The Guide to Teaching

Creating the Classroom Atmosphere

[This file contains the topic statement and all responses. It is intended primarily for printing.]

Topic Statement (Joel Schwartz):

What do you do to facilitate the free expression of diverse student attitudes, values,
beliefs and opinions? What problems have you had? How have you solved these
problems?

Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 12:22:45 -0700
From: Steffen Schmidt <sws@iastate.edu>

I set up a discussion group on my internet-web site. I post questions relevant to this sort of
issue and ask students to respond. I then ask students to comment on the responses and the
whole class reads this debate. I then bring to class (or access live and project on a large screen from the site) the comments especially some of the more controversial or provocative remarks (and there were some the last time that were VERY hot on the issue of immigration, sex in the military, and on diversity/affirmative action).

We then use this mother lode of student generated debate to try and refocuse their thinking into
conflict resolution, more substantive policy strategies for making a racially and otherwise
diverse society work, and of course, discuss the real emotional thread that runs through the
dialog (or lack thereof) between Latinos, African Americans, whites, Asian-Americans,
American Indians/native Americans, Gay's and Lesbians, people with disabilities and other
diverse groups (including by the way deeply religious people of whom in Iowa and the bible
Belt we have many).

The impersonal "discuss" asynchronous web site allows people to express themselves much
more freely than I could EVER get them to in the classroom. It has been a huge sucess on many
scores but especially in areas related to diversity.

If you want to look at some of this go to:

http://classnet.cc.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/main-menu

Choose the class U. St 235
Choose the name "Guest, Guest" and enter the password "ISU"
Click on "Discuss" and you will find a whole bunch of topics and
responses to browse. Some are pretty bad! But, it was a wonderful way to get students to open
up and it then offered a "loop" to bring all of this discussion back into the classroom.

Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 08:31:16 -0500
From: Gary Klass gmklass@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu

My Race and Ethnicity course, a small (10-20 student) seminar, is an unusual course in many
ways. It is built around a reading list of some two dozen recently published books on race and
ethnicity, many of which have been best-sellers and which span a broad spectrum of ideology
and style. Each student reads and reviews four or five of the books and most of the classes are
devoted to students presenting and critiquing the ideas in the books.

The course draws such a remarkable diversity of students - in terms of ability, temperament,
and political ideology as well as cultural background. When I first taught the course I
anticipated that there might be problems with the controversial subject. So far, I have had
almost none.

I think that I have designed the ideal format for a seminar. In other courses I work hard to
encourage student participation, in this course I merely attempt to control it - keeping the
discussion on topic and making sure each student gets their say. I rarely lecture, usually at the
beginning of class to put the works in perspective and most of what I teach involves helping
them find ways to formulate their own arguments and critiques.

I know that others who teach courses addressing controversial topics sometimes devise sets of
behavioral rules and contracts to guide the discussion. These approaches, I decided, would be
counterproductive, serving only to sensitize the students to the fact that the instructor sensitive
about what they might say. I tell them, without overemphasizing it, that two principles should
guide both what they write and what they say in class: a) one should avoid offending other
people, and b) one should avoid taking offense at what other people say. {Note that any
complaint that another student has violated the first rule is usually a violation of the second}. I
do stress that one of the advantages of this course is that every one can learn more from those
they disagree with than those they agree with.

One of the purposes of the course is for the students to learn how to express their own ideas
about these controversial matters in public. They do this both in the in-class discussions and by
submitting their book reviews to a public internet discussion list (POS302-L) that I have
created for the course. The public forum seems to force students to anticipate how others might
react to their ideas and the manner in which they are expressed. It also seems to encourage
them to write better.

Both the class and Internet discussions have been almost entirely civil. I've taught the seminar
six times now, four times using the Internet book review discussion list, I do not recall any
personal attacks or charges of racism every entering the discussion. This course is a delight to
teach and I strongly recommend the format to others.

Note: The seminar is offered every spring, instructors are welcome to have their students
submit reviews (and participate in the discussion of the reviews) to the discussion list. For
information see: http://www.ilstu.edu/~gmklass/pos302-l/

--
Gary Klass
Editor, PSRT-L
Associate Professor
4600 Political Science
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790
http://WWW.ILSTU.EDU/~gmklass
(309) 438-7852
(fax) 438-5310

Author: Cecilia Manrique <manrique@mail.uwlax.edu>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 15:52:30 -0400

This is where technology has really been a help to my classroom. I have three classes of
American Government this semester and there are 40 students in each. After three weeks of
classes I have finally put names and faces together so I can claim I know all of my students.
But do they know each other?

