From the Seat of a Student

a couple observations from my own classes

One of my professors this semester is a lot like that teacher I observed at the high school. He is a dynamic and excitable lecturer, never monotone. His style is effective in that it obliges attention, since he moves so quickly that students really must lean forward and listen; it would be pretty disastrous to fade-in and fade-out while he steams ahead, regardless of the cues his audience is sending. He just doesn't invite questions (because in his fluid speech, there seem to be no appropriate moments for interruption); he doesn't permit commentary or contributions (which dampens the initial eagerness to engage ideas); and he certainly doesn't seem to want to slow down (so convinced he is of the import of his ideas and the clarity that his vigorous speed and volume provide).
For the moment, I am still consciously learning in his class. I do enjoy listening to him, but I am waiting for the moment when my obligatory passivity boils into frustration. The time will come when I am tired of being a recipient; the time will come when I want to make contributions and check my assumptions in an active way. I don't know how his style would accommodate that.
I am writing this for my own record - I want to be able to look back on this and remind myself of what the student experience can be, especially when constrained by a teacher who's style is passionate but oppressive.

In another one of my classes, my fellow students and I sit through many extended silences after the professor asks questions. My first suspicion was that too few of us had done the reading. But, after paying more careful attention to the questions, I realized that the silence was the result of poorly-phrased questions! When my professor asks a question, it always sounds as though there is one - and only one - correct answer, and if you don't phrase it correctly, then it isn't right. I haven't figured out if it is the tone of her inquiries or her long pauses after someone gives a response. Whatever it is, there is something in her method of teaching that makes it feel risky to answer her questions.
This reminds me of a passage from Holt's How Children Fail: "They cling stubbornly to the idea that the only good answer is a yes answer. This, of course, is the result of the miseducation in which the "right" answers are the only ones that pay off." Even though Holt was writing about elementary education, this same phenomenon can persist in college courses! My professor perpetuates it without examination, to which Holt has another great prescription: "There is a very simple question that hardly anyone seems to have asked. Of the things we teachers do, which help learning and which prevent it?"