their voices, and if we want to create avenues for them to explore the possibilities of being agents of change, then we need to do a lot of creative, critical and challenging work to ensure that these goals are achieved.”

“One reason that teachers lecture is that it is ground that they totally control. It may be why the practice has held on for so long in the face of overwhelming evidence ... that it does not work very well to promote student learning of either the subject matter or larger general education goals like understanding others or participating in community activities. As soon as you open your classroom to serious dialogue that recognizes the legitimacy of ideas worked up by students, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Students may raise questions you never thought of. They may disagree with you, causing you to defend your point of view and, heaven forbid, even revise future lectures.”

I’ve always maintained that teachers have a right to bottom lines. If you can’t teach when students are eating or if you think that eating prevents others from learning, prohibit the eating. But now I’m wondering.