Hawai‘i Pacific University • Teaching and Learning Center • http://tlc.hpu.edu

Students 101by P. Sven Arvidson, Ph.D.

1 Students 101

3 Encouraging Student

Participation in Large Classes

4 Undersea Mission to Save Black

Coral Species

6 The Kids Are All Right

Teaching and Learning Center Staff

Director:

Michael Dabney

(808) 543-8048

mdabney@hpu.edu

Administrative Coordinator:

Sandra Meyer

(808) 356-5250

smeyer@hpu.edu

TLC Hours and Location:

Monday to Friday

7:00 a.m. to 6:45 p.m.

Saturday

7:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Opening hours change duringsummer and winter sessions.

1188 Fort St. Mall, Suite 139Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96813

No.

48

Mar

ch-A

pril

2010

Contents

continued on page 2

The Po‘okela newsletter is a bimonthly publication featur-ing articles of interest to faculty regarding pedagogy, scholarship, and service at Hawai‘i Pacific University.

Opinions in this newsletter are those of the authors. Articles are chosen for their power to encour-age reflection and discussion and do not reflect endorsement by the Teaching and Learning Center or Hawai‘i Pacific University.

EEvery professor encounters difficult students. Some

students are simply uninterested, while others are more troublesome. The aggressive passive-aggressive student, the interrupter, the hijacker, the shy student — most faculty members are familiar with them all. And, as I have learned firsthand over many years of teaching, faculty members must approach each type in a slightly different way:

Uninterested Students. On any given day of teaching, most faculty members teach some unin-terested students. Monthly, weekly, hourly, student engagement waxes and wanes. How best to approach the uninterested student? The professor must discover common ground. Of course, the larger the class, the more difficult that is to do. In fact, it is useful to remember that a small number of students are inten-tionally uninterested in their education, and even the most amazing teaching will not engage them.

Still, you can frequently make connections between your course and your students’ lives. For instance, a student asks for clarification of a point during class, and you respond by using a video-game analogy. She had earlier proudly told you she helps build virtual communities, and your response now acknowledges that. Why choose a soccer analogy when the video analogy is highly relevant to her? The addition of life interests to a professor’s response equals a connection.

How do you collect such information? The first day of class is a golden opportunity. Professors now have available a student’s name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. Still, I ask each student to write that information again on a note card, along with a response to “What do you do?” I leave it at that, even though students are puzzled. Many students grandly present themselves in this opening. Secretly, that is the real question, not “What is your e-mail address?”

Many students list their jobs (“I’m a nanny”; “I’m a paralegal”) and their interests (“I like snowboarding”). But students also write, “I was really sick last term and am afraid about doing well in here,” or “I have a toddler, and I’m in an Irish folk band.” That infor-mation is always available during the course to ease anxiety about student personalities, to help reconnect with students, to enlarge common ground with those who are already engaged, and to inform encounters with problem students. You can use that informa-tion discreetly as the course unfolds, in lectures and discussions, in responses, in designing assignments, and if problems arise.

You can also gather valuable information about students by being present during lecture breaks or before or after class. Many students will eagerly reveal their outside interests. Also, you should try to design written assignments where students themselves are asked to find relationships between the course and their lives or majors. And if you are teaching non-majors, know which ones are more represented and make lecture and discussion points with them in mind.

Aggressive Passive-Aggressive Students. Some students can be aggressively uninterested in class — for example, reading the newspaper and other texts, shopping on their computers, obviously daydream-ing, and even sleeping. Will you be laissez-faire or interventionist?

Such students are unobtrusively showing disre-spect for your teaching. They may be lost causes, but you must attempt to retrieve them. Why? Because the institution expects it. Read again your ratings forms, which reflect institutional expectations. They very likely include questions such as: “Did the course or professor challenge you?” and “Did the professor pro-mote active learning?”

“Po’okela serves HPU faculty and an outside mailing list of readers interested in our work, with the intention to prompt community building and reflection on professional practice, and to encourage innovation in teaching.”

If subtle approaches with the student are ineffective, make an appointment to talk. Why waste your time? The student who regularly reads the newspaper is already on your mind, so square away the assumptions face to face. “Since you read the paper during class, you seem uninterested in the course. Can you tell me about how you see this course?” However the conversation goes, you will make the point that his behavior is distracting to you as a professor and disrespectful. Except for extreme cases with incredibly unrea-sonable students, a respectfully led meeting in which you have attempted to get to know the student should yield some success.

