Preparing Yourself
From setting goals and taking stock of your assets to getting to know your students, course and dialogue design sets you up for success. Constructive preparation can set the stage for exceptional pedagogical experiences that honor the ideals named above, while centering student learning in both planned and unplanned dialogues. Some key ways to engage in meaningful preparation for yourself as the instructor include:
Know your goals for engaging in this work
Knowing your goals will allow you, via the process of backward design, to choose the most relevant texts and other content, as well as to design focused and purposeful activities, assignments, and assessments. Thinking through your goals ahead of time will also help you communicate them with students, which will increase buy-in (Porto & Zembylas, 2024; Smith, 2021).
Clear goals will anchor the course throughout the learning process so that you can stay on track and avoid unhelpful tangents when navigating difficult material or conversations (Smith, 2021).
- In addition to generating goals for the course as a whole, generate specific goals for course units, sessions, activities, and assignments that are likely to push students out of their comfort zones.
- Reflect and share why you need your students to engage in this uncomfortable work. How does this relate to their future professional or academic success/skills? What do you hope they’ll get out of the experience? And how will you know they’ve gotten where you hoped they would?
- Examples of learning goals from the syllabi of Georgetown professors:
- “Practice scenarios around how to navigate office politics and manage office dynamics” (Ella F. Washington, McDonough School of Business)
- “Demonstrate the ability to ask the right questions to inform and educate yourself or others on bio-ethics dilemmas and topics we discuss and new topics that will arise in the future” (Laura Bishop, Kennedy Institute of Ethics)
- “Demonstrate an understanding of the key drivers of terrorist behavior; Recognize the many ‘terrorists are people too’ factors that shape group and terrorist behavior” (Daniel Byman, School of Foreign Service)
- “Gain insights into the challenges and achievements of the LGBT community in Ecuador by engaging with Fundación Ecuatoriana Equidad” (Victor Salgado, Law Center)
- “Deliberate on how memory systems make us who we are—are we any more than the sum of our memories? How does ‘what we remember’ shape what we feel? How do the more implicit memory systems shape our life in ways we might not be aware of?” (Cynthia Fioriti, Psychology)
- “Become a member of a productive creative community in which each person’s success rests in part on your efforts and in part on the efforts of other members of the community” (David Ebenbach, Center for Jewish Civilization)
Prepare for your own discomfort
Interacting across differences, encountering new ideas, and ideas you might disagree with, is uncomfortable (Carey et al., 2022; Clancy & Bauer, 2018)—and that goes for teachers as well as learners. Even when you have good reason to assign it, you may still find class material ethically challenging or distasteful. You may be taken aback by ideas that students express in class conversations or assignments. It’s a normal and necessary part of the process, but of course there’s a difference between discomfort and harm (Barre et al., 2023)—and discomfort is often where the learning happens (see the Learning Zone model).
- In general, you’re going to want to think ahead to parts of the course where things could get tense for students—but don’t forget to look for moments that could make you uncomfortable, and play out in your mind how you’ll handle those experiences
- Familiarize yourself with the Learning Zone model to help you appreciate the importance of discomfort in the learning process
- Acquaint yourself with these established approaches to dialogue for insights on what to expect when entering into to difficult discussions
Decide on boundaries/degree of self-disclosure/vulnerability
Instructor self-disclosure (i.e., talking about you and your life outside the classroom) is associated with higher levels of student participation and perceptions of teacher clarity and responsiveness (Cayanus, 2004). That said, students react differently to faculty based on faculty identity groups (Boring, 2017; Mengel et al., 2019), so behavior that appears warm and open in one professor might be perceived by students as unprofessional when the same behavior comes from an instructor of a different identity. It’s important to be aware of possible downsides of sharing personal information. Thinking ahead will allow you to make conscious, deliberate, purposeful decisions about this. Put another way, “If I am choosing to wear my heart on my sleeve, I need to think critically about the how, when, and why I do it” (Martinez-Cola et al., 2018).
- Ask colleagues about their experiences—what do they share with students, and what are the results? What assignment or discussion prompts have worked? What community guidelines have they found specifically helpful? Be mindful of their identities (e.g., concerning gender, race, etc.) in evaluating how relevant their experience might be to yours
- Be aware of resources that you can turn to if things do not go as you hope
- Department chair
- Georgetown faculty ombudsperson
- The American Association of University Professors
- CNDLS is always available to help you think through teaching situations
Take stock of your assets
Often faculty overlook or take for granted the teaching strengths they’ve developed over the years. Articulating what assets you’re bringing to the learning situation will help you weather discomfort. Like assembling a toolbelt to bring with you, this kind of reflection can also keep you from being thrown when the unexpected comes up.
