Kirt Shineman ReImagine Teaching

   Research on the brain has shown that emotion plays a key role in learning, but how can we as educators apply that research in our day-to-day interactions with students? Are we using emotions to help students learn? What are some teaching strategies that take advantage of what we know about the brain? When I was a kid I was not rich. Nope. I grew up in Western Nebraska for some time, in a trailer park.  We didn't have a lot of stuff.  I had my favorite shirt, my favorite shoes, and yes, my favorite bow-tie. I didn't need much. I didn't bore easily. Grandma gave me crayons.  The story I was told was we were so poor Mom couldn't afford paper. I didn't care. I colored on all of the trailers in the park. Was I the first graffiti artist in McCook? Just some crayons, and some encouragement, praise, and I was happy coloring on walls. The encouragement struck a match of joy in my soul. Some forty years later, I wonder, did the praise, gratitude, and joy ...

  In a poem, one line may hide another line, as  at a crossing, one train may hide another train.  That is, if you are waiting to cross t he tracks, wait to do it for one moment at l east after the first train is gone. And the same is true when you read. Wait until you have read the next line— Then it is safe to go on reading. So always standing in front of something the other As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas. One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide.  In love, one reproach may hide  another, One small complaint may hide a great one. One idea may hide another . This is true  in the laboratory as One invention may hide another invention, One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows. One waits at the train tracks until the trains pass, These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses.  One teacher, one doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man May hide another. Pause...

 The Stanford University Newsletter explained several aspects of PBL that require specific skill sets that go beyond subject matter expertise. In regards to that info: Identify which of these skill sets are your strengths.   Identify which of these skill sets you feel are your weaknesses. Consider how you can improve in your weaker areas. Building a Culture in a Classroom: For one who studies culture I know that there are four components necessary for culture to coalesse: the same language, a symbol, rites and rituals (structure), and norms of behavior. These come together over time, and the students need to develop these together, not just forced upon them by the teacher. I offer a structure to keep the 75 mins the same from class to class, and the norms of behavior are spelled out in the syllabus (attendance, time, polite, etc.). Language is a new struggle. If the students do not speak English proficiently then they have a high communication apprehension ...

“Maybe we can just get together and eat a bunch of caramels” (Good Will Hunting). – Student's experiences aren't confined to the classroom, or even to the school itself. One of the saddest notions of schooling is that it must take place within the walls of the classroom. The world is out there to interact with. One small assignment we do in my course is as follows.  1) I assign students to go to a) Starbucks (non-drive thru), or b) Apple Store. I give the students these questions: What does the company do successfully? How does communication function at Starbucks/Apple Store to facilitate sales, comfort, habit, interpersonal relations? Deborah Tannen in her essay "The display of identities in talk at work" explained the incivility that characterizes many contemporary social interactions in our work and school settings. Yet, Starbucks and the Apple Store use very causal conversations to make us feel like friends, and we enjoy the experience, so we return. Star...

Many years ago, let's not say when, I designed the Oral Interpretation (COM241) course with the focus on a culminating final performance at a forensics tournament away from the campus. The culminating final performance/tournament offered a trophy, cash, a paid trip, food, camaraderie, peer-work, observation of other performances, evaluations from other judges, and a real-world comparison of choices. The students would aim toward the last PSCFA (Pacific Southwest Collegiate Forensics Association) tournament in the spring, called the Cool-Off. The PSCFA  provides students with an orientation in speech communication to enable them to better order their own affairs; to extend forensics to all participants regardless of race, age, gender, sexual orientation, and/or disability; to provide means of education for students and to maintain and advance the ideals and standards of speech communication.  The tournament would only allow novice competitors, which was ideal for my Oral Inter...

[A note about the photo: three of the students in this photo, behind Prof. May's (Rosie), became professors of communication including Dayna Kloeber, Roxan Arntson (Alexander), and Tenisha Baca. Two others are professional artist in performance. I have a group photo of the men too.] Changing and adapting one's knowledge and skills when making complex decisions about teaching is tough.  We are being asked to learn new concepts and develop new abilities to use situation-specific and flexible teaching methods to support diversity in student learning. How? First, I've discovered through my work as a communication studies scholar is to use personal reflection and conscious deliberation. I journal. My journal is private. I use it to think through successes. I try not to dwell on failures because then I am depressed. I am my toughest critic and there is never a perfect class. If I focus on the failures, I will quit teaching. This could be because I already struggle with depres...

Failures in the classroom do not always result in finishing successfully.  Sometimes failure is a gift we receive and we open the gift over the years. A student brought me a gift of learning. Before the semester began I received an accommodation report from Disability Resource Services. I looked over all of the accommodations, and made all of the changes available to the student. For this story I named the student Alice. On the first day of class I met Alice, and explained in private that I accommodated all of her requests. She smiled and seemed very pleased with class. She had me document on her notebook exactly what homework she had for the next class meeting. The homework demand on the first day included reading the syllabus, and filling out some forms. Alice returned to the next class with all of her assignments complete. Proudly she showed me her work. She showed me her notes on the first chapter. All twenty pages of notes. She flipped through her colorful notes. She showe...

My sophomore year I walked into my first forensics round at the Lakewood High School.  My stomach churned with nerves. The Coach, a friendly English teacher at my high school, never worked with students in oral interpretation, so she couldn't help. She brought us to Lakewood in her beat-up red Subaru. "You'll be fine!" she kept telling our very small team of three. I was performing in the event of Humor Interpretation, or HI, and I rehearsed for weeks in front of the bathroom mirror, door locked, and stuffed animals strategically placed as audience members. I knew my literature, "Notes for the Overfed" by Woody Allen. I knew my introduction, and the entire performance ran just under the time limit of ten minutes. The Coach asked me how I felt on the way to Lakewood, and I said I felt sick. Without taking her eyes off I-70, she passed me a large bottle of pink Pepto. "Drink this," she said, with a lilt in her voice for finally discovering a way to h...

 The opening soundtrack of Jaws played as I zipped up my wetsuit for the first time. Bum-bum. Bum-bum. The music echoed memories of a shark dorsal fin cutting through the dark water. Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum. I scanned the high waves of the Great Barrier Reef as I tugged on my fins, flipsies, flippers, flappers. Why were they so hard to pull on wet feet? Bum-bum. Bum-bum. Had I seen the dark shadow of a shark swimming off the side of the boat? Of course not. But even if I had, I was reminded by my snorkeling instructor, Kara the Kiwi, there were over 600 shark species, and only a few were dangerous. They wouldn't bother a fat man in a black wetsuit with yellow flappers. Or were they fins? Anyway, most of them were shy like Ralph Wiggum of The Simpsons. (" I’m bembarassed for you.") As I sprayed my diving mask with de-fogger, I imagined a Ralph Wiggum shark, all yellow, and shy, and speaking to me out in the reef, "Hey! Are you lunch? I ate too much plastic candy th...