Baby steps

Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash

I love to tinker with my classes. It doesn't matter how long I've taught a class, every semester I will try something new. 

Much of this is internally driven. Each semester gives me new insights into how students learn and how I can better support them. Then, too, solving one teaching challenge almost always reveals other issues that were lurking in the background. 

Many of the changes I make, though, are inspired by conversations with other educators, teaching conferences, cool things I've read about, etc. There is always some new shiny thing that I want to bring to class!

I'm always a bit stunned, then, to learn of colleagues who never change much more than the due dates on their syllabi from one semester to the next. 

I know that part of their stringency is born from time constraints. Research faculty, for instance, don't usually have much extra time to learn about cutting-edge pedagogy or to play with the latest teaching technology. For them, the grant proposal due in two weeks is far more pressing than revamping a class that, while far from perfect, is working well enough.

Really, though, I think that's more often than not a convenient excuse. It plays into whatever the academic equivalent of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is that makes "securing funding" and "publishing research" far, far more foundational than "teaching effectively." 

It also belies a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of change. My classes aren't what they are today because I rebuild them from scratch every semester. Far from it! Rather, they have evolved incrementally, little by slow, one or two steps at a time.

One of my favorite teaching books is Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, by Rafe Esquith, a fifth-grade teacher in Los Angeles. Observing his class in Room 56 for a week, you'd likely find his students engaged in live science demonstrations, rehearsing Shakespear, practicing instruments for their rock-and-roll band, and arguing over fine points of movies in his film club--among many other things!

Did Esquith wake up one early August morning with a sudden flash of inspiration, throwing all the intricate pieces of his class together in the two weeks before the new school year began? Of course not! 

Rather, he made small changes--bold to be sure--but nevertheless incremental changes every year. As Lao Tzu observed, "a path is formed by walking on it." What begins as a vague impression of trampled grass, with enough time and traffic, becomes a trail, a road, a highway.

My point is that creating an intricate, dynamic learning environment doesn't happen overnight. That's as true for research faculty as it is for teaching faculty. Indeed, it's true for any endeavor. If you're research faculty, think about the sophistication of your research today compared to what you were doing in graduate school. Think about the tools and methodologies you have at your fingertips now. Did those come to you all at once? Of course not. You're able to do what you do now because of small, incremental changes that had a snowballing effect.

In other words, don't discount the power of small steps. 

You don't have the time to completely flip your classroom? Don't! Chances are, though, you could flip, say, one lesson. 

Can't work your head around changing all of your learning assessments? Try creating just one, perhaps as an extra-credit assignment as a first run. 

Unhappy with the textbook but can't possibly revamp all your lectures to conform to a new one? Try finding one outside reading that better supports your learning objectives and build your lecture around that. 

Baby steps are still steps and, over time, you'll be amazed at how far they can take you.