How confident are you that you know how to write an impeccable email to a professor? If you aren’t confident, or maybe even if you are, please read this excellent article on how to email your professor. Please. The author (Laura Portwood-Stacer) breaks it down for us into ten easy steps. I’m often skeptical of […]
Teaching
Junior High School Superlatives
That’s me in the picture. Eighth grade. I was voted Most Intellectual by my classmates. This title was part of a larger slate of superlatives: Most Likely to Succeed, Best Looking, Most Athletic, Prettiest Eyes, Best Smile, Class Clown. I wonder if these elections are still in practice today and if so, whether the categories […]
Business School Teachers
Over the summer, my department held a series of teaching workshops. These workshops gave us a chance to come together and reexamine classroom practices such as in-class exercises, group projects, and educational simulations. The workshop I have continued to think about most was the one on the role of academic research in teaching business students. […]
Leaving Your Kid at College
I was asked to give some remarks to the incoming freshmen and their parents this week. Here’s what I said. (I changed the name of my son’s friend to protect her well-meaning mother). Good morning and welcome. On behalf of the faculty, I welcome all of you to our Leeds family. One of the reasons […]
Jonah Lehrer’s Immodest Proposal for College
In my office, I have some newspaper clippings taped to the wall. One of them has been there a few years, a column by Jonah Lehrer in The Wall Street Journal called “Taking Knowledge Out of College” (2012). Lehrer cites an argument by economist Bryan Caplan that “colleges are more about certifying their students than […]
Study of Online vs. In-Person Classes
I read an interesting study recently, “A Randomized Assessment of Online Learning,” published in the American Economic Review. The authors studied the difference between student performance in three formats of the same class: an online format, a fully in-person format, and a blended format. Students were randomly assigned to one of the formats. The result? […]
I’m Never Going to Use This
“I’m never going to use this.” This statement is the battle cry of the reluctant student. It’s hard to argue with this objection because it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem with the claim is that we never know what we are going to use. I’m a bit of a romantic about education. It broadens […]
Cheating in College
Last semester, for a change, I instructed my students not to cheat on the final exam. Does that strike you as strange? Some people might think it would be a strange instruction because students know they shouldn’t cheat, so what good is telling them not to? Other people might think it’s strange that I don’t […]
Classroom Walls
My children attended an elementary school with an open floor plan. I was skeptical when I heard about this design. There are no walls around the classrooms? Isn’t it loud? Isn’t it chaotic? Indeed, Bear Creek Elementary did not have fully-walled-off classrooms. But it was not a single undifferentiated open space. Bookshelves and file cabinets […]
Pride-Swallowing Siege
The first fifteen seconds: “You don’t know what it’s like to me be ME out here for YOU. It’s an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will NEVER fully tell you about.” For several years, this rant captured how I felt as a mother. I did tell the offspring about it, but, I suppose, as Jerry […]