Education Commons^™

The Seditious Class, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

I never saw it coming. My students and I had just shared a splendid semester-long educational experience. I had deftly mixed original readings, engaging class discussions, illuminating lectures, and thoughtful assessments with a community-based project that gave students the opportunity to apply course concepts in a real-world setting. Or had I? You would think that, after some 30 years of opening packets of students’ evaluations at the semester’s end (and now, downloading them from the University’s evil evaluation website), that the thrill would be gone—no more disappointment, elation, or surprise.

Not so.

My course was a required one, populated with …

Tackling The Pic: Successes And Challenges In Teaching The Prison-Industrial Complex, Melissa Ooten

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

“But they’re criminals. We should lock them up and throw away the key!” my student, using a tired refrain, declared. She soon had a classroom of her peers— thoughtful, engaged students who often enjoyed analyzing complicated and difficult social issues—nodding in support. Thus began my entry into teaching and discussing the prison industrial complex (PIC) and abolitionism in a college classroom. Luckily, the class moved beyond this knee-jerk reaction, but I learned a valuable lesson that day. While I regularly engage students in thinking critically about poverty, social justice, race relations, feminism, and inclusion, exploring the possibilities of abolishing a …

Technology Follows Technique: Refocusing The Observational Lens, Anton Brinckwirth, Elizabeth M. Kissling, Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Carlos Valencia

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

Digital video is being applied to teacher training, development, and evaluation. This chapter evokes theories and practices of performance observation and improvement. It demonstrates facilitative media used in the design and implementation of a current interinstitutional project by the authors. Simultaneously, the implications of teaching evaluation techniques caught in the lens of digital observation technologies lead to considerations of their personal and social impact on the field of world language teacher training and professional development in the 21st Century. A more communal and non-hierarchical approach, called peer coaching, is advanced with a value-added digital video and e-community twist.

What I Do All Day: Professor Spends 5 Hours A Week Teaching Class, But Here's How It's A 55-Hour Week, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Professors, like the students around whom we structure our lives, don't follow the same rhythms and schedules of most people. People in the academy, whatever their age, tend to follow unusual hours, work in cycles of desperately hard labor and periods of less desperation, tend to work in places other than a central office, tend to spend considerable amounts of time alone or in intense conversation with a few people, tend not to work in terms reflected in billable hours or tightly scheduled appointments. The fruits of our labor are not always visible to the casual observer. For that reason, …