Printer FriendlyThe following lecture was presented by Associate Professor Bill Berkowitz on May 14, 2001, at a series entitled: “If This Were The Last Lecture I Would Give, What Would I Say?” organized by the Multi-faith Council of the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
“The Enchanted Classroom”
I'd like to talk about enchantment, and the enchanted classroom. This particular story begins with the fact that I'm teaching social psychology this semester. And it was with a whole bunch of mixed feelings that I recently realized that I began teaching this class 35 years ago. Those feelings included pleasure in the continuity and integration of my life. Gratification that I can still be doing what I enjoy. Wonder and mild surprise that I'm still doing it. And, not the least, some sadness in that I still haven't got it right, and may never get it right before my teaching career is over.
When I started 35 years ago, even though I was a relative beginner, I felt I was doing a competent job. Now that I'm more experienced, I think I'm doing a little better, though who can say for sure? My teaching evaluations are not too bad, though not necessarily raves. My department chair seems happy enough. I'm more comfortable talking on my feet, without notes, though I'm not entirely sure that's a blessing. If you asked, I'd say I'm an above-average teacher, though I've seen data that suggest that 90% of classroom teachers feel the same way, which of course only proves the Lake Wobegon theory of self-evaluation and ego defense.
Yet I still haven't got it right. I know it deep down, in my bones. I know it every time I walk out the classroom door, which means I know it many many times over a semester, and many more times than I care to remember.
But that type of statement may not be too helpful unless we've got some clearer idea of what getting it right means. So I'll give an example, a formative and it turns out defining example for me, that occurred when I was in college.
I was exploring many different fields back then, and found myself, why I can't be sure, in a course called Comparative Government. It was a large lecture class, maybe 200 people. The particular unit we were studying was British government, and the class topic for the day was the British civil service, not normally something that makes one's heart beat faster. The professor teaching the course was good, though up to this point not remarkable. But for whatever reason, something happened during that class period. Something clicked, some gear shifted; you could feel the class being lifted. Everyone felt it, too. British government became a metaphor for all that was thrilling about teaching and learning. And at the end of the class, something happened that I have never experienced in college, before or since, from either side of the lectern -- the class rose as one and cheered. They gave the professor a standing ovation. ...That experience left a mark on me. I don't remember anything about the British civil service, but I do remember, and will always remember, what went on in class that day.
And since I have become a college professor, I've thought almost from the very beginning, and even more now, about the importance of going for the standing ovation. Or maybe the audience cheers and stamps its feet. Maybe they leap out of their chairs, or maybe they are so stunned that they can only sit in shocked silence. Not necessarily literally, though any of these would be nice. I can deal with the applause, or the shock. I mean figuratively too, where you as instructor create a state of mind in your students where they are transfixed by what is going on in your classroom, and you provide for them a moment of transcendence. Well, that doesn't happen much. It doesn't happen much in my own classroom, if at all, of that I am sure. Here's basically what happens: I provide some decent content. I provide some enthusiasm to go along with it; otherwise, why am I working here? I'll structure the course fairly well, so that students know what they are supposed to do. I will encourage, for I'm a pretty good coach. And I'll go a little out of my way to reach out to students, to learn their names, to give them references and resources, to ask them about themselves, and their lives, which they may or may not appreciate, and also to show caring about them personally, for I'm high on nurturance. I suppose in these respects I'm like many other teachers at UMass/Lowell, and like you.
And having done these things, while some learning may take place, what happens is that students don't show up for class, even though they are strongly advised to and even though they know that class participation counts for 20% or more of their grade. Those that are there may stare into space or slump in their seats. They may doodle in their notebooks. Worse, occasionally they may talk with their neighbor when I'm talking, which upsets me no end and really drives me crazy. And they will sell our wonderful textbook back to the bookstore, for money, and won't even think about keeping it. And they won't say thank you or good-bye at the end of the semester. When they hand in their final exam, they'll just walk out the door.
Yes, I know many of the students in my undergraduate classes are majoring in management or computer science or CJ or nothing yet, and that they may be just filling an open class block. I know they have jobs and often have stressful lives. I know that some normative studies have shown that at any given time about 40% of students in a class are thinking about something else, and about half of that time they are thinking about relationships and sex.
Those are some of the barriers. Despite them, most of these students will learn something of value, some more than others. But I can tell you that transcendence is not being created in that classroom.
And truth is that I don't see it being created much around here. When I walk down the corridors of Mahoney and other class buildings, I can't help noticing what goes on in other classrooms, and sometimes I will surreptitiously peek in or overhear, because I want to compare myself to and learn from others, and I see more or less the same thing going on in different degrees. What goes on may be good, it may be solid and valuable, but it's not transcendent.
So in my "last lecture," emphasizing the quotes, I would like to make a case for and call attention to transcendence in teaching, going over and above competence, and even above excellence, or teachable moments, or "deep learning." I mean transcendence in the sense of teaching that holds a student spellbound and transforms a student's life forever. When the jaw drops a little. When the student feels or says "whoa." When you and your class both feel awe. When you as a teacher are in a zone, when you have entered a new realm, and you know it, and so does everyone in the classroom.
