Howdja like my hat? Via Candie_N @ Flickr
I love teaching. To an absurd degree. I’d do it for free, even (which is good, because my pay is for shit). This semester I have a couple of really fun classes, and thus far the kids seem engaged in the material and the discussions.
And based on their vocalized contributions to class, the male students are considerably more engaged than the females.
Since before I was a teacher, I’d heard that teachers–both men and women–are apt to call on male students more often. Though I vowed not to favor my guys, I must admit that I have been falling into that pattern somewhat. It may be somewhat due to all that good, ingrained bias I’ve picked up in my many years on the planet, but it’s largely due to the fact that my male students are far more likely to offer to speak in class.
It’s not that the young women in my classes never speak up; there are always a few who remind me of grind-y, overeager undergraduate self, but given the fact that, like the general college population in the U.S., women make up more than 50% of the student body, this imbalance is particularly bothersome. One of my classes is fairly evenly split (although there are more women) and the other is 2/3 women.
In my upper-level class I had free rein with syllabus design, and I’ve built to explicitly discuss issues of gender, class, and race, so I’m less troubled that the subject matter is working to marginalize or disappear women, but in my lower-division class, where I had less control, the syllabus is a virtual parade of dead white dudes, and the representations of women we’re dealing with are…problematic, to say the least. I try to explore how these perverse representation are reflections of their perverse environments, and I try to draw connections to their current environment to clarify how much–or how little–has changed, but I still wonder how much the gendered messages in the material we’re studying affects the behavior of the women in my classes.
Part of my job is to engage all of my students, and I encourage the silent students to speak up in every way I know how; by asking them to write responses to questions in advance of our discussion, by asking students to engage with each other in debate and small-group work, and occasionally by calling on them directly. I know that speaking in class is not the sole, or perhaps even the best, indicator of effort and understanding, but I want my classrooms to be places where the pedagogical model reflects my political commitment. After class, it’s not unusual for one or more of my girls to stop by and ask a question or share an idea, and in some of the short written responses I get I see a heartening amount of feminist (or feminist-ish) thought, but the disparity remains.
Maybe it’s my math anxiety?
Anyway, I want to ask those of you who are educators (and please interpret that term broadly) what you do to make sure that you’re treating your students equally, and those of you who are/were students what–if anything–encouraged you, or your female peers to speak up in class?
My classes have far more men than women. I call on the students that offer themselves, of course. Who doesn’t want to talk to that engaged student? But I tell them from the start, I will pick on you to talk in class, even if you are hiding.
When I pose a question, I sometimes preface it with a rough estimate of how difficult the question is. The students are more willing to go out on a limb if they know they aren’t expected to be dead-on each time.
So, to get the women in class to speak up, I call them out by name.
I am going to have to start being a lot more prepared for the class I’m taking this term, so I can speak up more. Right now our discussions have been dominated by this one dudebro who loves to compare everything to Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and the like. If I hear him say the word “Prufrock” or mention “Howl” one more time, I’m gonna lose it. Any discussion we try to have about race or gender gets derailed by his love of dead white dudes. And this is a class on the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement!
there are always a few who remind me of grind-y, overeager undergraduate self
the fact that you have internalised this stereotype (which is gendered — men aren’t “grinds”or “overeager”, they are “passionately engaged with their subject”) is part of the problem.
as i’m sure you are aware, women who speak are considered to be dominating, even if a man is speaking as much or more. those of us who talk get noticed, and not in a good way — as the “grind” stereotype illustrates.
i talked when i was a young undergrad because i really was that passionate about the course work. then, when i went back as an older student, i talked because i didn’t give a fuck what the “kids” thought of me. i know it got on most professors nerves a lot more than when my male friend sam talked.
so, even if you are trying, your class may be an island in your particular institution. if women are generally penalised for speaking out (culturally, and in other classes specifically) your one little feminist oasis is not going to matter that much, in terms of change.
sorry.
I talk a lot in class. Like, to the extent that I’ve had many of my teachers (not one or two but probably ~a third of all my profs through high school and college) say “Anyone but baraqiel?” when asking for responses. In high school I didn’t notice a ton of gender differential, but I was less aware of those things then and I’m sure one existed. I did notice that I was the only girl who talked as much as I did and that I was the only person who my classmates seemed really invested in shutting up — whenever I got a question wrong, which was rare but happened of course, my classmates (especially the dudes) would go, “Oooooooooooh” in a taunting way.
