TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

I take a constructivist view of teaching, where students are expected to be active participants in learning.  My job as a teacher is not to transfer knowledge to the students through a process of rote learning such as memorization.  My job as a teacher is to inspire students to be curious about the world around them, construct their own questions, and find solutions to their own problems.  In my law classes, students are assigned landmark Supreme Court cases and divided into teams that argue each side of the case in front of their classmates.  This type of activity gives students an opportunity to not only memorize the outcome of cases, but also a chance to understand the “why” behind the law.

American educator John Holt once said, “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.”  I believe that all students can learn if given a responsive, well-designed classroom environment where each student is treated as an individual.  As a teacher, I strive to create this environment through a classroom culture that values curiosity, research and a strong work ethic.  In my Future of News class, students were presented with the contemporary problems facing news executives and encouraged to design a business plan for an ideal Maine news distribution outlet.  By working closely with students in projects modeled on real-world challenges, I am able to offer them classroom experience that will transfer to job skills in their future careers.

I believe that it is more important for students to reach their own conclusions through reasoning, than to memorize specific knowledge.  Therefore, in law, I most often emphasize the logical reasoning in court decisions, rather than asking students to memorize facts and dates as they would in law school.  This often results in a winding path towards “truth” in classroom instruction, but this, to me, is the process of learning.  Learning is not writing down a transcript of a lecture, memorizing it and recreating it on a test.  Learning is about trying new approaches, new methods and new theories.  In my law course, students were divided into groups representing petitioner, respondent and judges in a fictional espionage case based on current news headlines about the Wikileaks incident.  In class, the students organized the evidence and reasoning and argued the case, ultimately understanding the process through which court opinions are constructed.

I encourage students to have the confidence to share their opinions and insights—even when they make mistakes, because that is an important part of the learning process.  In a large lecture class, I provided students with a class wiki they controlled for the use of sharing information from classroom lectures, discussions, textbook readings and independent research.  It was not a controlled-forum.  Students could seek the information they needed, while sharing their insights with their classmates.  Of course, as a teacher, my job is to correct the mistakes, but this step is meaningless unless it is blended with the students’ self-discovery and exploration of the materials.

In my classroom, I think of myself as a guide—pointing the students in the right direction, highlighting important events, images and materials, explaining the social context of the curriculum and materials, and answering questions from individuals trying to make sense not just of the materials, but their relationship to the concepts presented in class.  Students enter a classroom in order to build new ideas and concepts, but their own personal experiences greatly shape their learning outcome.  As a teacher, my role is to engage the students in both formal classroom lectures, as well as informal guided classroom discussions so they can understand the social context of the information I am presenting.  I like to provide the framework for discovery so the student can feel free to question, explore and experiment with the knowledge I present.  I also feel it is important to engage the students in discovery of information beyond the classroom walls.  Last fall, my production students were challenged to a scavenger hunt where they roamed the campus with cameras in hand searching for camera shots that demonstrated the proper use of framing, lighting, and perspective.  These techniques encourage students to think for themselves, while promoting intellectual curiosity.

I believe students should have a strong foundation in factual knowledge, but they should also have an appreciation of the subject. Competence in course materials is not demonstrated through repetition of terms and vocabulary, but through the reasoning, critical thinking and organization of the information in a manner that is unique for each individual student.  I model this behavior for my students by keeping up to date on knowledge in the field, as well as talking about current events and developments that relate to the subject matter.  I strive to promote objectivity and critical thinking by discussing the origin of classroom materials and the perspective of authors and researchers.  I encourage students to identify inconsistencies in class materials and professional concerns that might not be addressed in the body of knowledge.  I want to challenge students to explore insights and knowledge beyond the text through the presentation of thought-provoking questions and issues.  Part of this process involves inviting real-world journalists and professionals to meet with students.  My digital journalism students have had the opportunity to research environmental issues in Maine, meeting with local journalists, top policy makers at the Department of Environmental Protection and research scientists from the University.

CURIOSITY, GRAMMAR & DISCIPLINE

In each syllabus I create for a class, I share three traits that students should have to be successful:  1) they should be curious about the world around them; 2) they should strive to be good writers; and 3) they should learn how to learn.

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Students need to be curious, if not insatiable about information in the world around them.  As journalism majors, they should consume local, national and international news, as well as commentaries, histories and works from the social sciences.  An ideal student should model themselves after the curious toddler who always asks “why?”  This also encourages students to be confident in developing new ideas inside and outside the classroom.  One of a journalist’s major responsibilities is to tell the stories that the public needs to know.  This can only be accomplished, if the journalist has their eyes wide open and is constantly challenging the status quo to uncover the problems and anomalies that face society.  In many of my courses, students are given current events quizzes that challenge them to stay on top of state, national and worldwide issues. I model this behavior for my students by presenting contemporary information in an articulate and enthusiastic manner.  I believe that my enthusiasm and passion for the subject are my best tools in motivating students to become active learners.

