Teaching at GHP

Marcie:

My office hours are basically whenever I’m awake. I’m at meals in the Palms Dining Hall, and those are also office hours. Feel free to sit and chat.

My apartment is my office, and when the door is open, I’m “in.” It won’t look like I’m in, because you have to go behind the front desk, through the supply room into my apartment, and then come down a long hall into my living area/office area. But if the door is open, just barge on in.

You may poke your head in my door and see me working. Just come on in! If the door is closed, and you really need to see me, knock. If I am in my apartment, I will answer.

Dale:

My office hours are whenever you see me. I’m at meals in the Palms Dining Hall, and those are also office hours. Feel free to sit and chat.

My apartment is my office, and you are always welcome to come knock on my door, which is a little out of the way this year: you have to go all the way around the west end of Langdale.  (I’d give you more explicit instructions, but the first time I saw this space in April, it wasn’t even finished.  I think it’s in a little cubbyhole to the right of the patio area.)

We have WiFi in the dorm!!! The copier may be networked—hope springs eternal—if so, there will be instructions on printing from your computer in your dorm room. There will also be instructions on how not to waste half a ream of paper trying to get your copies just right, and on how to avoid jams. Do us all a favor and familiarize yourself with them! The copier is your friend and does not have any ill-intentions towards you or your subject area.

Having guests? Not a problem, generally. There will be a form on the front desk for you to fill out and give to Marcie.

If the guest is for your instructional program, Marcie will set up a room with linens for them. They’ll also get a room key and an ID tag. (The ID gets them into the dorm. It does not feed them like our IDs do.)

If it’s a personal guest who’s staying in the room with you, Marcie doesn’t really need a form.

If it’s a personal guest who needs a separate room, fill out the form so Marcie can get them a room key and ID tag. You will need to provide linens for personal guests.

To be clear: we pay for instructional guests to eat at the Palms, but not personal guests.

You are about to have an amazing summer. Yes, you are anxious, nervous, panic-stricken. We all were. Dale says:

“I distinctly remember the first time I saw the campus and my dorm room and wondered what I had gotten myself into. Would I do a good job? Would I ‘get it’? Would I make any friends? How would I even know what to do or where to go?”

Clearly he did OK and you will, too! You are joining the best educational team in the state, bar none. We look forward to helping you “get it,” and we really look forward to having your talents added to our enormous pool.

And finally, a simple list of questions that we will be using to evaluate your instructional design:

• Is the material new, different? Is the strategy innovative? Are both appropriate?
• How are students being challenged, stretched to think, perform, produce?
• What knowledge is new? What skills are the students learning or practicing? What related behaviors are they expected to demonstrate? Have they been prepared to deal with the knowledge/skills/behavior?
• What kind of interaction is visible? Who is interacting with whom?
• Who is generating the task/learning activity? What is the type of learning activity? (Renzuli I, II, or III)
• What is the general level of motivation, concentration, alacrity to perform/produce, perseverance, creativity, tolerance of ambiguity, of the students? (Habits of Mind)

NEXT: Odds & ends

A word about observations. If you’re a first-timer, Marcie will set up a time with you sometime during the first week to come watch your class. She will observe for at least 30 minutes. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing when she comes in, nor do you have to acknowledge her when she leaves. (The same applies to Dale.)

She will try to get with you later to chat about what she saw. If she fails to do so, you can assume that she didn’t see any problems at all. (Conversely, do not assume, if we approach you, that we have issues with your teaching.)

She will be back to observe at least twice more during the summer. At least one of those observations she’ll ask you to tell her a good time to come. Other times she may just pop in. She is not trying to “catch” you doing anything except a good job.

Do not worry that it looks like you’re not doing anything. As long as the students are actively engaged, participating, and producing, you’re teaching.

In other words, relax about the observation/assessment thing.

Today’s criteria have to do with classroom management.

What is the class activity/student task?

An observer should be able to discern what’s going on, or at least that something is going on.

Who is doing the talking? the listening? the analyzing? the decision making? the problem solving? In what balance?

Especially as the class progresses, we really need to see more and more student activity compared to the amount that you’re center stage. We should also see a balance among the students: there shouldn’t be a “smart kid” problem.

What materials/equipment is being used and how?

Let us not see worksheets, please. Hide them or something. (N.B.: handouts are not worksheets. You probably should be handing those out.)

Are the students engaged directly with the material, or are they having to go through you to get it?

If your classroom is a smart room, are you able to incorporate that effectively?

What posture are the students in? Where is the teacher? Is every student actively engaged?

No sleeping! You also want to check for “boredom” postures. If there’s resistance to the material, figure out why. Is it the one kid, or is it all of them?

Are you actively monitoring student response, or are you hiding in the work?

How is the learning environment arranged?