In college…it’s weird, because I go to one of those lady-heavy small liberal arts schools. I’ve had, oddly. a lot of classes where no guys speak up, ranging from a course on the history of sexuality or fan culture to my inorganic chem class right now. But, I can think of reasons for all of these, e.g. in my fan culture class the students who were heavily into fan culture recreationally were all women, in the sexuality class the straight guys felt awkward talking about sex in a women-heavy class taught by a gay man….of course, this is speculation. The interesting thing is that in bigger classes, I’ve noticed a strong gender differential, especially about more “masculine” subjects. A lot of the talking in my engineering classes is male-dominated, similar to the talking in the big physics lectures I took, etc.
What’s interesting to me more so is the number of women I know who think that talking in class is something optional. I know a couple of guys who just aren’t that into it but most will offer something once in a while just to show the teacher that they’re invested. But with women who don’t talk…they don’t talk *ever*. At least, in my experience.
your one little feminist oasis is not going to matter that much, in terms of change
Maybe, maybe not. That’s not a reason to stop trying to affect change or challenge your students. As Hillel said, “the work is not yours to complete, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
Personally, I think that if women are given the opportunity to express themselves in one situation, and rewarded for it, they’re more likely to gain the confidence to express themselves in other situations.
sophiefair: I’m wondering what you think we SHOULD do (if anything), given that you recognize that the situation for young women is not great, at least in the having-opinions and speaking-up departments. Is the point that we shouldn’t even bother talking about making our classrooms safe and encouraging spaces for women since the world outside is so inhospitable and, well, just fuck it? Or what?
My last Intro to Philosophy teaching experience was really interesting in terms of gender dynamics, because 1)in my 25-student class, there were only 5 women, plus me, the instructor and 2)even in my lower-level classes, I assign a bunch of feminist/queer/race theory stuff (I recognize that this is a luxury not everyone is allowed). Things were further complicated by the fact that I had a few bros in the class who regularly attempted to hijack the discussion, challenge my authority, and in general behaved like assholes. This was a challenge, and to be honest, at times I was tragically ineffective in my attempts to deal with it. I was intimidated by a couple of them, and often struggled to avoid the sense that I was merely stuck watching the awful gender dynamic play out all around me.
Fortunately, having the curriculum I did made methods for dealing with this a bit more obvious (note that I do not say “easier”). Sometimes I found it worthwhile to actually thematize the classroom situation itself as an item of discussion (how are you relating to your fellow women students right now? How are you relating to me, as a young woman who is your teacher?). Other times, I deliberately ignored talkative men who raised their hands in favor of the women students who would occasionally talk.
Another thing I’ve found effective (though you might need to translate this a bit to make it effective in a non-philosophy class) is to ask a broad question (i.e. Is Descartes’ argument about sense perception convincing?), take an answer from the first person who responds (usually a dude)–and then shut them up and hand responsibility for the argument off to the rest of the class, preferably those who haven’t spoken. So, Bro says “Yeah, it is, because the wax example…” and then I stop him, and say, “ok, good, hold it right there, let’s talk about this.” So I put his answer on the board (therefore validating his contribution as worthy of discussion), and then say, ok Bro, let’s see what the rest of the class can do with this point (thereby getting him to shut up and getting others to participate). At which point I ask them to either 1)construct an argument together–i.e., taking no more than one point from each person–that would support this claim, or 2)figure out what might be wrong with it through drawing out implications, etc.
And yet, I’m still trying to navigate this territory, because I find that it’s really difficult for me personally to avoid playing into the very (shitty) dynamics that I’m trying to subvert, often not because I call on my women students less, but because I err on the side of self-doubt and being deferential.
Becky, I think you are absolutely right.
As a student I was extraordinarily shy. I just wouldn’t even think of speaking out and if a professor called on me my brain would switch into panic mode. There were a lot of reasons for this obviously, but one of the main ones was that I lived in fear of being judged by my fellow students. In my last year of under-grad I had a professor that encouraged us all to talk in a way that didn’t seem so intimidating. I’m not saying that she turned me into an extrovert but by the end of the semester I felt confident enough to join the discussion once in awhile. Which, for me, was huge.
I recently taught a freshman-level composition course- and I invested in many of your techniques PHDork (pre-writing, small group discussion, discussion boards). It seemed in this particular class that I had equal numbers of male and female ‘talkers’- about 3 main guys who would always pipe up and 3 girls who would contribute as well.
Honestly, I was more interested in getting everyone engaged that making sure things were equal- both daunting tasks, to be sure.
Another good thing to keep in mind, is that each class dynamic is different; I don’t beat myself up over the dynamic, when I provide ample opportunity and freedom for all to participate. Also, that by empowering both genders to speak and respect the other’s opinions, you do them more good in the long run as students than you may know. At least, that my fondest dream.
I like calling on specific people, and also a round robin style of contributing where everyone has to say something (but has the option of passing). When I was in high school I sometimes felt like professors stacked small groups, putting all the talkers in one group and all the quiet folks in another so someone had to step up and fill the void in the softer-spoken group.