Students should strive to be good writers.  In a mass communication or journalism program, writing is essential.  It is one of the main tools we use to communicate messages to audiences.  It is the physical representation of our ideas that is distributed to the public.  Students should be encouraged to write as much as possible.  To be a journalist, you must write.  Students should be encouraged to write as clearly as possible.  The process of learning to organize thoughts in a way that is coherent on paper is arguably the best preparation any student will have for a career in journalism.  Engaging in writing, and lots of it, give students practice in examining controversial issues and presenting challenging ideas.  Students must be encouraged to write in a style that promotes universal understanding through the use of good grammar and precise punctuation.  No amount of clever analytical posturing can distract a reader after they have found a typo in your story.  In my classes, students are treated as practicing journalists, not students practicing to be journalists.  In production courses, I encourage and often require students to publish their work to a collaborative journalism website I created called Mobile Maine News.  They are also encouraged to build relationships with Maine media outlets that might be interested in their work.  Two students from my Multimedia Production course had their video stories on Maine labor issues used by a local television station.  I believe this extra layer of authenticity pushes students to behave as real-world journalists with the values of objectivity, integrity and truth.

Finally, students must learn how to learn.   This is not a content-set that I distribute with glossary-like precision.  Learning to learn is a discipline.  Much like journalism, education as an occupation by either teacher or student, requires the discipline to learn across fields, connecting unrelated fields in meaningful ways and adapting our knowledge to these new realities.  In the modern world, it is difficult to keep pace with changing communication systems and rapidly advancing technologies.  Teaching specific skill sets is important, but not because of the intrinsic value in the individual skill sets.  Teaching specific skill sets is important because it gives students experience in learning how to learn unique processes and rubrics.  In it unlikely that we can prepare the students for the jobs they will hold in ten years.  Those jobs will use technologies and skills that we have not yet begun to imagine.  We can prepare students to be disciplined, self-learners who can identify needed skill sets and design their own learning plans to acquire those skills.  Students in multimedia production have learned about blogging, databases, writing for the web, graphic choices for the web, studio production, field production, live streaming, and podcasting.  Each of these is a different method for distributing content, but all require students to start with good content and a clear understanding of the audience they seek to reach.

One method I employ to achieve this is by sharing my professional experiences with the students.  These real-life newsroom “problems” are often the foundation for an exciting classroom discussion of possibilities that ends when I finally share how I would resolve the situation.  In Multimedia Production, students had to complete a final project, but they had the chance to select their coverage topics and create stories using formats that they believed would be most successful in telling the story.  This semester, those same students are acting as beat reporters, covering assigned issues over the course of several months.  Both activities require students to develop different professional skills sets modeled after real-world problem.

RESPECT, FAIRNESS & CLARITY

I want to promote respect and understanding in my teaching, both inside and outside the classroom. I encourage students to think for themselves and explore alternate viewpoints.  I model this behavior by encouraging students to question the course materials, the status quo, and even me!  I try to create a safe classroom environment that rewards friendly, collegial communication from and among students.  I approach each student as an individual—someone’s son or daughter—that has come to me because they want to share in my love of learning for the subject matter.  I try to be sensitive to students’ individual needs, motivations and progress in the course.  This attitude goes beyond the classroom.  I pride myself on being available to students outside the classroom—whether before or after class, during office hours or in individual meetings to learn more about the issues that excite the students.  During my first year at the University, I worked with students at the Maine Channel to produce a weekly newscast.  This involved staying late every Friday evening to oversee the studio production and assist students in troubleshooting technical problems and content delivery.  Last year, I mentored a student who served as the first web editor for Mobile Maine News, offering him experience and feedback in a cutting-edge job that has only existed for a decade.

In my courses, I try to organize and present materials in a clear, coherent way that relates to the overarching objectives of the course.  I believe this is the only fair way to structure a course in which students are measured against standard objectives.  This involves providing students with a syllabus framework that helps them to understand how individual lessons relate to overarching concepts that inform the field both theoretically and professionally. After a libel lecture in law covering theory and case precedent, I present students with a list of circumstances that might trigger a journalist to talk to an attorney about a potentially libelous story.  These kinds of tangible examples can make all the difference for a student struggling to make meaning of the principles. I try to begin each class by relating that day’s lecture topic to our overall goals for the semester. I integrate course materials such as lectures, readings and labs so that students can see the value in each exercise.  I also use the syllabus to provide a clear timeline of class activities, as well as grading rubrics and deadlines.

In this day and age, anyone can Google anything and find a quick, disconnected answer in a sea of knowledge.  As a teacher, I want students to move beyond this encyclopedic knowledge to connect difficult concepts and understand the theoretical foundations for abstract ideas.  To achieve this, I provide concrete examples for complex ideas.  I strive to present practical applications and case studies for assignment problem sets.  I provide students with a variety of learning materials to facilitate the spectrum of learning styles.  I revisit difficult concepts in different ways and give students opportunities to let me know if the ideas presented in class don’t make sense.  I want students to feel that they did their best, they were given a fair evaluation, they received constructive feedback and they can learn from their mistakes.