Speaking In Class Is Always Optional

I took American History at a community college the year after I graduated high school. Everyday my teacher, Mr. Little[1], wore the same dirty, sweat stained, pinstripe, oxford shirt that wrapped tightly around his large stomach. He would grip the sides of a brown lectern that sat on top of a cheap folding table toward the front of the classroom for the entire hour and fifteen minutes as if he would fly off the earth if he let go.

He plowed through his lecture notes in class-long monologue, barely ever looking up. So the entire room was taken aback when he stopped mid-lecture, wiped the sweat off his greasy forehead, and asked, “What do you think of Christopher Columbus? It is, after all, Columbus Day.” To my surprise a number of students raised their hands. The conversation was rather complimentary sounding something like the shadow of an eighth grade history report of Columbus.

The class was nearly entirely white (something not uncommon in Lincoln, NE). I distinctly remember there was one student who looked to be Native American, but given I never asked him to self-identify, I can’t be sure. The presumably Native American student sat toward the back of the room and was quiet. He was always early to class, like I was, but he never joined in the pre-class conversations, not even the gripe-fests that went on before Mr. Little showed up.

About 5 minutes into the discussion of Columbus, Mr. Little turned toward the Native American looking student, pointed in his direction and said, “You.” Mr. Little waited for him to make eye contact before continuing, “You’re Native right? What is the Native American perspective on Christopher Columbus?” The student struggled to find words. I wanted to pull my head into my body like Sammy (the box turtle I had growing up).

From that day foreword I profoundly understood that speaking should be optional in class discussions. I’m not saying you shouldn’t require student participation, but rather you should always allow you students to decide when and where they want the spotlight put on them.

Mr. Little probably thought he was being inclusive. He probably thought, in a perverse way, that by reaching out for this student’s opinion he was being “pro-diversity.”[2] However, Mr. Little was being anything but. Asking a student to speak on behalf of their social group (be it race, class, gender, etc.) is akin to saying “you people are all the same”. There is no “Native American perspective” because Native Americans are not monolithic. This is a common way that trying to be “inclusive” to non-dominant students backfires and only reinforces their “otherness”.

In my classes no one is allowed to throw the spotlight on another student. Especially not in an open class discussion. No one is expected to speak on behalf of anyone other than themselves. If you have something to say I pray that you will, but it’s not my place to force the stage upon you.

---

1. Not his real name.  ↩

2. Whatever that term means.  ↩

Texting in Class: What Would Weber Do?

“Ok, let’s stop for a moment. Everyone look up at me. Look up at me just for a second.” I politely ask my class. I wait for them until I have their attention. “Ok, this is an example of legitimate authority because as a teacher asking for your attention is widely considered a reasonable and non-coercive use of power. Thanks, you can stop looking at me now.” Unamused the class lets out a collective groan and a smattering of eye rolls.

Unfazed I continue, “You see, Weber argues that a leader only has authority when their use of power is perceived as legitimate. Legitimacy is not taken by the leader, but given by their followers.” They are fantastically unimpressed by this discussion, which is exactly what I was shooting for.

“A comparison should make legitimacy clear.” I pantomime my words as I say, “If I, instead of politely asking for your attention moments ago, reached behind my laptop here.” I pause to ensure that almost no one is looking at me before I continue, “pulled out a gun and said LOOK AT ME!!!,” I scream as loudly as I can pointing at the class with my fingers shaped like a gun. Students jump in their seats, throw their heads back with eyes wide. Spontaneous laughter explodes throughout the room. I stand motionless, gun shaped hand extended, waiting for their laughter to subside before I conclude, “That!.. That would be perceived as coercive.” Nervous laughter returns to the room and I say under my breath, “bet you’ll remember that on the test.”

Those “Damn Distractions”

My friends and teachers everywhere seem to be plagued by the inability to force students to put their “damn cell phones and laptops away”. Some teachers have responded by outlawing them in their syllabus, using force, some read poems about them to their classes, others temporarily remove students of their personal property until after class. However, despite all of the attention this issue gets, no one seems to have effectively curbed cell phone use. Perhaps we haven’t found the ideal combination of carrots and sticks or perhaps cell phones are indicative of a much larger issue.

