{"id":122,"date":"2009-04-07T08:48:04","date_gmt":"2009-04-07T15:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=122"},"modified":"2009-04-07T09:43:01","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T16:43:01","slug":"getting-meta-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/getting-meta-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting meta in the classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"HEY!<\/a>
HEY! WAKE UP! Photo by Sara!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve been going through some old teaching evaluations and in between cringing (“I hate Miriam!”) and patting myself on the back (“I love Miriam!”) I was struck by one student’s comment.<\/p>\n

This was for a film theory section. I think generally the class was successful, but it a) was a theory class and b) took place during late-afternoon dead-time (oh, and c) I’m not exactly Robin Williams<\/em>), so occasionally the tenor of the classroom would get a little, shall we say, less than wildly enthusiastic. Anyway, this student said, to paraphrase, that when things got slow, “I wish Miriam would have said, ‘HEY! WAKE UP!’ to get our attention.”<\/p>\n

I think this student is totally right, and the comment made me think about why I’m sometimes hesitant to acknowledge slowdowns and other problems in the classroom. For me, I think the reason comes down to the difference between a learning environment and a social setting.<\/p>\n

I occasionally have a tendency to view section as an extended dinner party, meaning it’s my responsibility to ensure everyone’s happy and having a good time. And it would be really awkward if, at a dinner party, your host stopped everything to say, “You know what? This isn’t really working. Talk more!”<\/p>\n

But of course section isn’t (sometimes really<\/em> isn’t) a party, and I’m certainly not the host, and students know that. We’re in this together, for better or worse, for the semester, and its in both of our interests to get over our social hangups and confront some awkwardness. Although I love getting to know my students, our relationship is not primarily one of friendship, for the very important reason that I need to be able to jolt them awake from time to time.<\/p>\n

So I’ve resolved to get more meta about classroom dynamics the next time around. I’m hoping a little enforced reflection will help us all to make it through those spring afternoons when Christian Metz and I are having a hard time competing with sunshine on the quad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been going through some old teaching evaluations and in between cringing (“I hate Miriam!”) and patting myself on the back (“I love Miriam!”) I was struck by one student’s comment. This was for a film theory section. I think generally the class was successful, but it a) was a theory class and b) took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}