Sometimes they are not comfortable to discuss in class because they do not know each other.
So my first technology assignment which is due tomorrow and they had two weeks to complete
this is to e-mail everyone in the class using a distribution list and introduce themselves to their
classmates. Their messages are fun to read and students enjoy sending them and reading about others. Some have placed open invitations to talk to them outside of class.

I have found that they are more comfortable with me and with each other as a result of this. Part of this week and next week we will be discussing equality, diversity, discrimination. I may have some more things to contribute then.

******************************************
* Cecilia G. Manrique, Ph.D. *
* Professor *
* Political Science *
* University of Wisconsin - La Crosse *
* 1725 State Street *
* La Crosse, WI 54601 *
* (608)785-6642 PHONE *
* (608)785-8486 FAX *
* manrique@uwlax.edu *
* http://www.uwlax.edu/LS/PoliSci/ *
* manrique/manrique.htm *
* Advisor, Golden Key National *
* Honor Society *
******************************************

Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 11:57:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: christopher malone cmalone@email.gc.cuny.edu

I teach American Government and Politics at Hunter College of the City University of New
York, an institution that many will agree is more ethnically diverse than any other in the
country. With this comes an extraordinary range in beliefs, attitudes, cultural practices, etc. But
also, the students' understanding of (American) politics varies from barely none to somewhat
well- developed. Thus, it is hard to keep all the students on the same page, so to speak: how,
for instance, do you get the recent immigrants from countries like Vietnam, Ukraine, Columbia,
Romania, Puerto Rico and Ireland - who have a vague notion of the political system here - to
understand the topics under discussion the way students who were born and raised in Bedford
Stuyvesant, Brooklyn or the Bronx do? In other words, It is not only a problem of facilitating
the free expression of diverse attitudes, but also getting a unified message across to a student
body whose worldviews act as a filter to that message.

I think that, as teachers, we must be aware of this two-way street. The first days of class, I ask
my students to tell me a little bit about themselves, where they are from, their country of origin,
how much they work, etc. This at least gets them talking in class, a problem some have right
off the bat. As we proceed, I make it clear to them that anything can be said in my class as long
as it is done with civility. But also, I tell them they must justify their comments; the "I believe"
or "I feel" answer is not good enough. "I believe" has to be backed up with some type of
evidence. This at least gets students thinking about why they believe something, the first step
toward critical analysis. Through this, we cannot only accept a diversity of opinion, but also
understand where it came from.

But most importantly, I think we teachers have to take that attitude expressed and place it in a
context that is accessible to the entire class. This is tricky with a class of great diversity. But if
one can create a space where a student is comfortable in expressing his/her viewpoint - no
matter how biased or offensive to others - then we have won half the battle.

Christopher J. Malone
Department of Political Science
Graduate School and University Center
The City University of New York
cmalone@email.gc.cuny.edu

Author: Joel J Schwartz <jjschwar@email.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 16:19:09 -0400

In a class dealing with issues of race, poverty, and politics, a class which usually consists of
students who are politically liberal, the few conservatives can feel "outnumbered" and
therefore, find it difficult to speak out. In other classes, the politically liberal students might not
feel that they can freely speak. I have heard from some male students who take women's studies
classes that they feel the same way. The problem is worse when the issues being discussed are
not so much issues of theory, but are issues which evoke strong beliefs and emotions. I have
dealt with this challenge in several ways.

A technique which I use frequently in my class is the assignment of position or reaction papers
on controversial issues. Students are required to write and bring to class non-graded papers,
maximum of two page. I explain to the students both in the syllabus and in introductory remarks
that these papers are non-graded because I want the students to write what they honestly
believe, not what they think I believe or want them to believe. I either give them an article to
read and to write a response or I show them a documentary and ask them to express their
reactions based on what they have read or seen.

In order for the discussion to be controlled it is necessary to know the students by name so as
to call upon them at will which allows me to bring into the discussion the "silent majority."
Since students have had time to think about the issue and since I have read their papers, I am
then free to ask any student to share their thoughts without their being embarrassed or surprised
at my question. To help me control the dialogues that ensue, I make it clear that students are not
to spontaneously speak out or respond to other students. They must raise their hands to be
recognized.

I adopted these "rules of discussion" after a documentary which I had shown resulted in a near
riot in my class. In a course that I teach, "Race, Poverty and Politics in the US", I show a
documentary produced by CBS in 1987, entitled the Vanishing Family; Crisis in Black
America". This documentary portrays young urban black males as irresponsible predators of
teenage women. These young males father children and feel no emotional or financial
responsibility towards them. There are always a number of African-American students in this
class, but they are outnumbered by white students. The questions which I pose for their
reaction are as follows:

What are your feelings about the ways the individuals behaved?
What is your reaction to their explanations of their behavior?
What would you propose we try to do to either to slow or reverse this
behavioral pattern?

