In an increasingly complex world, with courseloads becoming heavier and heavier, shouldn't we be opting for more accountability when it comes to our professors, not less?
A good teacher feels his way, looking for response.
I've invented several games for use as teaching tools in my classroom: one of them, a game called 'Iron Age: Council of the Clans,' got so popular among my students that they encouraged me to publish it, which I did.
Good teachers realise that the students are the antenna; they are sensing things that the teachers don't yet sense.
I made a point of always teaching undergraduates because they are not a captive audience. . . . I always tried out my research ideas first in the classroom to get feedback from people who didn't have to listen to me if I didn't make it interesting.
I really like visiting schools, but what I tell students isn't anywhere near as interesting to me as what they tell me.
When it comes to my vocabulary, I felt a responsibility when I was teaching to raise the bar of conversation in my classroom. And with my own students, I refused to let them use the phrase "I like" or "I don't like" when we were engaged in a critique.
I am no Rushdie. The only people who think of silencing me are my students, on days when my lectures are more opaque than usual.
In school, I guess I was a difficult, know-it-all type of student... I was always complaining that music education was too academic.
I've learned a lot about writing from listening to my students talk.
As you lecture, you keep watching the faces, and information keeps coming back to you all the time.
A young professor I watched in action at one of our large eastern colleges used to stand with his back to the class and mumble explanations of blackboard problems. He was "let out" at the end of two years because students refused to attend his classes. He was given an evasive reason for his dismissal and he left with justifiable bitterness toward the administration. If someone had told him the truth he could have avoided this denouement. Sometimes professors go on for years without any conception of remediable faults which irritate their listeners.
I used to get so many letters from students about the ending of 'Pro Femina.' So I had a stamp made that said 'irony, irony, irony' to put on a postcard and mail it back.
During my school visits, I really enjoy the feedback I get from them much more than anything I might tell say to them.
I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing.
Secondary school parents tell me that they are frustrated, that their teachers ignore them, their children don't give them much feedback because they are adolescents, they feel kind of out of the loop.
I've certainly enjoyed doing clinic tours for larger audiences, but the most valuable teaching experience has been the hundreds of lessons that I've given where I can hear the students play.
One of the things I miss about teaching is that students would tell me what I ought to read. One of my students, back in the 1960s, put me onto Borges, and I remember another mentioning Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two-Birds in the same way.
I wrote my first 30 books as a teacher. I would read to my classes, and they'd give me feedback. I was trying to role model.
I get letters from classes all the time. Say it's assigned in someone's 8th grade class, and the teacher asks everyone to write a letter to me about their impressions and what they learned. So, it's incredibly gratifying to hear.
