“When McGraw-Hill Education polled more than 600 college faculty in 2017, 70% said students were less willing to ask questions and participate in class than they were five years ago.”

September 28, 2017

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 … Read More

“Science needs its adventurers.”

September 21, 2017

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 … Read More

“Rock and roll when first encountered seemed to represent two fears: a fear of the future and a fear of the past.”

September 14, 2017

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 … 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.”

September 9, 2017

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.  … 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.”

August 31, 2017

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… Read More

“In 2016, for the first time, the majority of entering college students described their mental health as below average.”

August 27, 2017

If you teach college students, stop what you are doing and get your hands on this book. The data collected here will change how you see the people who sit in front of you. Twenge argues that the generation born between 1995 and 2012 are at the … Read More

“We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.”

August 18, 2017

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 … Read More

“Students rated sociability (e.g., friendliness, warmth) as significantly more important than did faculty.”

August 11, 2017

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… Read More

“He didn’t fit in.”

August 3, 2017

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 … Read More

“There is a great deal of poetry written and published today that turns its back (sometimes with apparent disdain) upon the reader.”

July 28, 2017

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 … Read More

“Who is it you are writing for? It surely could not be the average person who just enjoys a good read.”

July 21, 2017

The reader who asked Jonathan Franzen this … Read More

“There are many of us who need to reprocess our garbage, but who can’t bear the idea of writing memoir . . .”

July 15, 2017

Jessica Lourey continues: “. . . whether it’s because we are too close to the trauma, don’t want to hurt or be hurt by those we’re writing about, or simply prefer the vehicle of fiction.” Students in my classes on writing memoir have in fact expressed these … Read More

“The pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand.”

July 8, 2017

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 … Read More

“The secret of all art, also of poetry, is, thus, distance.”

June 30, 2017

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 … Read More

“Of the students who report having disabilities, the largest and fastest-growing group is students who have ‘invisible disabilities.’”

June 23, 2017

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 … Read More