One thing I’ll say as a student: sitting in a circle makes me a lot more likely to contribute than sitting in rows.
I always TA’d in a lab setting, which makes demanding participation a little easier, but one thing I always noticed was that while guys might be more willing to talk in class, my open office hours were always overwhelmingly female. Guys would come in with specific questions (On question 3, when it talks about the heat transfer, does it mean . . .) and quite a few girls would come in every week and stay the whole time to have what was essentially a small group discussion about the lab as a whole. I don’t know if the smaller group was a safer space, or if they were more comfortable focusing on discussion away from the actual experiment or if I was doing something to keep them from feeling like they could have that discussion in the lab, but it’s definitely a trend.
I’ve been teaching undergraduate English classes (freshman comp, Shakespeare, modern drama, surveys) for the last twelve years, and I’ve never had any problem with getting just as much participation from women as men in my classes. And that’s been the case whether I’m teaching classes which are 75% men or 75% women (both of which have occurred). I’ve also had a number of women – and some men – comment, both personally to me and in end-of-semester evaluations, that one of the things they loved most about my class was that they felt really comfortable participating in the class discussions.
The way that I try to make things work is to provide significant incentives for participation and take away as many negatives that I can. Some of the things I do that have worked well for me:
* Participation usually counts for 30% of the overall grade
* I explain to students that it is the easiest section of the class in which to pull out an A
* I give students regular grade updates, which lets them know if they’re doing badly in participation
* I always teach in a circle and avoid lecturing as much as I can
* I try to take any comments, from the most profound to the most inane, and make them relevant in some way to what we’re discussing (which usually makes students feel more confident about their contributions to the discussion)
* I try to make sure anybody who ever puts a hand up gets to speak, and if I can’t let everyone do so, will make sure that I give opportunities to those who haven’t spoken much yet
* I do a bit of group work every couple of weeks, where I divide the class into small groups, each of which discusses a particular question (which they choose off a list) and one of them explains their findings to the class. Practice at speaking to each other in class and talking after the discussion (which is easier to do because they have information at hand and backup from the group) usually translates to quiet students being more likely to speak in subsequent classes
I could go on and on about teaching, which I love, but I think that’s enough for now. I should note before I shut up, however, that the above strategies are all intended to facilitate class discussion in general, rather than something I designed to help women participate more than men. I never really considered that women should or would speak less in my classes than men, and somehow that’s never been the case.
I definitely had trouble speaking up in class as an undergrad. I still sometimes have trouble now that I’m a grad student, especially when some of my male friends who are in the class tend to be the first one’s with their hands up, and will even interrupt me and other women in class. They also interrupt each other, so it’s hard to get a word in, especially if you are shy or have been taught that interrupting is rude.
I think the big things professors and TAs can do to help their quieter students are:
1. Don’t let the noisy students interrupt everyone (one somewhat old-fashioned male professor of mine dealt with this by saying, “Ms. X/Mr. Y has the floor right now.”)
2. Pay close attention to slightly raised hands and little “um…”s, which are how many girls are taught to try and speak up.
3. Don’t call on the shy students too much, or they may just start skipping class.
4. Encourage your shy students to come to office hours, and talk with them there. The one-on-one will give them a chance to express their ideas without getting trampled on, and while there you can encourage them to share those ideas in class.
MKP’s round robin idea is also good, I think.
Really, sophiefair? That’s your contribution to the discussion? So, should I get over my internalized stereotypes to encourage my girls, or is there just no hope and all is for naught? And thanks? for your passive-aggressive “sorry.” That was so helpful. I’d totally speak up in YOUR class.
I have male and female grinds. I have one young man in both classes, back to back, who is SO overeager that he sends me late night emails asking me if we will be discussing Point X or comparing Y to Z. He. Is. A. Grind. And although I appreciate his investment in the material, I have to be careful not to call on him too often, even though I can practically hear him going “OOOH! OOH! I KNOW! OOH! CALL ON ME!” as he launches his hand into the air. He is in danger of becoming a Mansplainer, even: he prefaced a comment yesterday with “I don’t want to sound condescending, but…”
OH NO HE DIDN’T OH YES HE DID.
My point was that every class has a few students of each gender who love the subject and/or love showing off or whatever, but if we remove those outliers, men in my classes are far more likely to speak up than women. And because I am committed to creating opportunities for women where they are otherwise limited, I’m interested in what I can do differently.
So, to the many of you who actually contributed to the discussion: I thank you. I do worry that calling directly just freezes some people up, so that’s low on my list, and I’ve tried models where I go through the classroom round robin style, also mentioned, but I don’t think that’s an everyday strategy.
