On Being Calmly Wrong: Learning from Teaching Mistakes

One of the forms of teaching I do the most is advising doctoral dissertation students. Its long-term and one-on-one aspects make certain dynamics of teaching and learning especially visible. This is also the form of teaching in which I experienced my most galvanizing failure.

Transmitting information in the impersonal environment of a large lecture is problematic. Best practices suggest that breaking students into smaller groups helps to facilitate discussion and aid in the comprehension of material. When placed in informal and smaller groups, students should be less intimidated or anxious. There, the instructor can provide more personal attention. For smaller classes, groups allow students to tackle issues with the instructor acting as a supervisor.

This paper explores the challenge of balancing student-centered design and the power of simplicity. My recognition of a brewing crisis in my pedagogy was prompted by (of all things) two tweets. The first included a familiar chart: CAST’s Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines; the second was a forgotten mimeograph: Hannah Arendt’s 1974 syllabus for her 200-level course, “Thinking”, at the New School for Social Research.

Because I was trying something quite new a few years ago in a newly-created third-semester Latin course, I made time for nearly eight hours of office hours each week in order to account for what I sensed was going to be a very challenging and demanding course.

Having taught for more than thirty years, I have made my share of mistakes, but the one that I would like to highlight is a larger philosophical error, namely, a too narrow definition of my subject area, which limited my course offerings and the range of students with whom I could share Classics.

This paper broadly addresses the topic of intentionality in teaching, specifically in the area of student engagement. I will describe the first major rough patch in my teaching journey, which occurred when I was teaching a course in classical culture at a small, liberal arts college some years ago.