Life – Blue Book Diaries

Never Have I Ever … Become a New Teacher

Thursday, 27 July 2023Thursday, 27 July 2023 Jonathan Wilson

Almost two months after announcing my career transition, it seems appropriate to write an update. Whether to keep blogging at Blue Book Diaries is still an open question. But I’m comfortable describing some of the process of turning a veteran adjunct college professor into a novice high-school teacher.

First, much of my summer has gone to practicalities—figuring out new living arrangements, my new commute, that sort of thing. At the same time, I’ve made sure to relax whenever it’s reasonable. Both teaching and house-moving tend to behave like a gas, not a liquid; either of them will fill any container (of time and mental focus) you provide. If you don’t want to start a new academic year pre-exhausted, you’ve got to make room for rest before you tackle other forms of preparation.

(In other words, I’ve spent more of the summer than usual, not less, going to the mall, the movies, and the beach. And yes, that absolutely has been the right thing to do for the sake of my new students.)

As for teaching itself, the opportunity to reimagine my work has been wonderful. My new courses allow a lot of room for creativity, not least because they’re supposed to be interdisciplinary. Even if they were die-cut history survey courses, though, I would still be thinking hard about my goals for them—and about what ninth and twelfth graders really need from a history class.

The first definite teaching choices I had to make this summer concerned textbooks. Being hired fairly late in the season meant there were only a couple of weeks to decide which books to assign for the new academic year. Choosing these books required not only thinking ahead about course structure but also making judgments about likely student and parent perspectives.

Would a certain book be appropriately challenging for a ninth-grade reader without being overwhelming? Would a certain mix of books allow my students to see their ancestors’ peoples represented in world history? Could I perhaps find a friendlier translation of a certain book-length primary source? The textbook selections I made have already locked me into certain approaches for the whole upcoming year. But a lot of key decisions remain to be made before September.

Throughout the summer, talking with other teachers—often in Zoom meetings and over the phone—has been crucial. Several of my new colleagues, as well as the teacher I’m replacing, have generously shared their time with me, offering advice of many kinds. And I’ve continued talking with old friends about teaching in general, too.

Indeed, emotionally speaking, the best thing about this transitional moment, for me—besides just getting to look forward to teaching new students soon—has been the support shown by other educators. Never before have I had a stronger sense of taking part in a shared educational project.

Of course, I’ve been around long enough to know that no workplace is perfect. But I’ve also been around long enough to know not to take any good thing for granted. And this summer is full of good things.

Winds of Change

Monday, 5 June 2023Monday, 5 June 2023 Jonathan Wilson1 Comment

A few years ago, I decided it was time to start wrapping up my college teaching career. The circumstances were finally right. I would pursue a different job that I had thought about for a long time. Within a few weeks, I had more or less made up my mind.

That was in February 2020.

You know what happened next. Within a few weeks, all specific planning stopped.

But my goal didn’t change, and for the next three years, I kept working on it, a little at a time.

To make a long story short: I guess it worked.

Late last month, I accepted an offer to teach in the history department at an independent school in the greater New York City area. Starting this autumn, I’ll be a high school teacher.

It’s not clear yet what this will mean for Blue Book Diaries, or how much of the transition I’ll be comfortable discussing here this summer. It may be time to wind down this blog, or maybe it should live on in a new form. I don’t know. In any case, I’m proud and happy.

Ecce Homo Philadelphiensis

Wednesday, 12 April 2023 Jonathan Wilson

We’ve had friends visiting from Munich for a few days. This weekend, I offered them an improvised historical walking tour of central Philadelphia.

We wended our way through Independence Square, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Fairmount Park, and my beloved Rittenhouse Square. We stopped there for cheesesteaks—from a street cart, the way Betsy Ross intended—and ate them while listening to buskers and political protesters. At various points, our guests seemed especially interested in Philadelphia’s public monuments, particularly our battalion of statues.

As we headed back toward the car, we passed yet another cluster of Founding Fathers iconography: tributes to Thomas Jefferson, this time seemingly out of nowhere.

Conversation ensued. I think it had been brewing for a while.

Let me tell you, it really focuses the mind when a German observes that your society seems unusually susceptible to hero-worship.

*The Washington Monument at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (public domain)*

Another Theme for Spring: Presence

Thursday, 19 January 2023Thursday, 19 January 2023 Jonathan Wilson1 Comment

Surveying the smoldering ruins of academic Twitter this week, one thing I observed several times (not that this is anything new) is that pedagogical main-character-of-the-day controversies—e.g., a controversy this week over whether it’s ableist for a professor to refuse to distribute a full course syllabus before the first day of class—rarely seem to be examples of useful good-faith disagreement about actual teaching practices in a complex emergent environment. These controversies tend instead to feed on sloganeering and hyperbole. They exemplify mainly how people want to be seen publicly as teachers by other academics who will never know anything about their real-life teaching or its results.