Individual classroom dynamics do vary. I can tell the difference between my younger and older students, and in the upper level class, where the students are more invested in the topic and have known each other and worked together for a longer period of time, the women do speak up more.
funnyface, I suppose I could rearrange the tables (we don’t have desks) to make a circle, but we’d have to set that up and then break it down each day. I might be worth a try, though.
Kristine, I’m wondering if you could articulate what your teacher did or said that made the environment feel more inviting for the more reticent students.
vmt, Philosophyerin, Av0: I love hearing about your experiences. Tell me more!
@funnyface: I agree, 100%. My high school taught all classes in groups of 15 or fewer, and we were seated around a round or oval table. No one could hide, and women and men (Well, girls and boys, I suppose!) contributed in equal part.
My college classes were taught in a similar fashion, but since I went to a women’s college, I can’t offer it as a representative example.
Just yesterday I talked to my 9th graders about that disparity (we were having a conversation about gender roles in general) and we talked about some of the reasons for it–one factor seems to be that the girls tend to politely wait with their hands raised, while the boys just start talking, and with 30 people in a class, it’s hard sometimes to manage that behavior. The boys get my reflexive attention. We talked about how it wasn’t really fair that then sometimes the girls didn’t get to talk as much, simply because they followed the rules. And, embarrassingly enough, they caught me twice before the block was over allowing a boy to speak while a girl had her hand raised. Eek! It was interesting to have everyone involved in the conversation, with me saying, hey, I know this is a thing that’s imperfect about our community, and I’m working on strategies to address it …
And I am totally behind the idea of incorporating small group collaboration/partner work–my girls participate more vocally in those conversations, so I try to have something like that every 90 minute block. Sometimes I will ask a girl to be the spokesperson for the group during large group sharing, too.
Listening to what the girls say about participating has been helpful in writing groups, too–one group of all girls told me they were not comfortable reading their work aloud, and rather than just telling them it was required, I worked to help them set up some short-term goals—reading just to a partner, then to a small group, and then just a week ago they all read an essay to the whole class. I think it would have been more convenient for me to brush off their nervousness/anxiety, honestly, but as someone who was formerly a shy female student, I had some compassion that the needed to know I was behind them before they could push themselves…
Though perfectly chatty with my friends, both men and women, I became absolutely terrified to speak up in college classes. Things that sound great in my head suddenly sound dumb or inarticulate once said out loud, and as a result, I sat quietly through multitudes of liberal arts classes, letting racist and misogynist men make point after point and not saying anything in response.
I second the notion of calling on women with half-raised hands. Many a time I would almost psych myself up to talk, only to have the 6 ft tall dude next to me with a Michael Phelps-esque wingspan get noticed and called on first. Though I was relieved, I secretly wished I had a chance to talk.
All of this makes me sound so timid! I call my friends out on their crap, I schooled my dad when he made victim-blaming comments, etc. but in class its true…I get intimidated by men and start assuming they know better than me. Philosophy was the worst. Not even having class participation tried to grades helped…I just dealt with getting a lower grade.
However, I shone during structured presentations about a topic. When I got the chance to prepare something beforehand, whether it be a 5-minute speech or an hour-long in depth discussion I led, the whole class would see me differently. I didn’t have to worry about someone telling me I was wrong, or why they knew better, or messing up what I wanted to say. I always appreciated classes that allowed me to prepare instead of wanting me to speak off-the-cuff all the time.
So after the book I just wrote, presentations prepared in advance was a great way for me to contribute to a class, and after speaking through one of these, I usually got better in participating in other class discussions. Of course, I’m an extreme case and I would guess that most women don’t need as much of a push as me!
PhDork: That’s almost as bad as the time one of my bros declared (as the attempted final word of a class meeting, even!) that women “like it” when they’re oppressed. I was so shocked that all I managed to get out (initially) was “We DO???”
I’ve also done a round-robin-esque thing, in which everyone is responsible for “start the discussion duties” at one point during the semester. At the end of every class period, I’d say, next time we’re going to talk about the following question…and ask for a volunteer to be responsible for starting us off. This was part of their participation grade, so at some point, everyone had to do this, but I liked that 1)everyone was sort of in control of their own destinies, at least in terms of WHEN they did this, 2)they had time to think about it before being on the spot and 3)everyone in the class was also responsible for thinking/talking about the question at hand, so it was less a “here’s my presentation, oh god I’m dying” thing than, ok, we’re collaborating on an idea, and I’m just getting the ball rolling.
