I’m with the 70%. At some point in every class, I say, “What questions do you have about this?” Seldom do students respond. However, if that same question is included in a quiz, about a third ask for more information or for help with something. According to Jean Twenge, … Read More
Author: Kate Stover
“Science needs its adventurers.”
It’s hard to imagine a more exciting scientific adventure than the one described in Altered Traits. Forty years ago, when Ritchie Davidson and Daniel Goleman were grad students, their advisors told them that studying meditation would be a career-killer. But they had a revolutionary idea, and they wanted to … Read More
“Rock and roll when first encountered seemed to represent two fears: a fear of the future and a fear of the past.”
Some feared, Christopher Hill notes, that this new kind of music had the power to lead Americans to radical decadence in the not-too-distant future. Others, who had experienced gospel music, recognized “the testifying quality, the clear sense that there were deep stakes involved, that there was a message that urgently … Read More
“Our challenge as culturally responsive teachers is knowing how to create an environment that the brain perceives as safe so it can . . . turn its attention to learning.”
Most often, “culturally responsive teaching” focuses on students of color and students who are linguistically diverse. After reading iGen by Jean Twenge, however, I would argue that students born between 1995 and 2012 have unique cultural characteristics that we need to be aware of. Twenge notes the … Read More
“The surprising result of this research was that self-transcendent purpose produced the strongest driver for students to persist through challenging academic tasks.”
Jim Lang’s wonderful book Small Teaching was the first one I reached for after finishing the profoundly disturbing book iGen last week, which described in precise, scientific terms the characteristics of many of the students who are entering our classrooms this fall. Lang’s book provides many research-based strategies for reaching … Read More
“In 2016, for the first time, the majority of entering college students described their mental health as below average.”
“We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.”
What are the connections between memory and imagination? Is separateness only an illusion? These are the two questions that Simon Van Booy explores in this beautiful book. Readers aren’t handed the answers. Rather, bits and pieces of the lives of six people are given to us in non-linear order. We … Read More
“Students rated sociability (e.g., friendliness, warmth) as significantly more important than did faculty.”
A 2014 study by Megan Gerhardt evaluated how instructors and students ranked contributors to teaching credibility. While everyone agreed that competence in subject matter and character are most important, students noted a desire for sociability that “has important implications for the classroom experience.” As Sarah Cavanagh observes, “one route … Read More
“He didn’t fit in.”
Even though he was wealthy and influential, Charles Dickens didn’t fit into middle-class life in Victorian England for many reasons. Here are three: He made fun of “society” people in his novels. Instead of writing anonymously, as the other novelists of his day did, Dickens became a celebrity who went … Read More
“There is a great deal of poetry written and published today that turns its back (sometimes with apparent disdain) upon the reader.”
Who is poetry for? What is its purpose? If you like fist fights and barroom brawls, go ahead and ask poets and professors these questions. You’ll see two sides emerge: One will agree with “the noted American poet” who said “it is the responsibility of readers to educate themselves … Read More
“Who is it you are writing for? It surely could not be the average person who just enjoys a good read.”
The reader who asked Jonathan Franzen this question touched a … Read More
“There are many of us who need to reprocess our garbage, but who can’t bear the idea of writing memoir . . .”
“The pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand.”
What? Only one book for all the students to pass around? In England? In many of his novels, Charles Dickens describes how difficult it was for ordinary families to get any sort of education. In Great Expectations, Pip’s family had a hard time scraping together money for a teacher to … Read More
“The secret of all art, also of poetry, is, thus, distance.”
Czeslaw Milosz, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, continues, “Thanks to distance the past preserved in our memory is purified and embellished.” We can consider the past “without our former passions” so we can find “details that had escaped our attention.” Rather than creating art “in the moment,” … Read More
“Of the students who report having disabilities, the largest and fastest-growing group is students who have ‘invisible disabilities.’”
One of my greatest challenges as an English instructor is to address the learning needs of students with invisible disabilities, such as anxiety disorders. This population is growing at an astonishing rate. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of college students diagnosed with or treated for anxiety problems jumped from … Read More