Incidents (Or Narrative Slices) of Teaching at Its Best
Patricia O’Connell Killen, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita, Religion, Pacific Lutheran University
Resource 1
NOTE: Most faculty are familiar with conversations about teaching at the level of problem solving, broad generalization, and even argument about more and less effective teaching strategies. While such conversations can be useful, they do not yield the textured insights that emerge from a different kind of conversation: one that is anchored in and remains close to instructors’ actual experience and practice. The assignment that is Resource 1 guides faculty in retrieving and preparing specific slices from their teaching life to serve as anchor and focus for this different kind of conversation about teaching.
Assignment
During our gathering, we want our conversations to be grounded in actual experience and practice of teaching. To help assure that, we are asking that each of you reflect on your teaching experience to date and prepare two short written descriptions of “teaching at its best.”
Think back over your teaching experience. Identify two different incidents from your experience as a teacher that, when you recall each one, elicits an appreciative, positive response, perhaps a sense of gratitude, possibly even a smile. Each should be an incident of teaching during which you, your students, and the material were aligned, the energy in the classroom flowed, and students’ learning was palpable. The incidents can be from a physically proximate or a virtual teaching setting. They can be from a classroom, field experience, study abroad, civic engagement, or other teaching setting. The incidents could be highs or lows, times of serendipitous insight, or times when your students and you together engaged a tough conundrum or thorny issue. What matters is that each incident involve you, students, and material, and that when you recall the incident, you would tag it “teaching at its best.”
For each of the incidents, please write a two-paragraph summary. In the first paragraph, please provide a bit of context for the incident and then describe it concretely – “who” did “what,” “when,” “where,” “how,” “to what end.” Speak to how you saw the students evidencing that they were learning. Describe the incident so that we might be in the moment with your students and you. In the second paragraph, in a couple sentences respond to the question: What made this an incident of “teaching at its best”?
We will be working from these reflections, so please pick incidents that you are willing and able to share with colleagues. Also, please refrain from over thinking this assignment. There is no “right” or “wrong” response, there is your teaching experience. And, seriously, only two paragraphs per incident, no missives.