Finally, I’ll offer a story of one time that I failed miserably to adequately address the gender dynamics of this particular bro-filled class. We were in the second day of a discussion of Beauvoir’s Second Sex, and I had decided the day before that I was sick of getting canned, lip-servicey responses from everyone about gender roles (when I asked them to talk about whether B’s characterization of women’s situation was still accurate, 50 years later, I got a bunch of “girls play with dolls, and boys play with trucks, blah blah blah and also that’s ok” crap). So instead, I came in prepared to lay the smack down, and say, hey, B’s point isn’t that this is innocuous and just the way it is; it’s that it sucks and also YOU are contributing to it. So what did I do? I made them talk in small groups about their personal complicity in gender oppression. Can you guess what happened?
Only the women spoke up. Of course. This, by the way, was the only time that only women spoke up to suggest that they, personally, had a hand in something. Moreover, while they were still in the small groups, I witnessed one of the brighter women in the class being basically shouted down by a bro, while she kept repeating, “You’re not LISTENING to what I’m saying!” OH THE IRONY! Anyway, I still wish that I had interrupted them and pointed out what was happening right then, but I didn’t, because I was afraid of alienating them. Which, in retrospect, was stupid. Because really, what they needed in that moment was to get told.
Since I teach a foreign language, a significant portion of my work is just in *getting* my students to speak. This is particularly challenging as I’m in a country where there is no culture of classroom participation. Students expect to be talked at and don’t want to risk saying anything in case it’s wrong.
So my first challenge is just to overcome that. I do a lot of calling on students individually at the beginning of the semester, and a lot of activities where everyone has no choice but to talk (group activities are good for that). I also stress the importance of the participation grade.
I have to admit that sometimes the ‘calling on students directly’ thing has its downsides for the teacher. You have to be willing to sit out awkward silences waiting for an answer. I can do that – and I’ve been on the receiving end too, so I know what it’s like – but I make sure that when they finally do say something, I can turn it to good account. (And I should say I only will do this if I am quite sure that the student will be able to come up with an answer, i.e. that the problem is just shyness rather than not understanding the material).
I don’t notice men speaking more than women in my classes, but then, it’s a female-dominated subject, which probably makes a difference.
On an only-vaguely-related note, I try to remain impartial and not bring my politics into the classroom, but I do expose my students to issues that are political by using them as topics for discussion. I did one hour on feminism and had my students right essays on it, and the answers were really depressing – but since I’m grading for language and clarity, I obviously didn’t mark down the ones that said ‘feminism was great and all, but we don’t need that any more. And besides, I like when men pay for dinner’. They still made me sad, though.
@Avogadro – you actually get students coming to your office hours? Color me jealous! Some of my students don’t need to, but I have a bunch who just aren’t getting the concepts no matter how much time I spend with them; I wish they’d come to my office.
I also TA labs, where the instruction is either top-down (lectures at the beginning) or involves me working interactively with individuals or small groups. I make an effort to spend as much time as I can with each group, but the old adage that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” is all too true. If one group is sitting quietly working, and others are waving their hands and calling my name, I’m going to go to the noisy group first.
In both recent classes my most outspoken students have included both women and men (though my current class has some really dominant, brown-nosing frat boy types). But come to think of it, my quietest students were female and/or African-American (1 man and 1 woman). These last two, in particular, almost never raise their hands when they’re confused about something, as others will (*making a mental note to seek them out more*). So in my experience, I think the privilege to feel comfortable with speaking up in class is, as with so many other privileges, intersectional.
Also, PhDork and philosophyerin (your name is great by the way) – both of your obnoxious-student stories made me shudder. But particularly philosophyerin’s. He actually SAID that?!?
Another student perspective:
I have pretty intense ADD, and the only way I can focus during class is to take super notes. If discussions are held, it helps me if they are strongly differentiated from the lecture portion of the class. That way I can make it clear in my head; lecture = note taking, discussion = discussing.
If the class is small enough I also endorse the round robin idea. When I was a sophomore in college, I signed up for an upper-division seminar on James Joyce’s Ulysses that ended up being populated by 14 seniors, all of whom were literature majors, and me, who wasn’t. I’ve never been shy about speaking up in class, but in this case I was really intimidated and didn’t feel like I was “qualified” to contribute. The round robin ended up being a godsend. At the start of every class a different student would have the responsibility to kick off the discussion by giving a short talk, then we’d go around the table so everyone could throw in hir two cents. After each contribution there’d be time for discussion amongst the group, but our professor was sure to keep things moving so everyone had to say something. The chit chatters could talk a lot, and the quieter kids could talk less but still contribute without feeling singled out.
