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Purpose of Teaching

Planning for Spring Semester

I often find it challenging to plan the spring semester. We finalize our schedules and place book orders during the busiest times of the fall semester, often when we–and our students–are beginning to feel overwhelmed if not exhausted.

Because of this, I’ve tried to very intentionally set aside some time in the fall where I can step away from the challenges of the current semester, and imagine the spring. Getting into the practice of clearing this space, I feel, has helped my course design.

Here is what I suggest. If we are teaching the same course in the spring that we are teaching in the fall, we need to be honest about what is working and what isn’t. We need to be willing to take the risk of assigning new readings and developing new assignments. Because we don’t get student evaluations back until we are already teaching our spring courses, we may want to experiment with anonymous surveys and focus groups. If we worried that a certain book/reading/assignment didn’t work, we should ask.

If we are teaching a new course, we should set aside time to look through university press catalogs, and we should aim to select readings that are right at the intersection of engaging and educative. As we know, some books are engaging, but they don’t push student thinking. Some books are great at making a point we want our students to learn, but the books are extremely challenging (for any number of reasons) for our students to engage with. There is so much good stuff out there. We owe it to our students to bring them the best.

And–finally–we need to have the courage to break out of the habit of doing things the way they’ve always been done. Just because we’ve internalized the belief that a certain course must look a certain way, we need to lean into the freedom we have to design a course that works for our goals, our students, and our St. Lawrence mission.

If anyone has questions or would like help putting together their spring syllabi before book orders are due, please just reach out.