Winter development reflection 2

A couple of weeks ago I went to a lecture by visiting professor Eiichiro Azuma. He had a host of interesting things to say about the way that the Japanese saw a group of American soldiers of Japanese descent as a model for the rebuilding of their own countries military. More interesting from a mentor perspective was the way he talked about the divisions within the history field. Similar to the way that the humanities itself is subdivided, the history field has split itself up along geographic lines. That is problematic for him because he studies both Japan and the United States by focusing on the experience of all people of Japanese descent. These divisions also change as you go overseas. These distinctions often mean that historians focus on only parts of his work and miss the bigger picture that history can offer. Azuma's experience is similar to the problems that often face UNST faculty in the attempt to put together a cross-disciplinary course. Some professors are willing to ignore the fences between different fields of scholarship, while others are afraid to get out of their comfort zone. Like Professor Azuma, I do not want to be restricted by the arbitrary loyalty to an idea of what history should look like. When approaching material, the only restrictions should only come from the subject itself.

Winter development reflection

During Winter term, I had the opportunity to sit on the mentor transition team. It was the first time that I have ever participated in an self-organized, self-directed group of this sort. We had only a vague mission and had to determine for ourselves the best way to make Dana's transition as smooth as possible. The challenging part was how to balance all of the ideas and concerns that the group had. Some people believed that mentors should be required to recreate their resumes, while others argued that an assignment was not realistic. We also had to balance our mission with the fact that we had no authority to make it happen. We did, however, manage to put together a meeting with Dana and the mentors.

Thoughts about spring term

As usual teaching has been a challenge this term. Thankfully, I was not nearly as nervous this term during the mentor sessions as I was last term. Thanks to a completely disorganized professor, I was constantly forced to reiterate what we were supposed to be doing in class. This left me little space to explore the readings for the class, and was instead left with the task of reinterpreting the professors rambling incoherent lectures. For instance, during the first three weeks of class, the professor attempted to teach the students the definition of what folklore really was. To do this, he did not so much build up a mental framework for identifying folklore so much as he did try to tear down the classes ideas about what folklore was. Needless to say, by the end of the three weeks, the students only knew what folklore was because I gave them a few second lectures during mentor sessions. I know that my job is to help the students interpret the class material, but I would prefer to make a new network of connections to the material rather than teach it again.

Faced with the challenge of an incoherent class structure, I was really forced to really heavily on lesson planning skills I learned in the training and during my first term of mentoring. In order to cover the writing workshops that I had planned, I was forced to really map out each mentor session. This was especially challenging because the professor commandeered the time of three of my mentor sessions to do other class work and the group presentations.

I also used the conflict resolution training that we received during the spring training last year quite a bit. During the training, it was surprising how hard it was to really stop and listen to what the other person had to say with out jumping directly to certain conclusions. My first impulse when listening to a person’s problems before the training was to immediately offer a solution, even though I might not have really understood the solution. The immediate offer of the wrong solution can tell the concerned party that you are not really interested in understanding that persons concerns. During the training we learned to confirm the problems being raised to make sure you really understand what is going on. Saying “what I am hearing is that you have concerns in this area, am I correct?” may make you sound a bit like a therapists, but it as invaluable tool in solving conflicts between students, or between my self and students. This method is also incredibly helpful for understanding student perceptions of class material. Planning and listening are definitely the skills that I use the most in class.

Overall, I would say that the skills that my students needed the most help with was how to balance creativity and with hard and fast definitions from texts. The students tended to do well with free form discussions of certain topics, but when called upon to make critical distinctions about topics in the discussion, they were often at a loss to make distinctions. I think a series of workshops designed to hone their critical eye will help them better strike this balance.