For example, during a required philosophy course, a creative-writing major had begun working crosswords. After class I asked if she would do that in an English course. Her “no” opened up a conversation about how my course was sometimes slow for her. I suggested that she replace crosswords with writing “riffs” inspired by the lecture that I was giving. That solution worked and was a compromise on both our parts. A key point is that I had to know something about the student — her love of writing — to resolve the situation.

Interrupters. You cannot ignore the committed interrupter. An interrupter is not the student who asks a good number of astute questions. The interrupter is both annoyingly frequent and not selective. A course needs a modicum of uninterrupted segments for the professor to accomplish goals.

How do you decrease the interruptions and increase quality? Meet with the student, but beware. Have you made your judgment too early and in error — or too late and the classroom dynamic is irreparable? Will you turn an interrupter into an aggressive passive-aggressive student or worse?

Acknowledge the student’s passion for learning and explore how to re-channel that passion. Enlist the student’s help by asking her to dial back: “I see how you have shown others how to speak up, but for some it takes more time to warm up. What do you think about letting others have the floor too, now that they’ve seen how you do it?” You are asking the student to be a leader and take social responsibility.

Also offer a weekly meeting. Students will rarely take you up on that offer, or they will excuse themselves from meeting consistently. Yet the student has the friendly attention of the professor and is likely to rely on that special connection, attenuating the need for the spotlight.

Hijackers. Woe to the professor who finds a hijacker has seized the class. A hijacker consistently tries to publicly undermine your authority.

If thinly veiled disrespect were limited to just that one student, it would not be a serious problem. Instead, the hijacker will seek live, public assent from others in the class for his view, regardless of what the professor thinks. A hijacker is not necessarily a person with contrary views appropriately expressed. Unlike the interrupter,

the hijacker has an agenda in mind, and it involves you and your course.

A typical hijacker attempts to per-suade the class — before, during, or after a session — that the course or the professor is deeply flawed. Encountering my first hijacker, I initially liked how he bravely spoke up in class and seemed genuinely interested. Yet before long, he was challenging policies and disregarding reasoned responses.

For example, “Why do we have to take an exam in this course when we’ve all obviously read this stuff?” That day he posed the question, which I had already answered several times with appro-priate context, to the class. I let several students answer, but mostly they were intimidated. Then I responded again, moved on, and lost a night’s sleep. I knew I had to do something, but what was this student’s motivation? He was intelligent and produced good work.

I set up a meeting with him. Beforehand, I informed the chair-man of my department and queried a professor in the student’s major. Unexpectedly, I got stories of how the student had pedagogi-cally tortured that professor (lots of raw feeling, no good prescrip-tions).

In the meeting with the student, I asked him about his attitude toward the course and the aim of his behavior. “I like your passion for learning, but your fellow students are in a difficult course and need to trust in the professor to be successful. I also need to be able to lead with some authority, and what you do in class is not con-structive.” I gave examples and asked, “What is your goal?”

The student claimed no goal but acknowledged my concern for the other students, since I kept pressing. The meeting was contentious. We reached some understanding without blame, and he stopped trying to hijack the course. The payoff: Other students found their voices, and I slept at night. A hijacker must be dealt with directly and honestly.

Painfully Shy Students. Some students have taken a vow of silence, to be broken only if necessary. They never voluntarily speak in the class. They’ll even hide in writing assignments designed to reveal their perspective. For a painfully shy student, the larger the group, the greater the pain.

Why should you care? Within reasonable boundaries, it’s your job to try to find a way to educate all students, no matter their learn-ing style or abilities. Mission statements often claim leadership as a value, and leaders must be able to communicate confidently.

What should you do? It is a mistake to publicly chide a painfully shy student: “You don’t like us enough to talk to us?” Encouraging is not a mistake. Yet repeated “encouraging” becomes chiding. “Don’t be afraid, we’re all friends here” is subtle chiding. Call on the

2 Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela

Students 101 continued

P. Sven Arvidson, Ph.D.

continued on page 3

Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela 3

Students 101 continued

student as you normally would, but make an “out” available. If the student balks, eventually offer, “If you’d like to pass on this ques-tion, let me know.” Others will be eager to answer.

Also, to bring in shyer students, create a welcoming atmosphere with nondismissive responses to questions. Arrange for such stu-dents to get a chance to talk in smaller groups. Ask them to bring written ideas to voice in class: “These ideas are first rate. It would be wonderful for you to sometimes share your thoughts aloud in class. Others could benefit.”