Is it possible that we have lost or are losing our traditional and rational-legal authority? Don’t get me wrong, we still hold power over our students and our classrooms, but is their space left for us to use our power in ways that will be perceived as legitimate (and thereby seen as authority)? It would appear not (especially in regards to cell phone usage in the classroom). If students think using their cell phones is legitimate and reasonable, you can either convince them otherwise or force them to stop using them by fiat. The latter has consequences that don’t seem justified.[1]

“I’m not trying to win any popularity contests here,” you may be thinking. Neither am I. However, there is a limited amount of time in every class, a limited amount of student attention, and a limited amount of willpower. In this finite reality, I’m not sold on the idea that the time and energy it takes to get students to put away their phones is really worth it. If one student is pulled away from learning by their cell phone, does it makes sense to pull the rest of the class away from learning to stop and address it. Furthermore, if I use up some of the goodwill I’ve built with my class on nagging them to put their phone away, is that the best use of my power? Does that strengthen or weaken my relationship with my students?

Ding Dong Your Authority’s Gone

What are we to do about cell phones? Teach your ass off. Sociology is cool, interesting, controversial, and emotional. Use that to pull as many students as you can into the conversation. Use interactive teaching methods that will keep your students’ hands and minds too busy for cell phone usage. And then let go. Accept that you can stop cell phone use, but the costs aren’t justified by the rewards.

If we’ve lost our traditional or legal-rational authority, then all we have left is charismatic. Students will rarely listen to you because of your title as a professor (traditional) or because you hold their grade in your hands (legal-rational), but they will listen to you if they feel you care about them and about their learning (charismatic). Teaching with charismatic authority doesn’t mean you need to start doing stand up comedy or become an entertainer, but rather it means connecting with your students and showing them you care.

What I do

I hate cell phones and laptops in the classroom as much as anyone. So I’ve written a no technology clause into the class syllabus and I read it aloud on the first day. I will even show a clip about the myth of multi-tasking and talk about the research on the effects of texting on students grades. Then for the first two weeks I’ll give general reminders to the entire class when I see someone texting. After those two weeks, I never mention it again directly. However, I like to incorporate the reminders into class activities (for instance this Goffman activity).

I have yet to find anyone who has solved the cell phone problem in a way that doesn’t make them seem like a coercive and/or nagging parent. Our students think that controlling cell phone use is outside of our legitimate uses of power. The classroom has changed, students have changed, and so it should surprise no one that our authority has changed along with it.

---

1. We should also acknowledge that teachers are given varying levels of authority in the first place. The more dominant your social location, the more you are automatically extended authority. However, the point in this piece is that all of us are suffering from a decline in authority.  ↩

Sleep Walking Through Racism: My Life as a Recovering Feminazi

Growing up I heard Rush Limbaugh from the radio in my father’s truck everyday. I took sociology my senior year of high school and on the day we talked about feminism, I said sincerely, “oh, I love feminism. I’m a total feminazi.” I looked around the room to cocked heads and furrowed brows. After a long pause I said, “amirite?… what?”

I was then and am now, a feminist. I was also wildly unaware of how my social location was affecting my world view. If Donald Trump started a Mr. Socially Dominant pageant I could enter. I am white, male, heterosexual, upper middle class, able-bodied, and young (despite what my students say). When I said feminazi in class, I truly believed the other feminists in the room would recognize the term and embrace me as one of their own. I had a lot of unlearning to do.[1]

I’ve spent my entire life awakening to the world around me. Awakening to the experiences of people who don’t enjoy the privileges that are automatically extended to me. Typically I’m only guessing and typically I’m wrong, but I’ve been fascinated for years by the question, “what must it be like to not be in the dominant group?” In asking this question I’m really asking what is it like to be myself. To live with privilege.