My professor also laid out the ground rules for discussions immediately. We were to treat one another with respect. No talking over each other, no interrupting. Disagreements were fine, debate was fine, but condescension, personal attacks, and dismissive attitudes were not. He modeled those rules in his own approach to the discussions, and enforced them when necessary. He was also very encouraging towards the quieter students. He’d engage them directly in a dialogue to draw them out on a given point, all the while offering praise for insights and ideas. This really helped me gain the confidence to speak up more.
This class that I almost dropped because of sheer intimidation wound up being one of the highlights of my college experience.
Endora: OH YES HE DID.
Also! There was this other time that another guy (in a Logic class, no less) informed me–after I told him, sorry, you are not to answer your fucking phone in my class, even if you loudly and distractingly run out of the room to do it–that sometimes he just really needed to answer it because of his duties to Jesus or something. And in fact, he said that if someone Jesus-related (he claimed to be a minister) called again during my class, he would answer it, my orders notwithstanding. At which point, I informed him that he was cruising for an F, and if his Jesus duties were that important, then maybe he shouldn’t come to my class again.
So yeah, that was fun. Did I mention that I teach at a private school full of super-entitled douchetrons?
Thanks for this post, PhDork. I think about this all the time, lately.
Tall-in-Heels: laying out the “ground rules” as you put it has been pretty important for me as a teacher.
As has been reflecting, as a group, at various points in a term, on how our conversations are going, what we haven’t yet dealt with well, what the students want to talk more about. That is: I try to make the students responsible for the dynamic of the room as much as possible. I don’t always do what they ask for, but giving them some voice in the form of the course, not just its content, helps.
I also put some pressure on the dominant speakers in the room: I will often turn their assertion to the whole room, asking “does everybody agree with that?” This smooths the way for debate for those students wary of directly engaging each other, and has the added benefit of reminding the dominant speakers that they can’t just pronounce The Truth unto us. Similarly, if I hear conversation trending one direction, I will often pause and ask the same question–”does everybody agree?”–to actively make space for differing, but quiet, opinions. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
I co-taught a political theory class last semester – about 70 students in the class for 2 lectures each week, divided into four groups for one small group session per week. We pretty much went from Socrates to Susan Moller Okin and Iris Marion Young. But the only other woman we talked about directly was Mary Wollstonecraft. There were lots of dead white men… However both of us teaching the course are very feminist in our thinking, so every time we were talking about some dead white man, we would point out the gaps in his thinking where he just didn’t even see women. We constantly talked feminism, even if we weren’t explicitly teaching it.
The students seemed to be very happy, judging by the evaluations we got back. Except for one person, who said, “Too explicitly feminist for my liking.” We both cackled, and said, “Unlucky!” (To each other, in the privacy of an office – not in front of the students, of course.)
Similarly, if I hear conversation trending one direction, I will often pause and ask the same question–”does everybody agree?”–to actively make space for differing, but quiet, opinions.
I do this too, but a little differently. I tend to ask, “What would be a / the counter argument to that?” So it requires everyone to try to think differently, and someone who has already been thinking differently gets a chance to give her view, without feeling that she’s trying to argue against the rest of the room. But my discipline (philosophy and political theory) may be more amenable to that argument-based approach.
It’s interesting reading about how others do their teaching practice and reflecting on mine at the same time. In saying that, before I tutored at uni, I did reflect on what I liked and didn’t like in tutorials and tried to practice the things I liked. Overall, it seemed to work, and was effective.
The best way I found to ensure that students participate was to spend the first 3 weeks getting students comfortable speaking in a tutorial setting, getting to know them, and importantly that what they said would be heard without interuption.
I find that I do the sorts of things everyone else does good – small group work, debates, etc. In classes where there is a high number of students where english is not a first language, I found the most effective way to ensure that ALL students participated was to do ask a question (a yes/no short answer), give the students a couple of minutes to think, then go around the circle one at a time. I didn’t do it every week, but when I was finding it difficult to engage students with the material, I found this method worked.
I also found large/small group activities that involved cross-disciplinary perspectives were really helpful (I’ve largely been involved in teaching economics/political economy/international studies), so history, philosophy, geography, english, sociology et al students could use their knowledge in other settings and be knowledgeable.
Definitely this:
“Pay close attention to slightly raised hands and little “um…”s, which are how many girls are taught to try and speak up.”
I actually don’t believe in calling on individuals to contribute to the discussion. This has its downsides and isn’t meant as a criticism of those who do call on students, but I am happy with this approach because it enables shy students (like I was as an undergraduate) to take charge of their own participation in the class.
This places more responsibility on the teacher, though, to notice when the shy people look like they have something to say and then to give them an opportunity to share it. Done this way, the likelihood that they will contribute to the discussion is much higher than if they are called on in a way that puts them on the spot. Also, that successful contribution will encourage them to contribute again in the future.
I’m thinking about the Dead White Men thing and have to throw this out there.
