After watching Robin Williams challenge his class to think for themselves in the Dead Poets Society, I was left thinking about what defines good teaching. A few days later, I watched the State of the Union and listened while President Obama noted that a good teacher can increase the lifetime earnings of a class by $250,000. So, what is good teaching?
A post last year on one of our sister blogs, Sociology Lens, addresses part of this question by asserting that good teaching is about knowing students as people. In the post, Margaret Austin Smith draws upon sociological research to explain what she thinks good teaching is all about. Check it out here. But, we’d also love to hear from you—what makes a good teacher?
Hey Teaching TSP readers. It’s Nathan Palmer from SociologySource.com. Kia and Hollie have been nice enough to give me a chance to tell you about SociologySounds.com a site that helps educators find sociological music to play in their classes. If you’re reading this fine blog, then I’m guessing you are as passionate about teaching sociology as I am. That’s why I can’t wait any longer to tell you about SociologySounds.
SociologySounds.com is the easiest way for you to find great sociological songs to play in your classes. Each song features lyrics that are relevant to the sociological topics you teach everyday. We sorted all of our songs by class topic making it a snap to find exactly the right song. Once you find a song you like, you can play that song for free right from SociologySounds.com. Best of all, you can recommend songs and we’ll include them in our catalog. We’ll even give you a proper shout out for each submission as a way of saying thanks![1]
Why You Should Use Music in Your Classes.
Playing sociologically relevant music before class starts is a fantastic way to set the tone. The right song can energize your students, create a poignant moment, or at least be thought provoking. Think of the music as priming your students for what your about to discuss in class.
A really nifty trick is to time the song so that it ends at exactly the time class starts. Then like a game of musical chairs your students know that when the music stops they need to be ready for class to begin. The trick is, you don’t even have to tell them you’re doing this. After a few classes classical conditioning kicks in and they automatically stop talking. If you are teaching 100+ students YOU MUST try this.
The idea for playing music to launch my class came from, of all places, comedy clubs and concerts. Comedians and bands use music to hype the crowd getting them ready for the show. Think of the excitement that washes over the crowd when the music dies, the stage lights go out, and everyone crushes to the front of the stage eagerly anticipating the first song at a concert. A sociology class is not a rock concert and you are not a comedian, but if you could get 1/10 of that excitement before you start class think of how different your class experience could be. I like to think of it as my entrance music before I enter the ring to do pedagogical battle[2].
We are launching SociologySounds.com with a bold challenge. We want to hit 100 songs in our catalog in our first week. Help us reach our goal by recommending a song and spreading the word about us. Send an email to your department, Tweet it to your tweeps, post it on Facebook, or spread the word how ever you can.
We’ll be posting songs as fast as we can and you can follow our progress by checking our song counter. Thank you in advance for all your help![3]
You can also opt to submit the song anonymously if you are shy or if you are embarrassed that you know of a Backstreet Boys song with a sociological message. It can be our little secret. ↩
Not really. I don’t see teaching as a battle nor my students as an opponent. But I do like the metaphor in that the music gets me hyped up to teach like I’m on fire. ↩
In case this is the first we’ve met and you are wondering who’s behind this venture or how it makes money: SociologySounds.com and it’s parent site SociologySource.com are public services put out by two sociologists from Georgia Southern University. Both sites make no money (in fact they cost money). We are just a couple of nerdy sociologists trying to give back to our community. ↩
I just had to repost this video, shared on Sociological Images –a National Geographic documentary which genders animals’ sexuality. It’s worth the watch! (read the whole post here!) This would be an effective video to show in a section on normative gender roles, illustrating the broad reach of our deeply held notions of appropriate masculinity and femininity and the dangerousness of deviation.
The topic of fat-shaming is great for use in the classroom, because it’s most likely a new concept for most students, and can start a great conversation about stigma, the social dynamics of the obesity epidemic, and civil rights. To get the discussion going, you could show these “interviews” from The Colbert Report with Amy E. Farrell, a professor of American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Dickinson College, about fat-shaming and her book Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. Despite the craziness that is Stephen Colbert, I think Professor Farrell gets the point across well.
I first heard of using music in classroom from Chris Uggen, but that didn’t surprise me, because he wishes he was a rock star ;) But, turns out that many great teachers are using this method to pull their students in and help them engage with the topic in a fun way. I guess I’m convinced! We wanted to repost two nice descriptions of this method:
Hollie Nyseth Brehm and Kia Heise on January 19, 2012
Below is a guest post from Dr. Timothy Gongaware, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
In many of my classes, I have students explore George Herbert Mead’s discussions regarding the genesis of the self. Although the phases of play and game seem to be very well spelled out, I like to see just how well students can actually identify them and use that as a chance to explore what they may look like in the actual activities of others. In the classroom, I solicit example stories of children’s behaviors and activities, and we have fun exploring them and their variations in some depth. For the social psychology course I teach online, however, I give the following assignment:
After completing the assigned reading, take some time to consider what might be good examples of the phases in the genesis of the self. They are, in fact, all around us all of the time. After considering the phases for a while, search the internet (e.g., YouTube) to find video examples of both play and game.
By Tuesday evening, you should complete the following on the “Activity 2.1” discussion board: post a link to the examples; provide a proper definition of the concept of play and game; and, provide an explanation for how the video appropriately represents the related concept (extra credit will be given for a clear and well defined example of “pure play”). Then, by Wednesday evening, come back to read what others have posted and respond to, comment on and explore at least two of the examples.
Since it is not as well spelled out in Mead’s discussions, students typically find it more difficult to grasp the idea of “pure play” which precedes and helps to better develop the play and game of older individuals. This difficulty is often confounded by a common misunderstanding I’ve discovered among students who have previously been taught or read about GH Mead’s ideas. Specifically, students have indicated an understanding that “imitation” is the first thing babies do on the road to self genesis So, in addition to exploring Mead’s lengthy assertion that a baby/child cannot imitate until after they have begun to develop a sense of self (until after they develop at least a rudimentary ability to play), I encourage students to give concerted attention to the engagement of “pure play” by offering extra credit for posting clear and/or fun examples.
The clip below was recently submitted by a student as an example of pure play for the assignment and has become one of my favorites. The clip condenses a 4 hour video of a baby at play down into 2 minutes.
In addition to being just darned fun, the clip is an excellent example of what Mead referred to in various places as pure play: as those attitudes and activities which are not oriented to others, are not part of the construction of meaning with others, but which emerge from an unsocialized ‘I’, and, as Deegan emphasizes, emerge from a stimulus that calls out a detached act. The time lapsed video very clearly shows how a continuous and random shifting of focus expresses itself as the baby moves from stimuli to stimuli. From here the conversation can move to what a parent would do if they were in the room: helping the child learn to connect response and stimuli by acting as though the child were making meaningful choices and channeling/directing the child’s attention. In addition to the concept of pure play, it would seem very appropriate as an example of a human who is not yet able to treat themselves as an object and is acting only as a subject in the environment.
Hollie Nyseth Brehm and Kia Heise on January 16, 2012
In need of some last minute ideas for your sociology 101 course? Nathan Palmer has compiled a great set of lecture slides, activities, syllabi, and assignments that you can download for free! Here is the link.
After watching Robin Williams challenge his class to think for themselves in the Dead Poets Society, I was left thinking about what defines good teaching. A few days later, I watched the State of the Union and listened while President Obama noted that a good teacher can increase the lifetime earnings of a class by $250,000. So, what is good teaching?
