Received: from ATHENA-AS-WELL.MIT.EDU by po7.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA23221; Fri, 13 Aug 93 13:55:28 EDT Received: from M37-312-8.MIT.EDU by Athena.MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA03900; Fri, 13 Aug 93 13:54:47 EDT From: dpolicar@Athena.MIT.EDU Received: by m37-312-8 (5.57/4.7) id AA12008; Fri, 13 Aug 93 13:54:42 -0400 Message-Id: <9308131754.AA12008@m37-312-8> To: espadmin@Athena.MIT.EDU Subject: [DP.LASPAU@mhsgw.harvard.edu (DP): Portrait of Louis Schmier "R] Date: Fri, 13 Aug 93 13:54:39 EDT (Since the last one attracted some interest, here's another. If you are interested, there's a full-fledged flamewar going on on the EDNET mailing list, between the "psychology should only be practiced by professionals" school of thought and the "do what needs to be done and the hell with your formal qualifications" school of thought, sparked by this article.) The following article "Teaching for Character" by James Rhem appears in the current issue of The National Teaching and Learning Forum. It is a portrait of Louis Schmier and his renascence through and in teaching. Schmier is familiar to subscribers to TIPS as the author of a series of "Random Thoughts" on teaching. I am uploading the article to the TIPS list in thanks and appreciation for the discussion of teaching carried on here by the active subscribers. You've given me ideas for my publication, and I'm grateful. If you are interested in learning more about The National Teaching and Learning Forum, you may write or call for a sample copy at The National Teaching and Learning Forum c/o ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education One Dupont Circle, N.W., Suite 630 Washington, D.C. 20036-1183 Phone: (202) 296-2597 The 12-page publication appears six times a year. It includes a wide range of articles on teaching and learning topics. Alternate issues include a teaching case study and two responses from faculty to the case. Several times a year the publication includes an "ERIC Tracks" column which highlights representative material on selected teaching and learning topics available in the ERIC database. An annual subscription cost $39. Generously discounted rates are available for multiple orders. As Executive Editor of the publication, I would be very glad to hear from members of this list who might be interested in contributing articles, acting as potential respondents to case studies or working together with us in the screening of material to be highlighted in forthcoming ERIC Tracks columns. The publication also includes "Viewpoint" articles and I would be glad to hear from list subscribers who might want to write in this vein. On impulse, I am also uploading a Q&A interview with Peter Frederick from the current issue and one of the most popular articles from past issues, "The Courage to Teach" by Parker J. Palmer, a friend and fellow Madisonian. Best wishes to all members of TIPS. I hope you are having a better summer than we are here in the midwest. Having lived in Manhattan, I can imagine the heat, especially in the subways -- it must be unbearable. But have you considered how depressing endless rain can be -- and for those not being flooded into misery -- the swarms of mosquitos making it unpleasant to go outdoors? For me mosquitos are summertime's version of subzero temperatures. James Rhem (editorial address): 213 Potter Street Madison, WI 53715-2050 (608) 258-8747 rhem@thor.cs.wisc.edu OR JRHEM@MCIMAIL.COM Teaching For Character A year and a half ago, Louis Schmier, 52, a tenured professor of history at Valdosta State College, decided to revolutionize his teaching. He'd always felt a stronger affinity with teaching than research, but the he hadn't always followed his heart. "When I started here twenty-six years ago, I organized all kinds of extra curricular seminars, costume lectures, that sort of thing, but when I came up for promotion, I was told that wasn't professional activity," Schmier remembers. Rebuffed in his early enthusiasm for teaching, he threw himself into publishing and built up a reputation as a scholar of Southern Jewish history. His teaching retreated into a classic lecture-discussion model unconsciously oriented toward what he describes as "better students," a phrase he now uses with derision. "I don't compare students now," he says. "I see students running on different race tracks. I see them as having their own particular potential to be developed and not to be compared." "Just because a student supposedly doesn't 'have it' does not mean that student is not capable of 'getting it,' " he says. "I unabashedly believe every student has a unique potential, the striving for which is the dual responsibility of both student and professor." Removing Handcuffs In essence Schmier decided to apply the lessons he was learning in his personal life to his professional life. At home he found himself struggling with the problems of a younger son who, while scoring 162 on standard IQ tests, suffered from a condition known as "attention deficit disorder" (ADD). The condition had been misdiagnosed and poorly understood, and as a result his son had almost completely lost confidence, focus and direction in his life. "My brain had gone to mush," says Schmier. "I'd seen my son in handcuffs too many times. I was going through the motions in teaching. I felt off balance. I wanted to get into the classroom, but I had created a scholarly reputation that was feeding on itself. I was caught." Finally, Schmier and his wife found a school in Maine dedicated to dealing with special students through a "character-based curriculum." The school asks parents and students some challenging questions: Who are you? Where are you in your life? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? It keeps asking those questions, and, as what a jazz musician might call the curricular back beat to all its instruction. Inspired by the new hope he'd found in Maine, Schmier began applying his own version of this character-based approach in his classes. Revitalized by the success he's found in the classroom and by the daily "power walks" he takes at 4:00 A.M., Schmier has begun sharing his experiences in a series of "Random Thoughts," personal letters to the college teaching community sent out over the Internet. Not everyone has been pleased with what Schmier has had to say. He's shocked colleagues on campus and across the Internet by declaring that he's "more interested in developing character than in teaching subject matter per se." The Power In Triads At the same time Schmier admits he's not sure character can be taught. "Every student has native abilities," he says. "What one does with those abilities is called character." So Schmier has developed an approach that requires students to show what they're made of. It's an approach designed to build self-esteem and teach students how to learn ~ as well as teaching them American history. "I'd dealing with both their intellectual and moral capacities. What