"A foolish
consistancy is the
hobgoblin of
little minds"
H. Paul Brown
Goals
My general goals in teaching--in
addition to communicating the basic content of any specific course--are
two: first, to help instill critical thinking skills along with an appreciation
for their general importance, and second to invite students into a creative
and ongoing project of learning; to awaken a sense of curiosity about and
engagement in the world. Thus, I see my job, in traditional terms
as preparing students to be active, engaged, critical, rational and flexible
members of society. Many of the courses I teach (Greek Civilization,
Classical Mythology) are, therefore, not only ends in themselves, but means
to these larger ends. This, I suspect, is the goal of every teacher.
Latin or Physics or Basket Weaving is never really only about Latin or
Physics or Basket Weaving; most of our students will not become latinists
or physicists or basket weavers, rather, it's about connecting with them
and exposing them to why we became latinists or physicists or basket weavers,
and, importantly, how. Nevertheless, I take my role as a classicist
seriously. I hope fervently that my students will find classics engaging
and wish to pursue it further, and I see part of my role as instilling
in them the necessary skills and interest to do so. These two roles
are not antithetical. By approaching class this way I hope
to meet the needs of the future classicist as well as the those with only
a passing interest and even the once-only-thanks student. All of
these should be able to get something important and useful from the same
class.
What makes Classics ideal
to pursue such a two-pronged project is the very interdisciplinary nature
of classics itself. Classics is a microcosm of the nexus of learning
that is the Humanities. As classicists we must often wear many hats
(social historian, philosopher, linguist, critical theorist, et alii).
It is this flexibility that suggests how Classics sits squarely at the
center of the Humanities, and how it is so well suited for the project
of helping students become not only potential classicists, but more importantly,
engaged and productive citizens as well.
Methods
It has not been so long
that I can't still remember sitting in the classroom myself. I try
always to keep those memories awake. I try always to keep in mind
how I felt as a student and what worked for me as well as what failed me
in the classroom. Whenever I step onto the stage in front of host
of myth students I always keep in the back of my head, that feeling of
being submerged in that vast sea of anonymous faces staring up at Herr
Professor.
When I approach the classroom
I try to keep two desiderata in mind; I need to be flexible and I wish
to be interdisciplinary.
Flexibility means that
I must approach different types of classes with different methods.
The needs of the beginning language students differ from those in advanced
reading class. The needs of the general survey class differ from
those of the advanced topics classes. The elementary language student
needs to gain command of certain basic facts of the language and then to
develop a cognitive frame-work in which to use those facts. This
is an absolute sine qua non for any later work in the languages.
If my students don't come away from the beginning level class with this,
I've somehow failed to achieve my goal. Advanced readers, on the
other hand, need to be able to interpret that text and to apply what they
find there to any number of other issues. These different goals represent
quite different problems and require different handling. In the former,
I spend lots of time working on memorizing and on strategies for memorizing.
As we move towards the latter, increasingly more time is spent on interpretive
strategies. But flexibility in the classroom is more than just choosing
a method for a class. It means being prepared to handle different
students with different strengths and weaknesses within the same class.
Students come with different backgrounds, different histories and hence
different abilities. Navigating these differences is often quite
difficult, especially in larger classes, and it is here that a teacher
most likely to fail their students. Listening, however, and being
willing to change provides the best chance for a solution. For example,
in the language classroom, some students work better looking at charts
and copying them out, some by reading aloud, some by seeing examples.
So I always approach class as flexibly and as openmindedly as I can, and
I always try to be approachable.
Secondly, I invite students
to work with each other. This allows student to benefit from each
other's strengths. Sometimes a student can explain something in a
way I didn't. By working together, students also develop a sense
of community and investment in the class. Again, I remember in my
elementary language classes how much my fellow students and I helped each
other, and supported each other. I want my students to be able to
benefit from this as well.
I also defined my
approach to the classroom as interdisciplinary. By this I mean that
I don't see classics as situated within a bubble or a shell, but as necessarily
part of a larger world of practice. As I stated before, classics
is itself interdisciplinary and offers a model for a practice of study
and of thinking which is interdisciplinary. Thus a course like Introduction
to Greek Civilization, or Mythology, or even a reading course in an author
or genre, is never only about, say, Greek Civilization, but positions that
investigation over against other concerns (e.g., historical, philosophical,
aesthetic). This approach serves two basic needs. It forces
the classicist or future classicist to engage other, larger -or at least
different- concerns at the same time as it offers to draw that student,
who might never consider classics seriously, into the project of classics.
Thus, for me, teaching classics courses is always about exploiting classics'
interdisciplinary methodology while fitting it into a larger and potentially
richer world of study.