Those are just a few tips based on my experiences. When think-

ing about teaching troublesome students, keep in mind that many colleges offer help through “teaching centers.” Also, simply accept that some problems have no reasonable solution. Once you have done your best to communicate respectfully with all your students, however difficult, you have earned the right to sleep at night.

P. Sven Arvidson is a visiting associate professor of philosophy and senior faculty fellow in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Seattle University. This article is taken from his book, Teaching Nonmajors: Advice for Liberal Arts Professors (SUNY Press, 2008), online at http//www.teachingnonmajors.com.

Encouraging Student Participation in Large ClassesAngie Thompson, Ph.D.

If you’re interested in approaches that encourage students to participate in class and develop their public-speaking skills, as well as techniques that help you learn student names, then my “daily experts” strategy may be of use to you.

What are daily experts? I list five or six students’ names on a power point slide at the beginning of my classes (which are typi-cally 65-150 students). These individuals, assuming they are in class that day, then become my daily experts—the first ones I ask questions to or opinions of before opening discussion to the whole class. The approach provides for one-on-one dialogue in the midst of a larger class creating an environment that encour-ages interaction.

In my first-year class, I tend to pose questions that review materials covered in the previous lecture. These questions are listed on power point, and I ask them at the beginning of class to remind everyone of the content we worked in the previous class session. I often build on the students’ responses, asking related questions and/or adding depth to the material myself. In my fourth-year classes, I may use daily experts to review as well. More frequently, though, I ask them questions or inquire about their opinions in the middle or latter half of class after new content has been covered. These queries tend to be more application-oriented, often requiring lengthier responses from which I can build a class or small group discussion.

Why use daily experts? For my first-year class, the main reason is to break the ice, which hopefully helps students realize that I am approachable. It also ensures that each student has at least one opportunity to speak in front of the class. In my fourth-year classes, I use the daily experts concept to provide the same speak-ing experience, but more as a tool to ensure that all students have the chance to share relevant experiences and opinions with me and the rest of the class.

How does the professor benefit from daily experts? I get to know my students’ names and am more likely to remember them outside of class as well. Indirectly, my use of daily experts encourages class attendance. Students want to be there when their name appears on the PowerPoint. They don’t want to hear from their classmates, “You missed being a daily expert today” or have me say, “I missed you in class today; you were one of my daily experts.”

I also benefit because using daily experts forces me to teach in another way—a way that gets me focused on individuals. Every interaction with a daily expert becomes a teaching opportunity. It may be a chance to help that student become a bit more con-fident when he or she interacts with a professor. It’s a chance to help students face and conquer that fear of speaking in class. Most important, the strategy gets students actively engaged with the class and its course materials.

What about the rest of the class? There are benefits to the whole class when I interact with my daily experts. It gives oth-ers the opportunity to learn classmates’ names. They also benefit when they consider how they might have responded differently. They can learn from others’ experiences and see how to ask ques-tions in a nonthreatening way. The technique helps everyone engage more actively in the course material. So if you want your classes (even large ones) to be interactive, a daily expert approach might be just what you’re looking for.

Angie Thompson is an associate professor at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia. Taken from the January 6, 2010 issue of the e-newsletter, Faculty Focus, http://www.facultyfocus.com?p=10392. The original version of this article appeared in Daily Experts: A Technique to Encourage Student Participation, The Teaching Professor, December 2008. Reprinted with permission.

continued on page 5

4 Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela

Undersea Mission to Save Black Coral Speciesby Kelli Havner and Samuel Kahng, Ph.D.

This article was contributed by Kelli Havner, who, with seven other students from the NSC14800 - Field Experiences in Natural Science course, spent five days on the research vessel, Ka’imikai-o-kanaloa, with their instructor, Samuel Kahng, Ph.D., assistant professor of oceanography, to study the impact of snowflake coral growths on black corals.

Even though sun had not yet risen in the sky by the time I reached Snug Harbor, off Honolulu harbor, I could see the full 223 feet of the massive research vessel Ka’imikai-o-kanaloa or ‘K-o-K’ (meaning Heavenly Searcher of the Sea in Hawaiian) that would serve as the setting of my first real experience as a marine biologist. This was the first real step on a journey I’ve spent 21 years planning.

Built in 1979 as a seismic research vessel, the RV K-o-K’s pri-mary role is now to serve as a support vessel for the Pisces IV and V submersibles. It displaces 1,961 tons and can accommodate up to 14 crew and 19 scientists.

