UC Santa Cruz - Center for Teaching Excellence

Ruth Hoffman – Teaching Statement 2005-06
Lecturer, College Nine

Teaching the college Core courses is in some ways a very distinctive pedagogical task and experience. Much is required of a core course instructor. We help our students bridge the ever-widening gap between high school and university life. We guide our students through the maze (and haze) of their first term at UCSC. We must throw them directly into the deep end of university-level academic life and hope that they can keep their heads above water. We must also stand by ready to quickly throw them lifelines if needed. Sometimes those lifelines take the form of simple suggestions, such as how to manage their time, how to find a quite place to study, or how to overcome their general but very real fears of campus life. At other times, our lifelines are more academic in nature. We must teach our students to read critically, write clearly, and confidently enter into the intellectual debates that take place all around them.

Naturally, I try to help the students understand and to come to terms with the challenging texts that they read and with the profound and complex issues that those texts raise. Whether we are examining Gilgamesh or Malcolm X in the Stevenson course or considering the ever-changing political, economic, and social ramifications of globalization as presented by many texts assigned in the College Nine course, the subject matter is complex, the issues weighty, and the discussions often impassioned.

I also try to use these courses to develop my students’ basic skills in the areas of reading comprehension, independent and critical thinking, and clear and effective communication, both verbal and written. I will be very pleased if a decade from now such students still remember what they read in, say, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, and what they thought about it. But if the experience of reading, evaluating, and discussing that book in my classroom helps them to increase the analytical and communication skills that will then remain permanently at their disposal, I will be even happier.

Moreover, I take very seriously the task of increasing a student’s self-confidence and readiness to present and defend an opinion before others. I remember that when I was an undergraduate I looked upon my instructors as members of an exalted and privileged club of scholars. I wished desperately to join that club but felt separated from it by an impossibly large gulf. That early feeling of exclusion leaves me all the more determined today to strengthen my students’ sense of inclusion, to let them know that although they might be young members of this club, they are members nonetheless, members who are quite able (and have every right) to engage in the scholarly conversation.

I derive great joy from witnessing the steady personal and intellectual growth of each person in my class. Sometimes the close readings and careful discussions that take place in our courses will lead a student to change his/her mind. One student told me last year that each day she had come to class well prepared and thinking that she had the answers to any question I might ask. But many days she left feeling (as she put it) “as though you had just lifted off the top of my head, stirred my brains with a spoon, put the top of my head back on and sent me out the think about everything all over again.” If so, I replied, then I guess I had done my job.

But I certainly don’t want to create of room full of people who speak as I do, write as I do, or even think as I do. I don’t reward students simply for regurgitating my own beliefs. Quite the contrary: I teach my students to formulate their own arguments and I am delighted when they can stand toe to toe with me and defend their positions on controversial subjects. I want my students to find and develop their own voices, to learn how to commit those voices to writing, and to stand behind those voices as they engage peers in the scholarly community in spirited debate. I leave the classroom with a true sense of accomplishment when a student has managed to change my mind on a given issue.

I also believe that a single syllabus or assignment rarely fits all equally well. The particular characteristics and dynamics of different student cohorts demand flexibility on my part. I must very quickly calculate the nature of the class’s group personality and adapt to its particular (but also fluctuating) demands. One class may be more introspective and less given to boisterous debates; others may be livelier but also prone to superficial discussions. I therefore regularly and continually tailor assignments to fit each class’s unique needs.

My classroom style, furthermore, is not terribly conventional. If a pre-arranged daily course plan fails to elicit a good response, I will think on my feet and come up with another approach, even if that approach seems at first rather distant from the set curriculum. On one such occasion, I was having trouble making my students understand the necessity of identifying one’s audience while writing and pitching one’s words to that audience’s particular level of understanding of the subject matter. So I decided to change tack and apparently change the subject. I told the class that I wanted to update my CD collection and asked them for some suggestions. The students’ responses started at a slow murmur and soon grew to a great crescendo of ideas, from alternative rock, to rap, to jazz. During the discussion about what I ought to purchase, students began to take into consideration my age, my generation, the kinds of music I seemed to like generally, and then gradually adjusted their suggestions accordingly. They wanted both to respect my own identity and existing tastes but also to find a way to lead me out of what they regarded as my “cultural cave” and get me into the world of contemporary popular music. By the end of the discussion, they had placed a few suggestions on the board and, without any further prompting on my part, patiently explained why each suggestion was appropriate for me. After some fifteen minutes of this, I thanked them for their help and then added, “Oh, by the way, you have just succeeded in presenting an argument and supporting it with evidence – and doing all of that while taking your specific audience into account.” Here were some of the skills, I added, that they would need to employ in their next writing assignment for our class. One student in that class later wrote on his/her course evaluation form that s/he realized that I was teaching even when the class didn’t realize it.

I will close with a personal reflection. I am humbled by the process of writing this letter. Having completed it, I now find myself doing what I often ask my own students to do, to reflect on a completed assignment in order to draw its lessons. Re-reading my own letter in this light makes me see more clearly than ever how collective and collaborative a project learning is, and that the students who have honored me with this teaching-award nomination are at least equally worthy of such recognition. Without their efforts I would have neither taught, nor learned, anything.