*Artist’s impression of a collection of academics examining each other’s tweets for signs of carceral pedagogy*

Last week, I wrote briefly about my struggle to identify potential adjustments to my teaching approach that might best help several dozen specific students during the new spring semester. Well, as of yesterday, all my in-person classes now have had their first meeting, and based on those meetings, I’m optimistic that my changes will be effective—on balance. But I have no illusions about it being easy to implement these changes well.

Above all, what’s going to be necessary is that I put in the work of responding creatively, week after week, to the needs of the students who are actually in the room—including, by the way, needs that may well be contradictory. Such contradictions are typical in a real-life classroom, not exceptional.

So in addition to seeking simplicity this semester, as I wrote last week, I’m also seeking a greater sense of presence. I’m trying to be better at adapting to what’s actually happening for my students—specific people in a specific time and place—rather than adhering to what I had planned or to any abstract ideological prescription somebody tries to impose on others’ classrooms. And, to some extent, I hope my students will be able to see that this is what’s happening.

My Theme for Spring: Simplicity

Friday, 13 January 2023Friday, 13 January 2023 Jonathan Wilson1 Comment

Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit America in early 2020, teachers here have spent each academic term trying to catch up to an evolving disaster. That is, we have carefully planned every term based on what happened during the previous term, only to encounter new problems. Sometimes the new problems resulted from our (necessary) attempts to mitigate the old ones, which is especially annoying.

During these years, every topic that pundits and armchair pundits have treated as the issue confronting American education—remote learning! mask mandates! vaccine mandates! ableism! flexibility! testing! kindness! learning loss! self-censorship!—has turned out to be just one more dimension of a much larger problem, and that problem is that pandemics suck.

Peering into the future, I’m certain of only one thing: We’re going to be dealing with the pandemic’s fallout for years, and it’s a problem much bigger than any teacher’s or institution’s choices, however good or bad those choices may be.

Anyway, here’s my current attempt to fight last semester’s battles: I’m trying to help minimize student anxiety by simplifying my courses, especially at the outset.

For classes that meet in person this spring, I’m getting back to basics with the most predictable weekly schedule I can arrange. I’m drawing up each course calendar in the form of a checklist to maximize transparency and encourage students to track their progress. I’m assuming that class time will mostly be spent on really basic concepts. And I’m stripping down my syllabus, grounding every design choice in the need to make it less intimidating.

To some extent, this is taking me back to my earliest days as an instructor, when I was much more anxious in the classroom. But now simplicity is about helping students in crisis find their footing.

I can’t wait to find out how completely this, too, ends up missing the mark.

Spice Trader’s Pumpkin Pie

Monday, 14 November 2022Thursday, 1 December 2022 Jonathan Wilson

Now for something completely different: My recipe for a fragrant autumnal squash tart.

Chill a 9″ pie crust.

In a small bowl, mix:

2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cardamom
½ tsp cloves (ground)
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp nutmeg

Preheat your oven to 425°F.

Beat two large eggs in a large mixing bowl. Stir in one can (15 oz) of pumpkin purée and the spice mixture.

Thoroughly stir in one can (14 oz) of condensed milk and two tablespoons of sour cream. Then stir in one tablespoon of vanilla extract.

Pour the mixture into the chilled 9″ pie crust.

Bake the pie for 15 minutes at 425°F. Then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake for another 30-40 minutes or until the pie fully inflates (forming a dome with no depression in the center).

Turn the oven off, but leave it for 15 minutes with the door cracked open, so that the pie slowly deflates without cratering. Then remove the pie from the oven and let it cool for two more hours before refrigerating it. Chill the pie for at least 12 hours before serving.

This recipe produces a dense but silky pie with understated sweetness and a strong spice flavor.

French Summers in Austin in the Age of Abu Ghraib

Thursday, 4 August 2022Friday, 5 August 2022 Jonathan Wilson

*The Rio Grande (downtown) campus of Austin Community College*
*Cropped from a 2014 photograph by Larry D. Moore (CC BY-SA 3.0)*

When I recall my time in college almost two decades ago, I remember scenes and moods.

The prickling of my damp skin when I stepped into air-conditioned buildings in August in the Piney Woods. The odd thrill of sneaking into classrooms late at night to watch classic movies on the projector screens while student security guards turned a blind eye. Basking in the love of my new friends as I walked back to my dorm through pouring rain, which seemed to keep coming down throughout that October. But also the loneliness and impotent anger I felt as an antiwar student at an evangelical Christian college in Texas during the early 2000s. Then the exhaustion and euphoria that hit me in the middle of each week around 3 a.m. during the misbegotten semester when all seven of my classes met on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then, as looming storm clouds forced the outdoor ceremony into the basketball arena on the day I finally graduated, feeling as happy, sad, confident, and scared as I’ve ever been, then sensing catharsis as the rain started while our new local congressman, Louie Gohmert, gave our commencement address.