To a certain extent, I don’t really see the Dead White Men thing as a problem. I think feminist rediscovery and reevaluation of women’s work is great (which is probably what led to Wollstonecraft getting into the syllabus, for example).
But the fact is that in a lot of fields, there just isn’t nearly as much work by women to go on, at least until the 20th century. If we take literature as an example: there were fewer women who could write, so there were fewer women writers. And yes, even where women could write, social pressures made it an unacceptable or at least impossible endeavor in a lot of cultures and a lot of their work was suppressed either during their lifetime or just after their deaths. But if you’re doing an intro to 19th century French lit class, there are a lot more good male writers to choose from than good women writers. Not that they don’t exist – they do, and belong in the curriculum, but they will generally have to make up a relatively small part of it.
That doesn’t need to stop you from analyzing the way gender functions in the men’s work, though – that can be a goldmine, precisely because they were so unaware of their privilege. I’m more for that than including relatively minor women writers/thinkers whatever in a syllabus just for the sake of it. (In more specialized classes, of course – but those are the ones where you’d be studying relatively minor men, too).
What do you think?
Doesn’t class participation swing on interest in the subject matter too? Always seemed liked some subjects were more boring than others zzzzzz, and the early classes nobody much commented because they were half asleep. Also, ‘making’ introverts speak in class may turn them off more than on if they process knowledge differently than most?
This is interesting. My partner is TAing freshman world civ right now, and both times he was a TA he was always amazed–amazed–at the huge disparity between the boys and girls in his class. The girls talk all the time, and get good grades. The boys don’t do their reading, talk in class, or do well on quizzes and tests.
I think it probably has much to do with the way boys and girls treat doing work, and are rewarded for it. In my experience, girls are rewarded (socially) for being hard workers, while boys are expected (by themselves and their peers) to do well on tests without ever working hard. Right now he’s just trying to get them all to understand what it means to think for a class rather than have the teacher tell them X, Y, and Z and then ask them “What’s X? What’s Y? And what’s Z?” on the test.
Though there are no women on the syllabus he’s teaching. (He didn’t make the syllabus, and I am strongly encouraging him to make the one lecture he does, for which he can choose the week’s reading, to be by a woman.) This is a World Civilization class. I’m like–does the professor not realize that in the history of civilization in the world, THERE WERE WOMEN?!?! A friend of his, he, and I were debating this professor’s teaching style, which I find condescending (based on their descriptions) and which they think are necessary for the mind of the 18 year-old-frat boy. After a while I was like, “It doesn’t matter, no matter what he does I hate him.” And my partner’s friend was like, “What? Why?” And so I said that ignoring the entire female sex in the history of world civilization is offensive and a hateable offense. And, for reals, he says, “Well I mean, in the history of the world women didn’t really participate in civilization or anything–they weren’t allowed to.”
I was like, “No. They did participate. They were always there, always doing things, but the things they did weren’t considered important. But they were still there.” And after a few moments he was like, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” But both of them agreed that they didn’t hate him for not putting any women on the reading list, nor did they think it was that bad of an offense. I wanted to scream at them, “Maybe that’s because you don’t really understand what it’s like to exist in a civilization that considers you NON-EXISTENT!” Fucking middle class white guys.
Here’s another thought I forgot yesterday (d’oh!). I’ve got a blog for the class, too. If a student feels shy in class, some of that shyness might fall away in the comments section of the blog.
I can’t believe I didn’t mention that on this blog, tho!
re: making them answer. I see why so many of you are against. I promise that I don’t force them beyond calling them out by name. It’s ok to say “I dunno”. And, my topic has less opinion and more yes/no than some others might.
Hey, y’all, I’ve read everything but don’t have time to respond right now–and there’s so much to respond to! I’ll get to it after classes, I swear. I really appreciate the conversation.
Have you thought about pointing out the disparity directly to the students? “We talk about gender and culture a lot. Has anyone noticed that the guys tend to speak up a lot more in class?”
Okay. Today, I reminded my students that part of their grade is based on in-class participation, and that I appreciate the handful of “regulars,” but would appreciate a classroom of them even more.
I also asked that students take risks–I don’t ask a lot of single-answer, all-or-nothing questions–and tried to make it clear that the class was a team, a safezone, whatever, where people were free to disagree, and make mistakes, and that’s okay. (I pulled out that “if you can’t make a mistake you can’t make anything” quote.)
The results were a little better today, but we’ll see how things unfold.
I really appreciate all the suggestions; Alicia Maud (love that idea of “reflexive attention,”) procrastination, catnmus, christy, Mackey…geez, everyone. I’ve done some work with blogs, rodriguez, with mixed results, but its something I’d definitely try again.
