There I was, a nervous graduate student facing a crowd of four-hundred students. Their faces dimly lit by the auditorium lights as the feedback echoed during my sound check. Only 22 years old, and somehow it was expected that I was to teach Critical Thinking (during my Teaching Internship to complete my Certificate in Teaching Critical Thinking and Logic) to students not much younger than myself. I was nervous as I approached the stage and grabbed the microphone. Even in my time as a lead singer of various bands I wasn’t this nervous. Somehow the thought that I was responsible for helping these students learn how to become better thinkers struck a chord of responsibility within. So, what had I done before taking the stage to teach?
I prepared, prepared, prepared, and then I prepared even more. Every fallacy and their Latin names, Venn Diagrams, each syllogism’s Medieval form, and the major philosophers who contributed to critical thinking were studied, learned, and memorized before that first day. Some might say that I was prepared. Some might say that I was even over prepared. They were both right.
Somehow I felt the pressure to not only present the syllabus and the first week’s materials. Instead, I felt compelled to inspire an appreciation for the importance of Critical Thinking (our present higher education culture is an indicator that there is room for improvement). Yet, I thought the best way to do this was to provide a “big picture” view of the way that Critical Thinking has developed from the early days of Aristotle to the later formal developments of Frege.
And so I taught. And, boy, did I teach. There I was, pacing the stage, enthusiastically waving my arms to illustrate key points, and making (what I thought were) humorous remarks to engage the crowd. And when I was done, only 20 minutes of the class time had passed. Now, this would not be so bad if the class was meant to meet for 20 minutes. But we were supposed to meet for an 1h15m!
There I was fumbling, my teaching mentor (Greg Tropea, RIP) observing me. When I looked to him, I expected to see him shaking his head in disappointment. But worse…he was laughing. I was mortified and the students looked worse than bored. I felt that I had failed and that I was not cutout for teaching. All hopes of inspiring others to care about the nature of reality, knowledge, and values were quickly dashed. So what did I do?
As I stared at the crowd of seemingly apathetic students, I asked “Does anyone have a question?” No one raised a hand. Silence. (Thankfully this was not during the day of smart phones–otherwise, I would have been staring at a sea of glowing faces.) Then, in the back, I heard a voice.
One of the TA’s ran over to the student with the microphone. The student’s voice echoed over the PA system, asking “Can we go?” I responded, “No.”
I then asked the student, “What is the attendance policy?” The student couldn’t respond (there was no attendance policy).
I then asked “How many exams are in the class?” Students began shuffling through the syllabus to look. Then a student raised her hand to respond. After a minute for the TA to run over with the microphone, she correctly responded “Four.” Soon, the students were sifting through the syllabus and began asking questions regarding assignments and grading expectations.
Then, a student asked “What is Critical Thinking?” The other students laughed. I responded, “That’s a fantastic question. What is Critical Thinking?” The students then began to quiet themselves as I could tell they were actually trying to come up with the answer (or at least the students in the front few rows). Soon enough, a student looked to the definition of ‘Critical Thinking’ written on the syllabus and raised his hand. He responded
Critical Thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, in which students will be taught how to avoid jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question. In other words, it is a skill in which students learn how to think about thinking while adopting the proper patterns of reasoning.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “Critical Thinking”
I then asked, “Why would we want to do that?”
I had the students discuss the question with each other and soon the uproar of conversation filled the auditorium. I looked to my advisor, who was no longer laughing. Instead, he simply nodded his head in acknowledgement of the successful turn of events.
The students were able to discuss where they had difficulties communicating their own ideas; how they felt duped into doing something that they didn’t want to do; and how they did not know how to properly argue.
What had started as an apparent train wreck turned out to be an insightful discussion about the details of the course, but, more importantly, the course’s significance.
It wasn’t until about the fifth year of teaching that I came across James Lang’s book On Course: A Week-By-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching. While I had certainly developed better preparation skills, including how to not over prepare, I wish I had that book during my first semester.
I hope I’ll have an opportunity during this blogging series to talk about the day I tried to teach while wearing a tie.
Conversing with Mimir 