This happens at different and rare times to each of us, outside of class. We can each cite our own examples. Walking on the beach, in the forest, in the mountains. In spiritual practice. In high art. In married life. For me, it has happened watching some Bergman films, or at some ART theatre productions in Cambridge, or listening to Mozart's Requiem Mass, and occasionally in relationships.
I'd like to see it happen more in the classroom, in the enchanted classroom. Because I want to be in a classroom, and I want to lead a classroom, where enchantment pours out of every door, or better, in a classroom where some enchanted evening, morning, or afternoon you may meet a bunch of strangers across a crowded room, and transport them into a different dimension, into the woods, and place them under the spell of the good witch.
I don't think at this University we value this kind of teaching enough. I think we should value it more. I appreciate the work of the FacultyTeaching Center, and the Task Force on Enrichment of the Council on Teaching, Learning, and Research as Scholarship. And I appreciate the work of the University's Carnegie Task Force to promote teaching.
But at the same time, we don't teach about teaching in a way that reaches the majority of our own teachers. Departments themselves don't pay enough attention to it, instead giving Outstanding Teacher Awards sometimes on the basis of glorified resumes, or, as I have heard secondhand, and this is hearsay, intentionally rotating the award around Department members so that everyone will receive the award at one time or another. We don't include classroom teaching as an explicit part of the University's recent strategic plan. We don't evaluate teaching well. (I'm sitting here with an antiquated evaluation from my own college, which is not informative, which has been in use here for at least 15 years, which itself has not been evaluated, and which is difficult to change.) And I'm not sure we consider and reward it sufficiently in tenure and promotion decisions. So I don't think we do as good a job as we could in terms of identifying, or teaching about, or honoring excellent teaching, let alone teaching that is transcendent.
But back to the main topic. How do we get there, to this enchanted village, the new hallmark of this great University in Northeastern Massachusetts which also properly promotes Regional Economic and Social Development? Is it supposed to promote enchanted learning, too?
I think so. But as to the "how," I wish I knew for sure. If I did, I would tell you about it, and do it daily.
I do think I know a little about what's not going to take us there, what's not going to do the job. That is, I don't think you get to transcendence, and to enchantment, by being well prepared and organized.
Or by being competent, or even excellent.
I don't think you get there via small group discussions in classes.
I don't think you get there with student projects, collaborative or teamprojects or otherwise.
I don't think you get there by gimmicks and stunts, even though they have a place. One teacher in my field, whose writing I respect a lot, teaches intro psych courses at Stanford by choice, with hundreds of students in a large auditorium. He's been known to make his entrance on the first day of classes by swooshing down the aisle and up onto stage on a skateboard, in plaid Bermuda shorts, wearing shades and carrying a boom box. Well, that captures their attention, which is a requisite, but it can't be the whole story.
And I don't think you can get to transcendence with powerpoint slides, even though powerpoint is something of a favorite whipping boy right now, and I don't think you get there by distance learning or streaming video or Web boards. And I'm not sure we really get there by teaching with technology, even though I think such technology has great promise and I need to get better and plan to get better at using it myself. Technology can produce excellent learning; but as for transcendent learning, I have my doubts.
The painful, unfortunate and sad truth is I don't really know how to do it. To achieve that state. If I did, I would. What I'm doing here is raising the issue and putting it on the screen.
Yet there have been times when I feel I have approached this in my own classes, when my students have felt it too, even though it may have happened seemingly by accident; but we have been in a state ofnear-transcendence together, and we've known it. And once you feel it, that ecstasy, unless there is a better word, you want more. Even though it's a little scary, and, some would argue, a little dangerous. It's addictive; you crave it. But it is wonderful; how can you now be fully satisfied with less?
If we do want it, I think it has to do with building upon basic instructional competence by bringing one's whole self to class, by teaching with one's whole self.
It may have to do with emotional as well as cognitive preparation.
It may also have something to do with sweat, leaving it all in the classroom, as an athlete leaves it all on the playing field.
I think it has something to do with forming a relationship with students, not necessarily a personal relationship, although sometimes it is, but a relationship of trust and a communication of personal caring, something that allows you to get under a student's skin.
I think it has something to do with being passionate, with harnessing one's passion and with letting one's passion show, taking some emotional as well as intellectual risk, valuing the raw and unpolished as well as the safe and comfortable.
And I'm pretty sure it has to do with continued moral and personal and spiritual development on the part of the instructor – with finding a spark of the divine – so that the strength of one's convictions begins to effuse outward, in emanations that can be felt but may be too subtle right now for exact detection. But where one becomes radiant, and glowing.
That's about as much as I know right now.
Unfortunately, I may be working out these themes until my own real last lecture. I may never figure this out, or capture it. It's a slow process, at least for me.
For you, maybe it's not. Maybe you will capture it. Or maybe you've done it already, and do it every day. I hope you'll tell me about it.
But fortunately, I, and we, have the chance to continue trying. We have some time left to keep at it. Every time we go into a classroom, we start all over again, and the chance for enchantment is there. I'm going to keep working at it. You'll know I've succeeded when you hear the applause.
And I wish you the same. I wish you, and all of us, an enchanted rest of the semester, and many enchanted classes to come.
Bill Berkowitz is a professor of psychology at UMass Lowell.