This is more important than you might think. Every summer, VSU’s staff moves literal mountains of furniture for us so that your classroom is set up for maximum flexibility. Make sure you use that flexibility appropriately. (Science labs are less flexible, to be sure.)

If you’re lecturing, students need to be facing you. If you’re having a class discussion, you all need to be in a circle so everyone can see each other. Small group work in small groups. Panel discussion: small group up front, everyone else facing them.

If you have a larger room and you need interactivity between the students, don’t let them spread out. Bunch them, preferably up close to you.

What role is the instructor taking, e.g., lecturer, demonstrator, resource person, facilitator, etc.?

All of these are valid, and you should have realized by now that you will want to be open to all of them.

From what source is the information coming?

Vid. sup., how close are kids to the primary source? Renzulli I activities may require you to do a lot of shoveling, but our goal at GHP is to move out of that phase as quickly as possible.

NEXT: Your evaluation: Instructional functions, part II

How will you know if you’re doing a good job? We use both operational criteria and classroom criteria in deciding whether to ask you to return to teach another summer. The operational criteria are what Dale’s wife (a personnel director) calls “conditions of employment,” i.e., if you don’t take care of these, you’re not doing your job (and will not be rehired).

Attention to time constraints

Start on time, finish on time. Majors start at 8:00 a.m and end at 12:30 p.m., unless your classroom is in Fine Arts, in which case your time is 8:15-12:45. (The time difference is to spread out the 800 people for lunch.) Also, dance majors in University Center are on the 8:00-12:30 schedule so that they can arrive at Palms Dining Center at a reasonable time.

Do not allow tardies, and do not ever let students go early. This is a matter of supervision. They cannot get back into their dorms until 12:30—the doors are locked until then—and if they come to lunch before then, then that fact will be noticed by either Dale or Marcie.

Students can not “get out of minors” to do work on major classes. Remember this as time becomes short and nerves become frayed.

Supervision of students

Know where they are! Do not allow the students any opportunity to get into trouble. Even if you have them doing independent work, circulate. If you’re in the library (or out on campus somewhere), arrange to meet everyone at a specified checkpoint before returning to class, leaving for break, or dismissing.

Prepare yourself a series of sticky notes to leave on the classroom door for when you’re not in there: computer lab, library, West Lawn, the creek, wherever we can find you if we need to.

Discipline is the same, yet very different, than a regular high school. It is the same in the behavior we expect of our students (although the atmosphere is quite a bit more relaxed), but it is different in that we have no administrative system to monitor that discipline. Nor do we want one: we interpret inappropriate behavior as an indication that the student doesn’t want to be a part of the GHP community. It is part of your job to make sure it doesn’t get to that point.

Make your expectations clear. Don’t tolerate behavior that impedes your class, but do your best not to draw lines in the sand.

Use of support areas

In addition to the sixteen majors at GHP, there are four support areas: computers, counseling, fitness, and media. You are expected to use each of them in your department. If your department chair hasn’t broached this with you already, ask.

We have one computer lab for student use. You can sign up for lab time for majors. Computers have their own minors, so lab time is more sparse in the afternoon. (The VSU library also has banks of computers that we use.)

Counseling, in addition to serving as a support area for your instruction, actually counsels. A lot. Look out for those unhappy/angry/withdrawn students the first few days, and offer to hook them up with a counselor if necessary.

Fitness offers fitness activities before breakfast and in the evenings which you are welcome to join. They’ll have a schedule posted in the dorm. They also offer team-building exercises for your majors (as well as other sessions you will find useful).

Media is there to guide your students through the resources they need to do the work you assign. During the first week, you are required to take your class to Odum Library at some point for orientation.  Work with the media specialist on that!

Response to requests for information

Better known as “paperwork.” There’s not a lot at GHP, and your department chair will handle most of it, but when we ask you for info, we need that info. If we have to come ask you for it, that’s a bad thing.

Engagement & participation

You, too, should be engaged and participating in GHP. Go to the concerts. Attend other departments’ public events. Teach a seminar. (Dale teaches a Sunday night series on historical social dance: the waltz, the polka, English country dance, the foxtrot, the tango.)

You should be having a good time: hang out in the dorm lobby with the nutcases there. Eat lunch with members of other departments. Give the math people a hard time.

It is also acceptable to sit quietly in your room and work on lessons.

Finally, maintain your sense of humor. As Mr. Bennet says in Pride & Prejudice, “For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors, and to laugh at them in our turn?” It has been our experience that someone without a sense of humor, particularly about themselves, will not succeed at GHP.

Random details

We require the students to wear their nametags at all times. You will do the same.

GHP is free to its participants. Do not ask students to spend money on anything in order to do the work you assign.

NEXT: Your evaluation: Instructional functions, part I