On being the one with the chalk.

After teaching my third class today, I have started to form some general conclusions. First, it's a bad idea to wear a black dress on days when I am teaching, because by the end of the hour, I am covered in chalk; high heels, however, are a good idea, because they let me reach the top most area of the board with relative ease.

Also, I started to classify my students by type. There are many types, and they become so apparent when you assume the position at the front of the room.

There is the anxious type, and the relaxed type. There is the guy who took pre-calculus in college, and rolls his eyes whenever somebody asks an obvious question. There is the girl who sits quietly during class, but as soon as the hour ends, stalks me to the elevator and presses on with numerous questions. There is the girl who brings me cookies during office hours. And there is the guy who clearly knows the material really well, but is painfully unsure of himself. And his friend, the guy who doesn't understand that numbers don't behave like that in our universe. And there are, of course, those who want to know why the hell they have to learn this.

If I were teaching an undergraduate math class, for example, the answer would be simple: because I said so. Or, more convincingly: because The Dean said so. I think that the College bulletin even has a bit about how seemingly useless courses contribute to a well-rounded liberal arts education, and therefore, make you more interesting at cocktail parties. We all know that bit, and some of you even made a career out of it. But at the graduate level, especially at the School of Social Work, I can't spin that shpil too effectively. (Also, everyone in the class is older than I am, which makes it somewhat difficult to command great authority about such things). The people that I am dealing with are studying with a specific goal in mind. And to make things worse, that goal is quite noble, especially as compared to the more popular make-the-rich-richer ambitions of the law and b-school crowd. These people take classes like Child Abuse 101, so my sense of perspective makes it difficult for me to wax poetic about the profound significance of differential calculus. The best that I could come up with is that knowing how to do this math will make it possible for them to successfully argue about economic policy, and that will make their cause stronger. A mathematical argument about supply and demand makes a greater impression on heartless politicians than does an emotional appeal about right and wrong. So, I said that, because I buy it, and hopefully they do too.

Also, I had to come to terms with the devastating realization that when you only have one hour, constructivist teaching principles go out the window, and the dreaded need for coverage takes immediate precedence. Oh how I wish that I could let them discover the fundamental theorem of calculus. How swell that would be. But I only have enough time to explain it to them, and hope that they understand enough to be able to do the problem sets. And so I am beginning to see that the greatest constraint in adopting a true constructivist pedagogy is time, rather than the availability of quality instructors and resources. That is a disheartening conclusion, you see, because the quality of instructors and resources can be improved with higher requirements, better graduate programs, and more funds. But time is a more rigid constraint.

If anything, I can now say that I really do understand the (surmountable) challenges of this issue, and the fact that overcoming those challenges is far more crucial at the formative elementary and secondary grade levels.