- Reflect on what strengths you bring to class engagement with difficult ideas: content expertise, people skills, lessons learned from past experiences, goodwill from students, and more
- The University of Minnesota has designed a thoughtful set of reflection questions that can help you prepare
- Familiarize yourself with Georgetown University’s Speech and Expression Policy
- Know that CNDLS is always here to help
Get to know your students
Making it clear that you support and respect students is paramount. It makes it possible to move them productively out of their comfort zones (Hogan & Sathy, 2022). For those with very big classes, this doesn’t have to mean knowing every student equally well; research suggests that even knowing some of the students’ names gives the impression that you know them all (Cooper et al., 2017) and will help you to build rapport, using the geography of the room (e.g., “let’s hear from the left side of the room” or group names could also be an asset.
Rapport with and between students predicts more active participation and learning (Frisby and Martin, 2010; Frisby et al., 2014; Stanton, 2016).
Additionally, the value of cura personalis demands that we attend to the “unique gifts, challenges, needs and possibilities” of each student. Doing so also sharpens our understandings of those students; knowing students as individuals reduces the likelihood of viewing them with bias and stereotypes based on their identities (Rubenstein et al., 2018), and is associated with better classroom experiences and more student success, even beyond graduation (Dewsbury, 2019; Gallup, 2014).
Before the course
- Design assignments that will allow students to connect course material to their own lives. Examples:
- Give yourself a mini-introduction on the syllabus, in Canvas, and/or in class in order to model being a whole person (e.g., if you’re a first generation student and share that, students get an insight into you but also students that have that identity may feel encouraged)
- Include language on your syllabus that showcases your interest in students as individuals. Examples:
- David Ebenbach Class Philosophy and Values (see sections on Inclusion, Access, Courage/Self-care, etc.)
- Use pre-course surveys to gather information and start a conversation
At the beginning of the semester, and throughout
- Learn student names and pronouns as well and as quickly as you can
- Office hours (find sample syllabus language here)
- Emphasize office hours as a place not just to get help but also to get to know one another. Try to strike an invitational tone, and make it clear that seeing students during office hours is part of the job, not an interruption. Some faculty even include it as part of participation or an extra credit opportunity
- Use icebreakers to start building comfort and relationships
- There are great examples of icebreakers across the web; you might start with these resources by Cornell University and Ohio State University
- GU’s In Your Shoes Program can help students get to know one another through developing empathy and close listening
Give yourself time to know the context in which you’re teaching
Events outside the classroom affect the mental state of people inside the classroom, particularly (but not exclusively) if they are directly affected by those events (Hensley et al., 2020; Philippe & Houle, 2019), and so, while you can’t possibly account for everything students are bringing with them, it can be helpful to have a sense of major possibilities.
This is especially true if course material is connected to external events. If those events are making it hard for students to learn and talk with one another, you may need to proceed more cautiously. If, on the other hand, external events are drawing student interest and curiosity, you may want to make those connections more explicit and spend more time with them.
- Familiarize yourself with Georgetown University’s Speech and Expression Policy
- Be mindful of world events that might be affecting students and/or the communities they come from
- Keep track of campus events, which often affect students very directly; student newspapers can be a helpful tool
- Familiarize yourself with, and practice, Trauma-Informed Teaching
- When it’s possible to do so productively, connect class material to external events
Practice!
It probably goes without saying that practice leads to improvement—and of course this is also true of teaching, and there are many ways to rehearse (Ghousseini, 2017; Lampert et al., 2013; Schutz et al., 2019; Von Esch & Kavanaugh, 2017).
Rather than solely learning from in-class experiences, you can also try out techniques ahead of class, in dry run situations.
Practice can help you refine language you may want to use when addressing particularly sensitive topics.
- Gather trusted colleagues, or pedagogy experts from CNDLS, to act as students (or perhaps some as students and others as non-participating observers) in a rehearsal of your lesson plan
- If you encounter a particularly tricky moment in rehearsal, you can pause to analyze the situation, like a coach might pause a practice to talk through something that just happened during a play
- Practice some language that might come in handy when a session becomes heated
- [instead of allowing students to direct criticism at other students who are voicing less-popular views] “Let’s consider this idea, which we know many people endorse. Can we think of evidence that supports it, as well as evidence that doesn’t?”
- “The words you’re using could mean a number of things. Can I ask you to say that again in different words?”
- “Does anyone else have thoughts?”
- “Can you connect that to any of today’s readings?”
- “We need to remember the difference between intention and impact. Even with our best intentions, we have to be careful not to hurt others with our words—and beyond the hurt we should also try to see good intentions when they’re there.”
- “I think we could use a brather. Let’s take a break and come back together in five minutes.”
- For non-interactive teaching moments (e.g., lectures), you can even record yourself teaching without an audience and analyze your teaching choices afterward
- Form an ongoing community of practice where, on different occasions, different people can practice techniques and learn from one another (CNDLS often facilitates Teaching Circles where this kind of work can happen)
- Consider watching content of professionals presenting on the difficult topic or issue
- Consider inviting a teaching specialist from CNDLS to your rehearsal or to look over recorded teaching with you