General Approach to Teaching/Intro

I approach teaching with the goal of animating students to reach up, stand up, and create their own meaning in the world amidst a storm of information.

I have recently found this list of qualities that someone else wrote down but that I realize resonate with what I think the liberal-arts education is supposed to teach. Here they are below.

I aim to teach students to be:

curious, that is, to be life-long learners

ready to learn from hard work and from mistakes

effective/comfortable/dexterous at navigating ambiguity (e.g., the seeming "tangents" are rarely actually tangents)

humble--and not in a self-deprecating way but in a self-respecting but world-aware way

literate about data/evidence--with literacy including ability to comprehend, to critically evaluate to organize, and to report on empirical evidence/arguments

I have borrowed this list from Jeffrey Selingo's recent book There is life after college.

I have taught Intro Psych the most times of any class that I teach, so I have compiled a variety of student feedback that, I think, portrays what it's like to be in my classes. Throughout, I have tried to include actual student comments.

Click below links to see…

…why Grinnell College's Intro Psych is a great class no matter who you take it with

…my more specific approach to teaching (with student comments in quotes)

…whether you'd be bored if you've taken IB/AP Psychology (with student comments in quotes)

...how I think about my slides (and how controversial they seem to be?) (with student comments in quotes)

...how I am interruptible and enjoy conversations with students (and not just in office hours) (with student comments in quotes)

...how my style might give you a place to adapt to faster-pace and bigger-scope discourse (with student comments in quotes)

...how my lectures aim to elaborate and sometimes critically respond to the textbook (with student comments in quotes)

...how I try to keep the class engaging for students interested but not majoring in psychology (with student comments in quotes)

...or go back up and read about another class