Did you Tell Them?
Deanna Haunsperger
Carleton College has a new faculty workshop during winter break each year so that new faculty have an opportunity to intentionally reflect on the term that just finished, ask questions of established faculty, and re-energize to be ready to start the next term fresh. I greatly enjoyed this scheduled time to bond over pedagogical discussions with other new colleagues across the campus when I was a new faculty member.
Twelve years later, I was asked by the then-head of our Learning and Teaching Center and professor of classics, Chico Zimmerman, to assist in running the new faculty workshop that year. I was honored. Maybe I had, finally, figured it all out.
At one of our planning lunches, Chico and I sat in the snack bar on campus. Planning for the workshop evolved into a conversation about how our own classes had gone that term. I remember kvetching about my students and their apparent lack of knowledge about how to be a student. I mean, haven’t they been breathing student air for thirteen years; they should know how to be a student by now. “Why don’t students know that they should make use of office hours? They don’t seem to understand that they can come into my office and bring friends, and it doesn’t have to be a stressful time. By the time they’re college first-years, shouldn’t they know that they should find some friends and form a study group? It’s more fun learning math with others, and explaining math to others is the best way to be sure you understand it for yourself. And another thing: don’t they understand that struggling through some math problems on their own will be challenging, but it’s how they learn?”
Chico sat, apparently bemused by watching his often-subdued colleague off-load this rant, clearly practiced over her years of teaching. He sat back in his chair and said five words that have rung loudly, like church bells in my belfry, on the first day of class every term since: “Well, did you tell them?”
I remember just staring at him for more than a few beats while I absorbed what he was saying. Eventually I asked, “What do you mean, ‘tell them’?” He went on to explain that yes, perhaps, the students should have absorbed these things from the ether during their many years as students. But since I’m saying that they haven’t, and they’re now sitting in front of me in my class, what should be done about that? He said I should tell them what I think is important for them to be successful in my class, whether or not it’s mathematics that I’m telling them. It’s just as important for them to learn how to learn the mathematics. It’s part of my job.
Now on the first day of class, every class, every term, I tell my students things I want them to know about being a student and being successful both in my class and in mathematics. Eating well and sleeping enough are important. As is coming prepared to class. Find study buddies. Office hours, which I now routinely call Student Hours, are for them. I pass out a handout to students on the first day of class that my colleague Eric Egge and I developed (linked here), and we adjust as needed to the class that we’re teaching. This is in addition to the syllabus which gives information about the class; this is a handout on how to be a successful student. I talk to them about it on the first day of class. And then again at several key junctures throughout the term. I hope that this will be material that serves them well throughout their education, and not just in my class. It’s worth the investment.
Even though they’re in college, students still have things to learn about how to be the best students they can be. And I enjoy continuing to learn things so that I can be the best teacher I can be.
Deanna Haunsperger is a Professor of Mathematics at Carleton College who is still working on her craft.