A few days ago, I learned about the deaths of two people who defined two of my summers during those years.

Continue reading →

Things I’m Reading to Prepare for Fall

Wednesday, 20 July 2022Wednesday, 20 July 2022 Jonathan Wilson

We’ve somehow reached that the point in the summer when I suddenly have just four to six weeks left to finish planning all my fall courses. That means I need to find my focus and motivation … fast.

Typically, for me, that means reading things that could fire the imagination, generating excitement about what’s possible in the upcoming semester. This week, I’ve queued up a few freely available publications—open resources that don’t require access to a library (or venturing out into the heat).

First, there’s The APA Guide to College Teaching: Essential Tools and Techniques Based on Psychological Science (PDF), published in 2020 by the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Associate and Baccalaureate Education. (It was inspired by an earlier publication for K-12 teachers.) This 46-page report identifies 21 evidence-based principles for teachers working in higher education, pairing each principle with brief but specific advice.

For the sake of balance, though not necessarily contradiction, I’m also reading a brief appeal the English instructor John Schlueter wrote for the AAUP’s newsletter in 2019, called “In Search of What We Do”—together with a classic article that helped inspire it, Elliott Eisner’s 1983 essay on “The Art and Craft of Teaching.” Both of these texts warn against overly prescriptive and rationalistic (“teacher-proof”) theories of undergraduate education, which run the risk of making us forget that getting a college education is about liberating one’s imagination as a member of specific and dynamic communities of students.

Next, to assist with my effort to do a better job helping burned-out COVID-era students identify the importance and relevance of history—and perhaps also to teach U.S. history more persuasively in the current political climate—I’m studying the American Historical Association’s 2021 report History, the Past, and Public Culture: Results from a National Survey (PDF). This 112-page publication offers very detailed information for thinking with, as well as a series of ten summary statements on the “challenges and opportunities” the data reveal.

I’m also revisiting a great article by Kimberly D. Tanner, “Structure Matters: Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity,” which was published in CBE Life Sciences Education in 2013. Why am I reading an article for biologists? Because it’s applicable to any undergraduate course. Tanner’s article is an especially clear and well-organized discussion of basic challenges and almost two dozen practical techniques for encouraging participation from students who otherwise might be left out.

Finally, because I’m teaching at two Catholic colleges again this fall, I’m rereading a 1993 educational statement released by the Society of Jesus: “Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach” (PDF). Most history teachers, of course, don’t need to worry about the specific theological commitments than animate this text. But the Jesuit order has a 500-year tradition of conceptualizing education as an imaginative, reflective, and aesthetic enterprise that prepares learners to become leaders in the world. Though not a Catholic myself, I always find this text energizing.

Celebrating an Award

Monday, 25 April 2022Thursday, 5 May 2022 Jonathan Wilson

Today I had the honor of receiving a Presidential Teaching Award from the De La Salle Institute for Teaching and Learning (DLSI). This recognition is given annually to one part-time and one full-time faculty member at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

Part-time faculty members are eligible to receive the award after teaching at the university for at least five semesters. Other criteria include a record of “enthusiastic engagement with students,” “incorporation of key elements of Lasallian pedagogy,” or innovation in “pedagogical methods that are intellectually rigorous, creative, engaging, and accessible.” The final decision of whom to honor is made by the university president, guided by the recommendation of a faculty advisory panel from across the university.

I was invited to offer brief remarks at the faculty awards event. So I delivered some thoughts that I hope went something like this:

Jonathan W. Wilson, speaking from a lectern at an event at La Salle University. Photograph courtesy of La Salle University Office of Marketing and Communication. — *Photograph by Dan Nguyen, La Salle University*

In 2022, a lot of us—educators at all levels—have the sense that we’re working in a time of general professional crisis. It’s a time of anxiety for us, and it’s certainly a time of anxiety for our students. The pandemic is only one part of it. Many of us now wonder whether our work is sustainable at all.

Three hundred forty years ago, it was in another time of general upheaval that Jean-Baptiste de La Salle established the Brothers of the Christian Schools. During that crisis, poor and working-class children in France needed better access to basic education, but teaching them was a badly regarded—and poorly compensated—line of work. La Salle’s solution, ironically, was to embrace poverty and humility.

That’s what the Lasallian watchwords “together and by association” meant in the seventeenth century. The teachers of La Salle’s order were supposed to live in solidary with each other and with their students. La Salle himself gave up both a personal fortune and excellent prospects of advancement through the ranks of the Catholic clergy. The trade was for a sense of meaning: deprivation now, but the confidence, shared with others, that your work had a higher, long-term value.

Today, one of the things that sustains me as a teacher, despite the insecurity of our time, is getting to participate in the long Lasallian tradition. I draw strength from its unusually vehement insistence that, in spite of everything, we don’t work alone, and our work has a long-term purpose. That’s why this particular form of recognition means so much to me.