The second time I showed this documentary a white female student said that the best solution
would be to castrate such individuals. At that point an African-American student rose and
began to move toward her. Other students rose also. I asked the other black students in the
course to restrain the one student. After what was probably a very brief period of time, but
which seemed like an eternity to me at the time, the student returned to his seat. At that point I
called a recess for ten minutes of cooling down.

Have any of you encountered similar situations and how have you handled them?
What do you do to prevent such incidents?

(Discussion forums may prevent this, but in my opinion, they are not a satisfactory substitute for the live interaction between students and teacher.)

Author: ShankmanK <ShankmanK@Mac.Ripon.EDU>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 06:49:25 -0400

I have some low-tech approaches to creating a classroom atmosphere that encourages
participation. I know that some of these things might sound like touchy-feely nonsense, but in
my experience they work.

The biggest single thing that I have done that has increased open participation, especially in my
larger classes (this is relative; we're a small college, so when I talk large class I mean
approximately 35 students) is to make sure that every student knows every other student's name.

Whenever we're going to discuss something, I first break them into small groups (I randomize
the group assignments so that the same people don't end up in the same group. I like to use
offbeat criteria--people who prefer grapes to strawberries would be in one group; people
wearing stripes in another, etc.--it lends a certain level of informality to the group formation
process, doesn't take any longer than having people count by sixes or whatever other process
you could come up with, and, since I come up with new categories every day it really does
insure that the groups are different--and unpredictable--every time); before they begin
discussing the issue, they have to make sure that everyone in their group can name everyone
else.

I started doing this about 4 years ago, and the level of participation, the quality of participation, and the engagement on issues rather than emotion has noticeably improved (before I started this process, I once had a student try and spit on another student during class discussion, and I also may be the only teacher in the history of the world who almost had a fist-fight break out--I literally had to get between these two guys and separate them--over the electoral college).

My other suggestion is somewhat higher tech, although a more organized person could use the
library reserve room instead of a web page--I assemble links to materials on the issues we are
going to discuss on a class web page (you can check it out at
http://WWW.Ripon.EDU/Faculty/shankmank/default.html). The students are assigned to
permanent groups of 3 or 4 at the begining of the semester, and each week they have to discuss
these issues (I provide discussion questions to guide their initial discussions; I also require
them to rotate jobs--discussion leader, note taker and report writer--on a weekly basis and
keep a log of their meetings) outside of class time, and turn in a written summary of their
discussion.

This really provides a basis for a good and serious discussion in class, since in their small
groups they have already identified issues that they want to resolve. It also provides a basis of
factual material on which the whole class can draw, rather than making things up as they go
along, which is a problem I have had in the past. So, to summarize, I'd say using small
groups--both in and out of class--as a preliminary to a larger discussion, making sure the
students see each other as individuals, and providing a basis of factual information that
everyone in the class has access to are key, in my opinion, to creating an atmosphere in which
free and fruitful discussion can take place.

--Kim Shankman, Ripon College shankmank@mac.ripon.edu

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 16:08:41 -0400 (EDT)
Author: Joel J Schwartz jjschwar@login5.isis.unc.edu

Ways to guide classroom discussion so as to create a classroom in which all can speak their
opinions (not necessarily in order of importance because all the points together create the kind
of classroom atmosphere for which we are striving):

Be sure students know that "class participation" is a question of QUALITY of discussion, not
QUANTITY.

Do not allow a small but vocal few to monopolize the discussion. Make the time and effort to
learn the names of all of your students so you can call them by name. Knowing your students by
name makes it easier for you to bring the hesitant into the discussion.

Guide the discussion so that it doesn't digress into irrelevant topics (but be flexible. Some of
the best learning experiences will come from these student-generated digressions).

Be patient. Wait for students to think about your question, organize their thoughts, and summon
the courage to speak before their classmates (especially important when teaching freshmen).

Praise students for making thoughtful comments. Do not respond to students in a manner which
is condescending or embarassing. Make the time and effort to learn the names of your so you
can call them by name.

Make the class discussion a CLASS discussion. That is, be sure to have students respond to
other students as well as to you so that you do not conduct a student-teacher dialogue.

Help the students to differentiate betweeen the relative importance of comments made during
the class hour by clearly identifying the important points. Be sure to leave enough time at the
end of the class period to summarize what was said so that students leave feeling that they have
learned something substantive and important.

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