Teaching at GHP

On the student survey, we ask, “Was the content of your classes different from classes at your school?” We do not replicate the high school curriculum. We do not teach the Georgia Performance Standards or the Common Core. We provide our students with material that they will not encounter in a regular high school classroom.

Your class may be a college-level kind of course, or it might take students deeper into material to which they’ve already been introduced. You could do a broad introduction to a field, or delve deeply into a specific topic or work.

Some examples from years past:

• Hap Truslow (SocStuds) brought photocopies of actual pension files of the New York Irish Brigade of the Union Army. Each student got his “own” soldier, and Hap guided them through decoding the documents in the file. The student had to evaluate whether the claim for a pension was justified based on their research into the Civil War battles the soldier (or his heirs) claimed he was in and the wounds he claimed to have received.
• In Science (various instructors), the ecology students do field research using the various habitats here on campus, especially the creek. They learn to make specific and close observations and then set up experiments to answer questions they’ve developed.
• Jobie Johnson (CommArts) guides students through Anglo-Saxon poetry, giving them the tools they need to pick apart the pagan basis from the Christian overlays.
• Mike Funt (Theatre) works with masks and clowning to teach students how to use their bodies to express a storyline.

You have probably already talked to your department chair about what you want to cover in your class. If not, do so soon!

A good question is, “How different is too different?” We have to be able to afford whatever you’re teaching, of course; practical nuclear physics is probably not a good topic, and the budget certainly will not allow for a classroom set of the Riverside Shakespeare. Also, while our students are intellectually sophisticated, they are still minors. You have more latitude in addressing mature topics than you would back home, but remember that not just anything goes. My rule for that is if the topic is defensible, I will defend it. If you have questions about your plans, run them by me.

In comments, share ideas and questions you have about your instruction.

NEXT: Delivery and expectation of student response

On the student survey, we ask, “Was the way your teacher taught it different from your school?” While lecture is sometimes the most expedient way to get information into the students’ heads, we expect to see more than just lecture going on in GHP classes.

That is not to scare you away from lecture completely. Some of GHP’s finest courses have been lecture courses. But on the whole, the rubric to remember is that if you feel as if you’re working too hard, it’s probably because you are. Use delivery models that put the burden of learning on the student: discovery, read and response, abstraction/analysis/synthesis, etc.

As I observe you this summer, I do not necessarily need to see you standing and delivering. If I walk into your room and it looks as if you’re sitting in the corner doing nothing, that’s probably a good thing, as long as it’s obvious that the kids are deeply engaged and productive because of some switch you’ve flipped. One summer when I toured State School Superintendent Kathy Cox around the campus, in most of the classes we entered we didn’t see the teacher do anything. And it was fabulous.

We also ask the students, “Was the way the teacher(s) asked you to respond to it different?” and “Was what the teacher(s) expected you to do with it different?”

What does that mean? As an example, in a regular math class the student might be expected to learn a paradigm for solving a particular kind of problem, and then to practice that paradigm. At GHP, the student might be expected to develop a paradigm for solving a class of problems, or to be able to explain alternatives to the paradigm, or to create problems that would defeat the paradigm.

In music, rather than a goal of merely “getting all the notes right,” we could expect students to explore historically appropriate stylistic issues, or to be able to verbalize how their ensemble visualized a certain passage.

Ask yourself: when a student leaves my class, what should he be able to do that he wasn’t able to do before?

In comments, discuss things that you found to be clear or unclear about the differentiation of delivery and expectation of student response.

NEXT: Empowerment