We (six graduate students, and two undergraduate students,) embarked on a five-day research cruise from November 19 to 23, 2009, with Dr. Sam Kahng, with the objective of investigating the interisland biological invasion, distribution, and impact of the octocoral Carijoa riseii or snowflake coral, on native black coral species.

Black coral colonies which look like underwater trees and can grow over two meters tall, are harvested to create jewelry. They have been designated Hawai‘i’s state gemstone and are considered a sustainable resource. Numerous regulations have been put into effect to preserve them. Within the past 10 years, a new threat has emerged in the form of the snowflake coral. These have been out-competing the deep water black coral species and are grow-ing over them in order to reach higher above the ocean floor to filter more prey from the water. In so doing, they smother the black coral trees. They are also able to grow independently on the substrate and form underwater prairies which allow them to continue to spread.

Aboard the K-o-K, we were able to launch the Pisces IV sub-mersible to record eight hours of survey data via video footage to monitor the progress of the overgrowth. The submersibles were used to collect data to allow Dr. Kahng to observe firsthand the impact of the snowflake coral. The videos included audio narra-tives to better assist the team analyzing the videos. During the cruise we launched the Pisces IV three times. Each launch was supervised by Dr. Kahng and a member of our crew. Graduate student Paula Lam accompanied him during the first dive; Rick Klobuchar of the Waikiki Aquarium went down in the second launch, and student Coulson Lantz participated in the third

launch. They dived 200 meters, saw expansive deep reef environ-ments, and watched as the pilot carefully took samples of black, wire, and plate coral that “crumbled like cornflakes” when col-lected by the submerisble’s mechanical arm.

Live coral samples were collected to supply Klobuchar and the Waikiki Aquarium with new specimens for the coral “farm” the aquarium has constructed. Student Paula Lam was in charge of organizing the live coral samples so the correct sample depth was attached to each colony. She also aided Dr. Kahng by cataloging the samples and preserving them in various solutions to preserve the skeletons and soft tissues for post-cruise analy-sis. Some samples were bleached to better examine the skeleton morphology. Formalin was used to preserve the soft tissues for histological analyses.

The group on board the Ka`imikai-o-kanaloa.

The Pisces IV submersible.

Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela 5

Students Coulson Lantz, Lennon Thomas, and Robert Thompson were responsible for numerous CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) and hydrographic casts to study the buffer-ing effects caused by dissolution of carbonate minerals on the deep reef. This coastal buffering effect may counter some of the effects ocean acidification due to rising atmospheric carbon diox-ide. Lantz was also in charge of retrieving data from temperature loggers placed within the 60-150 meter depth range in the ocean two years earlier. They were found during the second Pisces IV dive and retrieved, some heavily encrusted by fouling organisms.

Kimberly Rose, Danielle McKay, and Michelle Nguyen ana-lyzed the video footage from the submersible dives to quantify

the black coral trees, the snowflake coral overgrowth, and at what depth they appeared. They also assisted Lam with processing the coral samples when they were brought aboard after a sub dive.

I was given the duty of recording and documenting our excur-sion and lending an extra hand when needed, which was often. There was constant activity aboard the K-o-K as multiple opera-tions were occurring simultaneously around the clock. Between work, sleeping, eating, and taking in the views, this experience was an amazing launch into our field of study. It has motivated us to continue our education with a renewed sense of enthusiasm as we can only hope for another experience to equal the one aboard the K-o-K.

Undersea Mission to Save Black Coral Species continued

In the fall of 2009, Dr. Patrick Bratton, assistant professor of political science and program chair for political science and inter-national relations at Hawai‘i Pacific University, visited the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi, India, to carry out research on the use of coercive diplomacy during the 2001-02 crisis between India and Pakistan.

IDSA is the top international relations and security think-tank in India and is one of the top three think-tanks in Asia.

Dr. Bratton presented his research at an IDSA fellows’ seminar in mid-November and has submitted an article for publication in IDSA’s journal “Strategic Analysis.” This article will also form a chapter in an upcoming volume he is working on with Wallace Thies of Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. The

chapter examines the experiences of governments engaged in coercive diplomacy.

While in India Dr. Bratton also delivered presentations at

several other institutes, including Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of International Studies, the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

Dr. Bratton graduated from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and completed his graduate studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UK), and the Université de Rennes 2 (France). He completed his Ph.D. at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. and has worked at the Catholic University of America, the National War College, and Washington College. He can be reached at pbratton@hpu.edu.

