Maura C. Flannery
College of Professional Studies
flannerm@stjohns.edu
As a new semester begins, we are again reminded of just how
important it is to be a good teacher. Faculty bear a tremendous
responsibility. We have one chance to get it right with these
students. There are no real do-overs in teaching. Yes, we can try
to do better next semester, but that will be with different
students. Those we have this semester will have gone on to other
courses and other professors. This burden of getting it right
applies to all of us, whether we are teaching core or majors’
courses, undergraduate or graduate students. Each category carries
particular responsibilities. If it is a core course, then this
might be a student’s only contact with our discipline. What we
teach and how we teach it will stay with them as either a solid
foundation or a bitter memory. If we teach majors or graduate
students, then we are involved in shaping their view of the field
and deepening their understanding of what it means to be part of a
particular community of scholars.
Put in these terms, teaching can be almost paralyzingly
frightening. Oh, the pressure of getting it right! On the more
positive side, this edge of tension is also what makes teaching so
exciting. Every class is a challenge, and on those days when things
go well, the joy is more than commensurate with the strain.
In To Engineer Is Human on why engineering projects
such as bridges and stadium domes continue to fail despite constant
improvements in engineering know-how and building materials, Henry
Petroski writes that failure is almost inevitable because human
enterprise is always striving for more: longer bridges, broader
domes, more durable and adaptable new materials. Sure, if bridges
were always built as the successful bridges of the past were, then
they too could always be durable and dependable. Where is the fun
of that? We’d still being using the designs the Romans used 2000
years ago, and many wide expanses would still not be spanned.
I did some things right last semester. In my scientific inquiry
course, I did an activity dealing with biodiversity hotspots that
turned out well. It involved a website that is a rich resource with
information on many areas where biodiversity is particularly great
http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots.
I want to repeat that web activity this semester, but I also want
to try something different, involving a comparison of evolutionary
timelines on various websites. This is a little more complicated,
and therefore has a greater chance of failing, but if it succeeds
it will be great—well worth the risk.
This is how I change my teaching—in small increments. I am not a
very daring teacher/engineer. I do not want my course falling down
around me, so I tend to be cautious. On the other hand, I don’t
want to keep walking on the same old bridge either. Times change
and students’ needs change—to say nothing of the subject of
biology. I have to keep asking myself questions like: how can I
incorporate the latest on genetic insights on evolution, is there a
website that will help me with this (http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/ugenetics/index.php),
and is a web-based activity really the way to help my students to
understand the subtleties of evolutionary genetics?
Besides lowering my stress level, a slow approach to change also
seems to be the responsible way to go. I am not building any daring
structures that will collapse with the least wind, I am not
changing everything at once and subjecting my students to radical
experiments in pedagogy. If things don’t go very well with
something new, at least I have enough tried-and-true materials in
the course to keep it from crashing. I fully realize that I have
said nothing very innovative here, but what I am trying to do is
encourage the timid. You may not think that you do anything
terribly innovative in your teaching. That may not be a bad thing.
You are less likely to build a course that collapses completely
like that bridge in Tacoma. On the other hand, don’t rest too much
on your laurels, there is always room for improvement if it is done
judiciously and responsibly.