The Failure of Community College Teachers

Cox showed how the culture of college professors, both at two-year community colleges and four-year schools, was hostile to good instruction. The professors had been trained to be proud of their grasp of their subject matter and not worry too much about how they were teaching it. The best students at four-year colleges could adjust to this, but first-year community college students were often not equipped to translate the jargon and weather the indifference they felt from many of the college faculty they encountered.

Community college professors often fail at teaching - The Washington Post

 

All I can say is that attending around a dozen schools all the instructors and professors I had were good to excellent with one exception. That exception was a Chinese professor in Economics at a state U where the problem was that neither me nor my fellow students could understand most of his words because of his accent.

 

I have taught at a JC, several state universities, and a top-tier liberal arts college. I've found that effective teaching is different for each situation. At a JC it is imperative to use a textbook and class lectures are from the text. Most of the students have no experience taking notes so a normal lecture is no effective. Instead, what I do is go through the text with the students, pointing out what's most important, explaining when they don't fully understand the text, and very occasionally elaborating. One has to be prepared also to explain the meaning of many words and explain cultural references. You can't assume that the student have very much significant prior knowledge. (For example, you can't make a reference to A Tale of Two Cities and expect students know what you're talking about. For that matter, they've never heard of the French Revolution and know almost nothing about the American Revolution.

I encourage discussion but don't let it stray far from the text. Frequent exams are necessary, every week or other week because many students are not likely to keep up with the reading if not prodded. Multiple choice tests are necessary because most students will not have the skill to write an essay. It's good if you can assign some sort of a paper (I require a book-report from a supplied list) but it's necessary to provide an outline that can be used to write the paper. My experience is that it is necessary to give students an opportunity to re-write the paper after corrections. Many of the students will never have written any kind of paper and many will hardly be able to write at all. Correcting papers takes an enormous amount of time if they are to be returned for revision, so that in a large class it's not practical to do this.

At the state university (not the flagship but what formerly was, in most states a teachers' college) I taught at, there was a great mix of students with different abilities and prior knowledge. I've had students that should have been at Stanford but they got poor guidance in high school or were frightened by the expense. In contrast, I've had students that could not do long division, write a simple paragraph, or construct a coherent argument.

Consequently, teaching at a school like this with it's broad range is the most challenging. As a practical matter, you can't fail very many students even if they deserve it Maybe 5% maximum. The class has to be pitched at a level not much higher than the JC previously discussed. The great challenge is to keep the well-prepared students interested. If it's an introductory course, I usually tell them to study on their own and just come in for the semi-weekly quizes. In advanced classes, where discussion and independent work are important, you just have to struggle to keep it simple but interesting - - so that both ends of the spectrum can benefit. In some classes, like statistics, I give an exam on the first day, testing student skill in arithmetic and algebra. If a student does poorly on the pre-test, I explain that he probably wouldn't do well in this class. Papers and essays are the biggest challenge because of the broad range of skill levels among the students.

In general, both at the JC and the state university, you would be mistaken if you expect the students to do much studying outside of class. The average student at a JC or state university probably "studies" about four hours a week combined and cram for exams.

Everything is quite different at the selective liberal arts college. Ever she the movie "Mona Lisa Smile", a Julia Roberts vehicle. She discovers on the first or second day that all the students have ALREADY read and digested the textbook so she's briefly at a loss for what to do for the remaining fourteen weeks.

Unlike many of my colleagues I assign a textbook except in advanced seminar courses because the text provides a summary of the subject matter. But, of course I don't review the text in class. Instead, it's used a starting point for discussions. The students are assigned much additional reading - - reading that is quite unlike a textbook in that it is not designed to explain things. Included could be articles from sophisticated newspapers or magzines, technical journals or books written for people already in the field that we are studying.

You can expect the student to have a broad basic education in the arts and sciences.

Frankly, many if not most of the students are smarter than me. I have more "knowledge" and experience so they can learn lots from me but most they learn on their own and from other students. Discussion is encouraged and usually I just have to referee it. I give multiple choice test still, because they can cover lots of material but essay exams and apers are also given. Most of the studenys can write quite well but if they have problems, there's a "writing center" they can go to where people who really know how to teach writing can give help.

The point of the Washington Post article is that many PhDs don't know how to teach to a poorly educated class that lacks the cultural background and skills that educated people take for granted. I admit that I myself was guilty of this with my first teaching job as a part-time adjunct at an urban JC. I had no idea how poorly prepared these kids were for college and that I had to radically change my teaching techniques if they were to get anything at all out of the course.

 

This is why we have completely useless professors.

And, sentences like this is why we have problem with education.

Leave CC profs alone. Most have real jobs, with real-world experience. This article very much reads like ivory tower professors demanding that the sub-class professors adhere to their isolation from the filthy masses.

Better do it now or we reconceptualize you!

 

I agree. And frankly, k-12 is all pedagogy with no discipline or experience, which doesn't work.