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Most teachers in the U.S. have gone back to school by now, but I don't start teaching until Monday. This fall I'm teaching at two very different institutions: the large University of California campus where I also consult with faculty to improve their teaching, and a small private university where I'm an adjunct instructor in museum studies. It's my ninth year teaching at the university level, but I find the longer I stay within higher education, the more conflicted I feel about U.S. education in general and about higher education specifically. Worse than conflicted, actually--I feel complicit in institutional failures to improve students' motivation and ability to learn.
I suspect I'm in this game for the long term, but it makes sense for someone at my age and stage of my career--university staff member and perpetual adjunct (vs. tenure track) instructor--to assess what exactly I'm contributing.
Factory farming of undergrads?
First, in my staff job, I consult with faculty to help them become more thoughtful about teaching undergraduates. That means being available to nearly 2,500 teaching faculty, plus thousands of graduate student teaching assistants. It feels overwhelming until I realize that my colleagues and I--a total of 2.5 consultants--work face-to-face with just over a thousand of these teachers every year, and 600-700 of those are new teaching assistants who show up only for orientation.
I wish more instructors would take advantage of our services, but graduate students and faculty alike tend to prioritize research over teaching. The result? Undergraduates get short shrift. This year my university will be offering its largest course to date, a 750-student biology course. (Our largest lecture hall holds only 500 people, but that's another story.)
This factory farming of students seems more ironic--or is it fitting?--in light of the fact that I work for a university famed for its technological innovations that have benefited large-scale agriculture.
Reasons for hope--and despair
Second, I teach a seminar in college teaching, mostly to graduate students and postdocs, but occasionally we have a junior faculty member sign up. My colleagues and I teach 3-4 sections of this course each year, with 20 students in each section. The course focuses on active teaching and learning methods. I'm grateful to have this opportunity to evangelize about best practices in teaching, particularly to science students who as undergraduates may have seen only two approaches to teaching: lecture and lab. We encourage them to craft courses, assignments, and assessment methods that allow students to develop both creative and critical thinking skills.
Teaching this seminar, and seeing the interest on students' faces in active learning, gives me hope for the next generation of college teachers and their students. But then I'll walk through a large academic building and not hear a single student voice, except during the 10 minutes between classes and during foreign-language classes. Undergraduates at this institution aren't being given sufficient opportunities to voice their own ideas. Coming as I did from an undergraduate experience where most of my classes had fewer than 25 students--and frequently had only 10-15--I feel at once sad and angry on behalf of these students.
Most of these students attended public middle schools and high schools in California during the era of high-stakes testing under the No Child Left Behind legislation. These students all ranked within the top 12.5% of their high school classes--which means they earned good grades and did very well on tests. This bubble-form testing culture continues for them in college, but they don't know how--or don't have the recourse or resources--to challenge this system.
A model that works
Meanwhile, in my third job, I teach museum studies in a graduate program at a small private university. The program admits 20 students per year, and students typically take two or three years to finish their master's degrees. My job this year involves teaching a first-year course in museum history and theory and then mentoring final-year students as they write their theses.
The students and faculty in this program--and perhaps it is unfair to compare undergraduate and graduate experiences, but I will--have forged a real community of learners and practitioners. I value very highly my inclusion in this community. The students in the program are motivated to learn and the faculty hold students accountable as writers and thinkers. Students who haven't yet produced B-level writing by the end of their first quarter are put on academic probation, and students who haven't achieved this