Dr. Bratton speaking at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, India.

India Gate, one of the largest war memorials in India.

6 Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela

continued on page 7

The Kids Are All Rightby Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. and David B. Strohmetz

But, for whatever reason, the exam results were predominantly chaff.

Was it your teaching? Impossible, of course. You are a con-scientious teacher who worked diligently on your lectures. You tracked down recent references, created examples, embedded discussion questions, made several rounds of revisions, and fol-lowed tips for creating proper PowerPoints. But the students still did poorly, and will surely blame you and exact revenge on your teaching evaluations. The only viable explanation for the students’ poor performance is that the students are to blame. It’s not you, it’s them! (Or so you think.)

Teachers want students to learn, and when students fail to meet that goal, someone must bear the responsibility. The kids aren’t all right – they’re the problem. At one time or another, it is easy to feel as though students are not holding up their end of the teacher-student “relationship.”

This conclusion that students are not “all right” often takes the form of lamenting students’ lack of motivation, lack of inter-est, lack of preparation, excessive partying, excessive socializing, and a lack of enthusiasm for our teaching. Worse, some make broad claims that students in general “don’t read,” “can’t write” and “can’t think,” especially compared to students of yesteryear. But are these novel complaints? A faculty report once concluded that 25 percent of students admitted to Harvard in 1897 did not have the writing skills necessary to succeed in college. This does not bode well for progress in higher education over the past 100+ years.

Unfortunately what this does suggest is that the phenomenon of blaming students is more ubiquitous and may not be limited to teachers who are exceptionally egocentric, narcissistic, burnt-out, curmudgeonly, or those who would rather not teach at all.

As professors who have the responsibility for helping our students learn, this seems like a counterproductive perspective. Teachers are all familiar with the notion that when students do well in our courses, they take the credit as the smart and capable students that they are. However, when students do poorly the teacher often bears the blame. Students have “earned” every A, but have been “given” every B, C, D, or F by their less than stellar teachers.

However, professors are not immune from adopting a similar self-serving bias. When a specific class, an entire course, or an

entire semester of teaching evaluations go well, we simply re-affirm our teaching prowess. But when evaluations are less than complimentary, there must be another explanation. Most com-monly we attribute poor teaching outcomes to the occupants of the desks in our classroom. Yet, if you asked students why some of their courses are less fulfilling, less educational, and less enjoy-able, students would likely suggest that the instructor is to blame. Certainly both perspectives have a kernel of truth.

If students are not ideal scholars, there must be a good reason for how this came to be. A common explanation for students’ shortcomings involves generational differences. But it seems too easy to merely conclude that the students of today, “generation me,” are qualitatively different than students of the past. We must remember that when we compare students past and present, we may be using an unfair comparison group.

We run the risk of using our own past experience as the default comparison group. This presents two problems. First, our recol-lection of our own college experience may suffer from retrospec-tive biases where we recall things more favorably than they were. Did we really do all of our reading? Did we really avoid procras-tinating? Did we truly devote ourselves to our coursework? Were we really attentive in class 100 percent of the time? Certainly, we are prone to some degree of rosy retrospection.

The second problem is that even if we have perfect and bias-free retrospection, it is likely that you were not a typical college student. In fact, it is much more likely that you went on to become a professor because you were not a typical student. Compared to the typical student, you probably earned better grades and placed a higher value on education. Compared to the average student at most colleges and universities, you may have graduated from a better high school, had more encouragement along the way, or had better role models who reinforced the importance of pursu-ing higher education. Perhaps, as a result, you emerged from high school with better critical-thinking skills, better writing skills, better reading skills, and were a more skilled test taker. Even if you did not benefit from any of these advantages, your superior performance as an undergraduate was undoubtedly the result of you paying better attention in class, studying more, reading the assigned texts, and conscientiously completing assignments.

More to the point, it is likely that your own college classrooms were not teeming with aspiring academics who shared your enthusiasm and appreciation of the learning process. Chances are that some of your fellow students were supremely prepared,

It happens. A few weeks into the semester you finish grading the first exam in a course, and check the class average only to find that perfor-mance is decidedly underwhelming. What happened? Was the exam too hard? Did it have confusing questions? Impossible, of course. You wrote the exam yourself and made sure that it assessed everything students should have gleaned over the past few weeks. The exam was a finely tuned instrument designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela 7

some were supremely underprepared, the rest were somewhere in between. The same is true in our classrooms today. Thus, we should be careful to avoid portraying our personal academic experiences and motivations as the benchmark for comparisons.

