What Teachers Learn When They Take Classes

Given teaching loads and the regular demands of academic life, it’s not realistic to expect teachers to take classes, but when they do, what they learn about teaching is extraordinary. This isn’t the first account we’ve shared in the newsletter; it probably won’t be the last. There are important lessons to be learned from the experiences of others.

Marshall Gregory, a professor of English with some years of experience behind him—we have highlighted other of his pedagogical publications in previous issues—recently took an undergraduate Shakespeare acting class.

“If I live for a hundred years, I will never forget the exercise of being rolled back and forth on a gym mat by undergraduate women while I recited my soliloquy from Hamlet using only vowels, no consonants. This exercise was the death-blow to any shred of dignity that I might have tried to fake as a wise old owl hanging out among a flock of fluttery undergraduate songbirds.” (p. 309)

The article contains a lengthy discussion of four learning tactics used in acting class that Gregory thinks have application in arts and humanities classes, but highlighted here are three lessons Gregory learned about teaching through this experience.

The first he labels “the value of first-hand incompetence.” When teachers walk into a classroom, they are the smartest and most competent people present in relation to the content. They have studied its minutiae for years and know intimately more details than students will begin to grasp in their nine- or 15-week journey through the material.

Teachers quickly forget what it feels like to enter a classroom knowing virtually nothing about the content.

“I cannot tell you how educational it was for me as a teacher to be the worst student in the class.” (p. 310) From that experience, Gregory learned that “…what teachers need is a deeper empathy for the rich swirls of our students’ anxieties and initial incompetence, not so we can let them off the hook for learning or hard work, but so we can understand why they resist so powerfully being put on the learning hook in the first place.” (p. 311)

Next, Gregory writes about “the value of being a model learner for students.” “My willingness to be a raw learner stretching hard to reach the first rungs of competence—and my willingness, despite palpable embarrassment, to show the warts of my incompetence—was a lesson to my fellow students.” (pp. 311-12) Gregory doesn’t think most teachers model real learning for students. He points out that we ask students questions to which we already know four answers, all of which we would happily discuss at length. Teachers are reluctant to display incompetence, limits, or questions they can’t answer, especially in front of students. Gregory learned that students are inspired by teachers who act more like learners and less like polished experts.

Finally, Gregory learned the power of “a true learning community.” Students in Gregory’s humanities classes (and he suspects the same for students in other humanities and science courses) don’t know each other the same way students in the acting class came to know each other. In acting class, students knew much more than each other’s names. They participated in activities outside of class. In class they supported each other. If someone botched lines, classmates offered advice and encouragement. If someone did well in a scene, classmates offered congratulations and praise.

Gregory admits that this kind of intimacy is hard to replicate in humanities and science courses, but he believes faculty need to work hard to achieve something close to it.

He has students introduce themselves to each other time and again—saying not just their names but offering information about their likes and dislikes, places of origin, and aspirations. His goal is to help students build up a “fund of knowledge” about each other.

Would that academic environs were more conducive to faculty taking classes—until they are, we should pay close attention to the experiences of those who manage to once again become students in a college classroom.