Providing a lot of different ways to experience and demonstrate learning seems to be something I can do, regardless of topic or a particular class dynamic, so
student presentations (solo or in pairs) are built in, so everyone will have their (prepared by possibly more anxiety-producing) moment, and the group work provides another opportunity for a more active role, and the in-class writing, and out-of-class writing…
Oy.
Endora, regarding the Dead White Males thing; I’ve thought/read a lot about it, and I’m think that might be a whole post in itself–or maybe a seminar? Would some of our other teachers be interested in a virtual roundtable? You’d all have to speak, though, so no shrinking violets!
virtual roundtable! virtual roundtable!
Re: Dead White Males–I decided to go back to grad school after getting really interested in feminist concerns about canon construction and women. I’m now doing feminist Shakespeare studies, and am still very interested in the way that Shakespeare gets read in terms of women and feminism. I had thought, for some naive reason, that these issues of the canon that feminism was raising had been at least partly dealt with. But now I feel like I am an idiot for expecting actual feminist change by anyone but explicitly feminist professors. Last year I had one male teacher who was not explicitly feminist, and he really made me happy with his reading list. Although we were doing medieval literature, he included several female writers, and even though it was mostly male writers, feminism was a huge part of the reading. I mean, there are only so many female authors from the middle ages that have survived until now, so when you’re doing something as specific as that you are constrained in your choice of text somewhat. But he totally had my psyched about feminism’s actual effect on reading lists.
Until this whole thing with my partner came up, and now I feel totally deflated and depressed about it. It has sort of energized me as well, but in a depressing way. I think I’ve mentioned this book before, but Elaine Showalter edited The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, Theory. I particularly like the studd by Annette Kolodny, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Nina Baym, Varolyn Heilbrun, Lillian Robinson, Jane Tompkins. One choice quote (though every time I read this book, the margins get more and more full of really large checkmarks, !!!!!s, and asterisks): “Yet I cannot avoid the belief that “purely” literary criteria, as they have been employed to identify the best American works, have inevitably had a bias in favor of male things–in favor of, say, a whaling ship, rather than a sewing circle as a symbol of the human community…”
That sentence, when I first read it, really struck a chord with me in terms of the things that we value. I guess it was the first time that I had a serious shift in the fundamental way that I look at things. I had always felt that looking at women’s roles in things were important–like all the women who, say, fought in the revolutionary war. But now I’m like–why the hell are we focusing on the war instead of, say, childbirth procedures in the 18th century? Why are the important things the things that men say are important? This was why I got so annoyed at my partner’s friend, who told me that women hadn’t really taken part in civilization. It’s like, no, you’re right, they never took part in the masculine civilization that you’ve decided is civilization. They were busy having their own fucking civilization, the one that you don’t really care about.
Anyway. As a feminist who spends all her time reading a very important dead white dude, this issue is very important to me. Oh, also Ann Thompson wrote a chapter in Shakespeare, Feminism, and Gender that I really loved. She talks about how the history of the editing of Shakespeare affected its reception, something she began to realize as she edited an edition of The Taming of the Shrew. It’s highly enjoyable. Um, if you like Shakespeare, and feminism.
I’d personally love to read and/or participate in a Harpy Seminar on the Dead White Males thing.
I teach a physical science lab for nonmajors. My current section has 22 women and 5 men. Because the university requires that everyone take a physical science class, and our department has the reputation of being much less math-y than the physics and chemistry classes, even for nonmajors (an unfair reputation, imho, that we’re forced into) I end up with the students who are math-phobes. Even so, I gave out a survey on the first day of class including a question about how they felt about solving problems which boiled down to algebra and a larger number of people than I expected–maybe 60%–said they felt ok with it. However, when I include quantitative problem solving questions on the labs, I notice that if I seat people at tables with one guy, the one guy ends up doing the math parts. This is despite a majority of people in the class saying they can use math. Now I’m considering seating all the guys together for one lab to see what happens.
Because I teach science to nonmajors, getting people to voluntarily answer oral questions is like pulling teeth. They start out intimidated by science, possibly after years of bad experiences in high school. I try to use any method which won’t put people on the spot. I use a mix of calling on volunteers (usually announcing that I will call on at least 3 people per question, with no repeats for the next question, so that more people get involved), having people write for a minute before calling on them to answer orally, discussing with a partner before sharing with the class, and calling on people at random. The last one I save for when my students are losing their focus, and I give them warning that they will be called on at random. And of course I wait.
But having been that terrified student before, in classes where I had no confidence in my abilities whatsoever (e.g. any humanities class), it’s a fine line between trying to draw out the slightly less confident, and traumatizing my students to the point where they still dislike science. :/