I'm saying is that if they have self-confidence and the courage to take risks there isn't a thing they can't do." Schmier uses triads of students as the building blocks of his method. Why triads instead of the more familiar pairs often used in cooperative and collaborative learning approaches? Power. "The triads are fully empowered," says Schmier. "I don't want tie votes." The triads act as one on tests, papers, and weekly quizzes. For example, if a triad decides not to take one of the two exams that precede the final, it isn't obliged to, but the percentage value of the final exam (which all students must take) increases for students in that triad. The triads become arenas in which students drop their fears and inhibitions about learning and begin to exercise their power as learners. The solidarity these units develop often leads to triads working in tandem. Study groups composed of two or three triads often evolve three or four weeks into the semester. Just as the groups practice self-support, they also police themselves. If one student fails to contribute to a group paper or exam, the triad may vote to remove his or her name from the work, and the student then receives no credit on that assignment. "I wanted to evolve highly motivated individuals and the triads offer a mechanism for doing that," says Schmier. "Fundamentally, teaching is a social process," he says; hence it seemed sensible to use a social process to achieve an individual psychological and cognitive end ~ learning. If students feel their own power, their self-esteem and self-confidence will flourish and they will learn more than they would through other approaches, Schmier maintains. Inside The Classroom At the beginning of the semester, Schmier's students in undergraduate American history receive a twenty-page syllabus. The syllabus outlines all the nuts and bolts of the course in great detail. It explains the triads, the quizzes, papers, readings for each class meeting, outside readings, and the grading system. Thus the normal subject matter challenge of a course stands clearly spelled out and familiar, but the triad method makes it new. "Students are uncertain at first, a little scared," Schmier admits. But they adapt. "They know exactly what they're expected to be prepared to discuss each day, but they can change it," says Schmier. "If they feel they're not finished with something, they can say so, and I have to revise the calendar." In the first two days, Schmier presents some basic study skills. He outlines the long-practiced SQ3R (Scan, Question, Read, Review, Recite) method, and then launches into the assignments. In a typical class period students have arrived early and already begun discussing the day's assignment in their triads. In early May, for example, students read Milton Goldin's article "The Gospel of Andrew Carnegie" and were asked to discuss the question: "Was Andrew Carnegie a moral person?" In April they looked at an article by Alice Hall on James Madison and asked "Are radicals dangerous?" Was Madison a radical?" "To whom?" Schmier arrives and joins one or more groups in discussion. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the discussion shifts from the triads to the class as a whole where students participate as individuals. That phase of the class lasts for about thirty- five minutes. This discussion takes different forms. Sometimes its questions and answers on the material; at others it becomes a debate on the issues. "It's not all peaches and cream," Schmier admits. Some students resist the approach calling him "interfering" and saying to him: "How dare you get involved in my personal affairs. I don't like to talk. I am a listener. I don't like you telling me that I have no confidence." Schmier takes it all in stride: Before he began using the triads, the normal drop-out rate for his classes was 30%. Despite student complaints, the drop-out rate has sunk to 5% since he began using the triad method. And, he says, grades are higher. Each week students complete a 15 - 20 question self-evaluation on how they're doing in the class. "Have you done the reading?," it asks. "Have you met your goals?" "The students are brutally honest," says Schmier. "It stuns me. It's almost as if they're waiting for someone to ask them these questions." "A student will write on the evaluation, 'I'm going to study harder,' and I'll write back 'What is it going to take for you to study harder?' or 'Why didn't you study harder before? Think about it.' " A Self-Improvement Class Slogans play an important part in Schmier's (serious) classroom humor. "I'll come in with one of my bits of wisdom like, 'A person who does not stand for something will fall for anything.' " Schmier isn't uncomfortable having his course described as a self-improvement class. "Its a self- improvement class that uses the subject of history as a tool, and they're learning history," he says. The course carries a formidable reading load. In addition to reading George Tindall's America from cover to covers, students read 500 pages of additional material from secondary sources. They write reports on this reading organized around a large set of terms they're expected to work into the essays in ways the demonstrate their growing understanding of what they mean. The Final The syllabus ~ which students have had all semester ~ contains four questions, one of which will constitute half of the final exam. (Fifty short- answer questions on the text make up the other half.) Students write and submit the final ~- which counts for 40% of their grade ~ as triads. They receive individual grades, however, based on their total class work. "When they hand in an exam, if the essay is inadequate, I send it back to them for revision," says Schmier. Hence students can't escape the effort of trying their best. Changing The Teacher The character-based approach has changed Schmier he says. Describing himself as "having a heap of arrogance" in his personality, he says the class has made him more humble. "I'm more sensitive to the students. I always had name blocks before. Suddenly, I have a photographic memory for names. So, obviously there was a distance there between me and the students that I didn't even realize that's just broken down in this triad system." While some of his colleagues have attacked him for trying a radical method, at least two of his peers have decided to try the method in their classes next semester. "The worst part of this is the pain, the pain of seeing students holding themselves back, fearing they can't do it. That tears me up. I need a degree in psychology to handle some of the things I see with students. In fact I'm taking some courses right now. You have to be a counselor to some extent. "This isn't for everybody. It's not just a structure. It requires teacher growth. So, I'm not doing this because it's easy," says Schmier. "It's not easy. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. I'm following my gut." [include photo: Louis Schmier] -- 30 --