Mediated Learning Newsletter

Vol. 6, Issue 1: September 2006, page 2

Critical Thinking Exercise Leads to an Award

Johnny W. Lott,
Director, Center for Teaching Excellence

Walker Hunter

Walker Hunter was a May graduate of the creative writing program in the Department of English receiving his master’s degree. And he was the recipient of the first Center for Teaching Excellence Outstanding Teaching Award. This award, created by the Graduate School and the Center, was funded by the Graduate School. It is the first such campus-wide award given at The University of Montana to a graduate teaching assistant.

Mr. Hunter brought to his classes a unique style influenced by Lester Fisher Gray, a faculty member at the University of New Hampshire-Durham. Hunter described Dr. Gray as having a lion’s pace across the classroom with a combination stare and strut. With a commanding Afro and shiny gold teeth, Dr. Gray asked Hunter on his first day back in college after a three-year hiatus if he knew the rules for using a comma. With no idea what answer might be expected, Hunter replied, “I know when to use one, and…”

At that stage Gray cut him off with, “You don’t know the rules; do you? There are marked deficits in your learning.”

Hunter quickly learned that Gray employed an old-school style of teaching and was a faculty member who would hold students to a line drawn in the sand when it came to learning. He was proof that someone at a university could hold academic standards and get away with it.

Another influence on Hunter’s teaching was Alexander Parsons, a UNH faculty member who was more like an older brother with his understanding of pop culture used to engage students. Hunter strives to blend the two methods of teaching exemplified by Gray and Parsons by holding students to standards but allowing fun along the way. Hunter describes his teaching as being like a line from Tom Waits, “We are all chained to the world and we all got to pull.”

As a teacher of both fiction and writing, Hunter says that it is hard to compare the different teaching methodology required in the two areas. Teaching fiction was personally more fun to him, but teaching writing was necessary for the teaching of fiction. He relied on lecture in the early part of each of the classes to set the standards and establish the ground rules. With the rules and techniques on the table, then students knew the language with which to address work in the classes. In teaching fiction, Hunter relied on short stories of Proux, Jones, Bass and other local writers so that students could see that writing is not necessarily isolated from the rest of the world. Many of the studied writers are a part of the community, and as a result students quickly learned that it is not easy to escape from the learning/writing community.

In all of his classes, Hunter emphasized that writing is half skill and half hard work. You cannot slack on either and be successful. Grading writing required different skills for the two types of classes but a few of the same ones:

• Don’t read more than two papers in a sitting.
• Find a comfortable place to read papers.
• Use a rubric for composition classes.
• Consider impressions and style in reading fiction.
• In the fiction class, assessment considers what is refreshing and what is disappointing.
• Look for evidence that students have used constraints and developed the paper into something with more universal appeal.
• Don’t be an architect but a manager of experiences using a welcoming environment.

One concern at The University of Montana is student apathy. It tends to replace the inquisitive and energetic mix of the freshman world. Even in a second semester, some students may shrug off such worldwide concerns as the Rwandan genocide to become passive observers.

Hunter describes trying to move students beyond the convenient but disabling option of apathy which he says students do not like but can fall into it easily. Once students are in a state of apathy, it is very difficult for faculty members to cope. He says that student apathy can easily arise in composition classes—a university requirement with possibly little inherent student interest.

As an example of a use of materials to stimulate students, Hunter used Batman, Deviants and Camp by Andy Medhurst to talk about different interpretations of literature, how camp has been used in literature, and how gay experiences might influence art and drama. The selection was not used for lecture but to get students talking about how the medium can massage the message. The material was used to get students beyond their typical apathy toward the subject.

Because of the apathy, Hunter has advice for fellow teaching assistants:

• Personalize the class.
• Let students know that you individualize the syllabus when possible.
• Make the reading material interesting to students; for example, use American dissidents as subjects.
• Let students know early on about your own humanity.
• Teaching is most exciting when it transcends what the instructor wants and moves to its own level.
• Make feedback as non-confrontational as possible.
• Require conferences with students on early assignments.
• Make lectures less formal; write an outline of main points before class but give them extemporaneously.
• Draw diagrams, even bad ones, on the board to prompt discussion.
• Use analogies.

Hunter describes Missoula’s campus across different seasons as advantageous to good teaching. Seasonal changes keep students’ minds alive. Winter, the most problematic, is long and leads to isolation and insulation, but snaps of warm and cold help. Another plus for Missoula is the community of writers and teachers who give a feeling of consistency between writing and teaching. To him trust between faculty members and teaching assistants also keeps the program alive.

Hunter uniquely describes college as a non-extension of high school. Students have an opportunity to start over and to act in ways that can benefit both society and themselves. Students can change the world by using their skills. He encourages his students to become involved in letter writing campaigns, to develop posters to get their messages across, to get concerned about such things as Ugandan child refugee programs, the meth campaigns, renting apartments that had been meth labs, and anti-drunk driving campaigns. Having concerns and accepting a cause diverts student apathy and allows them to be more involved in the university experience.

In classes, Hunter draws on developed and useful student skills that they may not think about. For example, they have and use the ability to reason critically although they may not consciously know it. In the early part of a semester, Hunter taught in “academic dress.” While in this mode, he encouraged students to read him like a text by asking: What type of car would I drive? What type of pet would I have? What movies would I like? What books would I read? Do I smoke? What type of dog do I own? Later in the semester, he taught in a tee shirt and jeans, wearing sandals and allowed his tattoos to show. Students again considered answers to the above questions and critically discussed how their attitudes changed. Ealier, they were critically reading him as an instructor but may not have looked beyond the surface. Clearly this activity made a good impression on students as evidenced by their evaluations of the classes and the lessons they learned. Hunter reflected that this exercise allowed students the freedom not to be what others thought they were but who they might want to become.

Sage advice from this teaching assistant also included the following:

• Teaching here should not feel like a job. If it does, then some thing is going wrong. Something needs adjustment.
• Students want to learn here. Make the environment be such that they are receiving knowledge and they are hanging out with people who want to be here.
• Embrace digression and let conversations go where you as a teacher may not want it to go.