In reality, we are much more like our students than we care to acknowledge. Who among us can say they have read all of the recent journals in their field, have never submitted a less than perfect manuscript or grant proposal, have never procrastinated on a project, have never missed a deadline, have never been late to class, have never skipped a meeting, or have not paid astute atten-tion while a speaker provided information? If you have any doubt about this last one, I urge you to look around the room during your next faculty meeting to see how many of your colleagues are otherwise occupied.

Students in our classes today do check their cell phones exces-sively. When we were students, most of us never would have dreamed of doing such a thing (mainly because there weren’t cell phones). But, if you had such a device as a student, I suspect that you may have found it difficult to avoid checking for text mes-sages about that night’s social activities as well. Now that we do have these devices, how many of your colleagues (if not yourself) check their BlackBerrys or iPhones on a potentially excessive basis? Although there may be generation differences in the avail-able technology, students and teachers of yesterday and today share the same desire to learn useful information, to be financially secure, to lead a happy life, and to be efficient, and to avoid wast-ing time engaging in seemingly meaningless activities. Ultimately, if we focus on the similarities rather than highlight the differences, we will be more effective in helping our students to learn.

Students as a whole are not going to change. It is unlikely that an entire generation, student body, or even your early morning class will see the light, rebel against their nature, and suddenly enter your classroom as the dedicated scholars you think they should be. Not only will your students show up in the same state as they did last semester, it may be unrealistic to expect other-wise. If someone had the courage to enact change in our students, which of the following would be the wiser course of action? A) Assume that you should simply keep doing what you have been for years as students will make the choice to change and will enter your class prepared, motivated, and enthusiastic. B) Ask yourself, what can you do to connect with your students in a way that allows you to achieve the goals that you have for them? The

wisdom is in Choice B.

Given that we may be unable to effect wholesale, lasting changes in the inherent natures of our students, we as teachers can adapt and better meet our teaching goals. As they say, the first step is acknowledging that we contribute to the problem. By focusing on student deficiencies, you may inadvertently perpetu-ate the problem. Case in point, by developing a mindset that stu-dents have significant deficiencies, you may become more prone to developing a confirmatory bias that leads you to more easily identify and remember students’ deficiencies. Worse, negative expectations about students might lead you to act in a way (per-haps unknowingly) that elicits negative behaviors from students.

For example, if you became convinced that your class was unenthusiastic, you might devote less effort to your next lecture because quite frankly “why bother? They aren’t interested any-way.” Thus, your next lecture is subsequently less engaging, and the students are, as you predicted, unenthusiastic. By identifying and resisting this self-defeating pattern, you can take steps to avoid it. After all, you are the person with the most influence on the classroom and have the most ability to produce the desired change.

We’d like you to think back to the question posed above. When you were an undergraduate, were you really attentive in class 100 percent of the time? Always engaged? Or were you only attentive and engaged in the better classes, with the better teachers who projected positivity and respect for their students? If so, are you teaching one of the better classes? Are you one of the better teachers? If you have room for improvement, as all average, good, and great teachers do, keep in mind that it is impossible to be a master teacher without a fundamental respect and appreciation of your students. Only by avoiding the obstacle of blaming students, can you proceed to instill in your students a sense of curiosity, skepticism, and an interest in pursuing new ways of thinking about the world.

Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. is associate professor of psychology at Monmouth University. David B. Strohmetz is associate professor of psychology and associate vice president for academic and institutional assessment at Monmouth University. This article first appeared in Inside Higher Education, online at http://www.insidehighered.com/newsletter/html on October 28, 2009. Reprinted with permission.

The Kids Are All Right continued

8 Hawai‘i Pacific University • Po‘okela

We would like to hear from you! If you have original quotes or anecdotes that you would like to share with other faculty about your teaching experiences here at HPU, please

send them to the Teaching and Learning Center along with your name, your title, and your permission to publish them in the Po‘okela.”

“WHEN EDUCATORS SPEAK…

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. ~ Elbert Hubbard, author and publisher (1856 – 1915)

Be careful about reading health books; you may die of a misprint. ~ Mark Twain, author (1835-1910)

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? ~ Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize Laureate - Physics (1879 – 1955)

We all have times when we think more effectively, and times when we should not be thinking at all. ~ Daniel Cohen