If you teach sociology, then I don’t need to tell you that teaching privilege is hard, especially if you are teaching it to students of privilege. Because social privilege is extended automatically and often unconsciously, telling someone they have privilege is like trying to convince a fish they are surrounded by water. It would appear that the greatest social privilege the dominant group enjoys is the privilege to enjoy their advantage without having to be aware they are receiving it.

Sleeping Walking Through Racism

One of the privileges of being white is that you do not have to think of your experience as being unique or distinctive to your racial group. Many students, but particularly white students, when asked to identify their race will say, “I’m American”. When I teach culture it’s not uncommon for a student to raise their hand and say something like, “I feel like I don’t have a culture. I see all of these other people eating special foods, dancing at celebrations, and stuff like that and I wish I had a culture too.” Of course this is ridiculous, if we air dropped them into a foreign country where no one spoke their language, at their foods, or celebrated their holidays then their culture would jump up and slap them in the face.

My point is, being the default, the neutral, the unremarkable leads the dominant group to sleepwalk through their unique cultural and racial experience. We can see evidence of this sleepwalking in the common reactions white students have toward racism.

“There’s no solution to racism, we’d have to think about it all the time!”

Over and over again I’ve heard my white students say verbatim or in essence, “there is no solution to racism”. Which I, up till now, took to mean “there is no way we can mitigate racial inequality”. However I now believe I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. What I think my students are saying is, “there is no way to make race go away.” But why does race need to go away?

Being “colorblind” is popular because it simplifies the world. “If we could just stop talking about race- if we could stop thinking about it, then we could just move on” is a common refrain my “colorblind” students espouse. From the perspective of someone who actively ignores race, discussions of or any acknowledgement of race creates the problem. To solve racism, the colorblind believe, everyone just needs to join me in not thinking about race. Of course, the dominant social group would say this, because they are already the default in society. By giving up the word race, they are in effect ignoring all non-dominant racial groups.

Sleepwalking students want racism to go away. When you’ve effectively convinced them that racial inequality is real, they get caught in a moral cognitive dissonance. A good person doesn’t allow injustice to go on in their community, so if they accept racism as real, they are forced to do something about it, redefine themselves as a bad person, or mitigate the cognitive dissonance. This usually entails denial, rationalization, or throwing their hands up in defeat.

Over the years a few of my white students have said a non-colorblind world would be unfeasible because, “we’d have to think about race all of the time!” They are half right. We have to teach our students to embrace the complexities race, class, gender, etc. bring to our lives. Race has to be important enough that we honor everyone’s uniqueness, but not so important that we discriminate based upon it. I said that in my classes recently and a student groaned loudly and said, “well that’s not hard at all is it?”

I’m fond of saying anger is a common side effect of learning. When you awaken a sleepwalker they abruptly realize that the dream world they were just in is a fallacy and the harsh realities of being lucid to the world around them can make them angry. They want to go back to sleep. They want to return to the simple and comfortable dream world you pulled them from.

If I had one take home message for my101 students it would be, “The world is far more complex than we are lead to believe; embrace the complexity.”

Conclusion

To be uncomfortably honest I see myself in these responses. I know them from an insiders point of view. Being a part of the dominant group means you receive a life-long training in the justifying rationales that tell you everything is ok- everything is as it should be. It’s surprisingly easy to be lulled to sleep on the issues of inequality.

I angered people my senior year when I declared myself a feminazi, but I learned a lot about my social location, worldview, and my blind spots. In the years that have passed since that day, I’ve tried to open my eyes wider. I’ve tried to wake more fully, but I still have a ways to go.

---

1. And I still do. I live in a biased unequal world that privileges me everyday.. How could I not have a lot of work left to do?  ↩

Writing Letters of Recommendation The Fast & Easy Way

Writing letters of recommendation (LOR) can be a tedious and time consuming process if you let it be. Boiler platingLOR text is unethical in my opinion. However, the divide and conquer strategy that I’ve discussed throughout the Getting Through the Hay Series can still be applied here even if each LOR you write is unique.

