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Sound like anyone we know? --
The seasonal aisles in Schnuck's and the Jewel/Osco stores are still full of Halloween items, but I already know what I want for Christmas. It's a book titled My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student by anthropologist Cathy Small of Northern Arizona Unversity. She used a pen name, "Rebekah Nathan," and she tried to conceal NAU's identity by calling it "AnyU" (hear the pun?), but her observations ring true. The experience changed the way she teaches, and I think we can learn from it.
According to media accounts, Small wondered why her students blew off their assigned readings and couldn't be prodded into joining in class discussion. And she didn't feel like they were being candid with her. So in 2003-04 she did what comes naturally. A cultural anthropologist who has done extended field research in the South Pacific, she took a leave of absence, signed up for 15 hours and moved into a freshman dorm as a participant observer. At year's end, she had barely a 3.1 average, enough material for a book and a new sense of the pressures faced by first-year college students.
"It has profoundly affected my view as a professor, in a really positive way for me," she said afterward in an interview with Scott Jaschick of the online magazine Inside Higher Ed. "I was on the border of becoming alienated [before]. I could feel it. And now I see students in a much more human way, with more compassion. And I’m doing different things in the classroom."
While the book is still only an item on my reading list (or, more precisely, my holiday wish list), I've gleaned enough from news accounts to want to know more. What did Small learn from her freshman experience, and what does she do now in the classroom as a result? It is probably not a coincidence that NAU's social and behavioral sciences students voted her Teacher of the Year in 2004-05.
In any event, the press accounts give me a strong hunch Small's fellow students at "AnyU" faced some of the same challenges as our students at SCI.
"One student, who was up at 5 a.m. most days for ROTC training, dropped her meal plan because she literally didn't have time to eat," said Mary Beth Marklein, who reviewed the book in USA Today. "Others were involved in athletics, clubs and/or community service. But jobs, especially, took up big chunks of time." Marklein cited a 2003 survey showing 54 percent of freshmen nationwide worked. Our students don't have ROTC, but they face similar work pressures. In 2001, a survey of entering SCI freshmen showed 76.3 percent had part- or full-time jobs.
Other points are more difficult to generalize. Perhaps it's only because I wasn't a particularly good student as an undergrad, but I sympathized with Small's efforts to juggle her schedule. I thought she fell into a pattern some of my students describe to me (when they're being candid) and I remember well from my own student days.
"Struggling to keep up with five classes, she started cutting corners," noted a perceptive account in The Chronicle of Higher Education. "She ignored all but the most essential reading assignments and studied only the material she would need to know on examinations. She stopped writing multiple drafts of papers -- a sin for a veteran scholar. Even with the aid of an erasable calendar, she became disorganized. ... Her most humbling experience was her computer-science course. When she began to fall behind, she fought the temptation to skip the class"
As a result, Small now e-mails students who are falling behind and makes a concerted effort to help them catch up. "If you give them an opportunity to come forward, and work with them, it can make the difference between them failing or not," she told the Chronicle. She assigns less reading now, and she ties it more directly to classroom exercises. She even has an explanation for why students don't speak up in class, and a strategy for dealing with it. Jaschick of Inside Higher Ed explains:
Another area where her experience as a student changed her teaching is asking questions in a class. Nathan said that she noticed that "so much of student culture is about being equal" that many students view the act of asking a question as singling themselves out, so they won’t ask. So a question such as "Who knows X?" or “What did you think of the readings?” will get ignored by students who do know X or have an opinion on the reading. [Small] said that she now uses techniques such as asking "How many of you thought X and how many of you thought Y?" and that when students see that they are not alone in thinking X or Y, they are more willing to engage.
There's more. The daily newspaper in Flagstaff, The Arizona Sun, compiled a list of what Small said faculty and administrators can learn from students:
Small's research methods were controversial, chiefly over anonymity issues, but her project was cleared by Northern Arizona's research ethics committee. And The Arizona Republic in Phoenix noted her research methods met the ethical standards of newspaper journalism, which are in some ways more rigorous than those of academic life:
... Small's goal was to protect students' identities. Her methods look acceptable.
And interesting.
That's the nut of this story.
Small wanted to know what young people are thinking, and she was willing to go to some trouble to find out. ("Gift")
That's also the "nut" of this month's newsletter column. As we do classroom assessment, it can help us to know what our students are thinking. In its editorial on Small's study, the Republic said she could have "dismissed these kids as apathetic," but instead "she used her research on NAU campus to make her teaching more relevant to their lives. ... Listening is still one of the best teaching tools available."
I think the Republic's editorial board got it right. Good teaching equals good assessment equals good teaching.
Assessment committee notes
Sr. Anna Izydorczyk has been named this year's student member of the Assessment Committee. She is the latest of a series of hard-working, capable students we have had on the committee. ... Humanities 221 (Native American Cultural Expression) has been approved by the Illinois Articulation Initiative as meeting the criteria for Illinois Transferable General Education Core Curriculum (IAI GECC) HF 906D, an interdisciplinary humanities and fine arts course "reflecting the cultural identity of American racial and ethnic minorities." It is the first course incorporating our new Common Student Learning Objectives to be approved for IAI credit. ... Thanks to public relations director Susie Doddeck and creative design guru Scott McCullar for the attractive laminated mission statements. I've taped mine next to the CSLOs on my office wall.
-- Pete Ellertsen, chair, Assessment Committee
Nuts & Bolts is an electronic newsletter published by SCI's Assessment Committee. Members are: Bob Blankenberger, humanities and social science; Amy Lakin, languages and literature; Rick Rossetto, life sciences; Steve Stowers, math; Barb Tanzyus, math; Ray Bruzan, chemistry; Brian Carrigan, science; Sr. Anna Izydorczyk, student; and Pete Ellertsen (chair), communications and humanities. Kevin Broeckling, dean of students; and John Cicero, academic affairs dean, serve ex officio.
If you have information, comments or feedback, please contact any committee member or Nuts & Bolts editor Pete Ellertsen, in Becker L-16A on the SCI campus, 525-1420 ext. 519 or by e-mail at <pellertsen@sci.edu>.