We can easily split up this task up between the part requiring humanity and the parts requiring tedious busy work. The honest writing about the personal and professional qualities of the student requires humanity on your part. Looking up the proper name of the school or institution receiving the letter or gathering info about the students accomplishments on campus, is busy work and should be done by the student requesting the LOR.

To this end, I created a Word document that I require my students to fill out completely before I’ll write a letter on their behalf. It’s a series of questions including, “Why did you ask me to write on your behalf?” and “What would you, ideally, like me to discuss in your letter?” This takes the guesswork out of the process and dramatically reduces the time to completion.

I get a lot of these, so I used Gmail’s Canned Emails to save a pre-written response email to a LOR request. I placed the email on a server, so that I can hyperlink to it in my email’s text. This keeps me from having to even find and attach a file. Also, it allows you to use the same file and link location in your emails. Here is my Canned Email:

I’d be happy to write a letter of recommendation for you. However, before I write on your behalf, I’ll ask you to fill out this letter of recommendation request form. This helps me write the best letter possible, so please return it to me ASAP. You can download the request form here: http://gsu-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/Letter_of_Recommendation_Form.doc

Please fill out this Word document in the spaces provided and then attach it to your reply email.

Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any other way.

Thanks, Prof Palmer

Below is the letter of recommendation request form:

Letter of Recommendation Request Form

5 Easy Ways To Fight a Torrent of Email

Email is the digital equivalent of weeds. You can spend all day dealing with it, but tomorrow there’ll be more. There is no trick I can give you to reduce the size of your inbox, but I do have a few strategies for minimizing the impact email has on your day[1]. The first is to follow the divide and conquer approach described in the first post in this series. But after you’ve done that here are 5 more quick strategies.

1. Always Be Closing

Unless you are trying to develop a connection with a student, try to end the conversation with every email. If you can end a conversation in one email rather than bouncing emails back and forth, you’ll save [bookoo] time.

2. Craft Your Emails & Syllabus Carefully

Some students ask you questions that are clearly covered on the syllabus, but a lot of students ask questions because what you said in class, written in a class-wide email, or printed on paper isn’t as clear as it could be. Always be thinking, “will students email me questions about this?” as you’re writing or saying anything. You can’t nip all of them in the bud, but a majority of them can be.

3. Not For Them, But With Them

Students like to ask you to do things for them, but you should say no. Instead offer to do it with them. The classic example of this is the question “will you read this 10 page paper and give me feedback before it’s due so I can know if I need to keep working on it?” This is a one way time transaction. When asked I reply, “I’d love to go over your work with you, but I prefer to do it face-to-face. Please feel free to stop by my office hours or let’s set up a meeting soon so we can really pour over your work.” This approach dramatically speeds up the process because you don’t have to write everything down. The old adage, “I can’t be working harder than you,” is the driving logic behind this approach.

4. Let Students Answer Each Other’s Questions

Give your students a way to answer their own questions online. Most LMSs have a discussion board feature that can easily be turned into backchannel for student interaction. My students use this all the time and I patrol it frequently to be on the look out for crises as they bubble up.

5. Use Keyboard Shortcuts

If you are using Gmail (and god love you if you aren’t/can’t) you owe it to yourself to learn the keyboard shortcuts. These make it a snap to reply to emails (just push r), archive an email (push e), move up or down your inbox using j and k, etc. It may take you a minute to learn to incorporate them into your workflow, but they are a huge time saver (especially [ and ] which archive and move up and down your inbox). Read this if you want some help on setting these up on your gmail account.

---

If you’re not careful, email can eat your lunch, but it doesn’t have too. You need to find the strategies that work best for you. These are just a few that have worked for me. I’d love to hear what works best for you in the comments below, on Facebook, Twitter, or send email to Nathan@SociologySource.com

---

1. Just as a reminder, I have over 300 students every semester. So the advice I have may not apply if you teach at a smaller school or a school with much smaller class sizes. However, I think that all of us struggle to keep up with our inboxes.  ↩