Geeky Pedagogy

Geeky Pedagogy, written by Jessamyn Neuhaus, is aimed at teachers who are also geeks, introverts, nerds. Her book spoke to me. I’m definitely an introvert, but I hadn’t thought of myself as a geek or a nerd. I wasn’t considered an oddball in school – at least I don’t think so – nor was I labeled or treated as being from a strange tribe. (I also went to school in a different country with a different education system so perhaps the same tropes don’t apply.) But reading Neuhaus convinced me to embrace my inner geek or nerd when it comes to my subject of expertise: chemistry!

 

Even if you’re not a geek, introvert, nerd; if you care about student learning and continuing to improve as an effective teacher, I highly recommend you read Geeky Pedagogy. While there are helpful tips and tricks, thoughtful analysis about teaching, great suggestions and recommendations, for me the best part of this book was being inspired to continue in my journey of being an effective teacher. Not a super-duper teacher or the perfect master-teacher; no such individual exists. Rather, one that continues to be self-aware, reflective, and puts into practice all the things I’m constantly learning about learning!

 

Having immersed myself in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) for over a decade, I was familiar with the many SoTL “suggestions” that Neuhaus includes in her book. But she is strident about one point, which I agree with wholeheartedly: “Whatever the SoTL recommends, whatever your mentor tells you, even whatever worked for you in some other teaching context, may or may not work for you in your current localized teaching context. There’s no one specific hard and fast method for building our pedagogical practices, no one specific way it must look or one specific thing we must do in all teaching scenarios for all time. This applies to everything from the most sweeping pedagogical theory to any single teaching trick. It applies at every stage of our careers, from our first class to our last… ultimately [you] have to do whatever it is that works for you and advances learning among your students.”

 

Geeky Pedagogy reminded me of the importance of awareness and self-reflection. Sometimes, when I feel busy and pressed for time, I don’t the time to reflect after class or I’m not sufficiently self-aware during class. It’s easy to get distracted. Just two days ago, I had to wrangle with the technology in the classroom and it took me ten minutes to get the projection system up and running (when it normally takes a minute or less). Thankfully I got to class ten minutes early for my 8am Monday morning class. But because of all that, I missed chatting with my students before class, and I felt flustered. It took me a little time to regain my self-awareness and be really present for my students, and not just think about what I was going to say next. It was good to be reminded by Neuhaus about the importance of giving one’s full attention to the students and their learning during class – and not just what I had planned.

 

Planning, though, is also very important – particularly if you’re an introvert and/or find it challenging speaking extemporaneously. I plan a lot. These days, my students don’t realize how scripted my plan is – I have chunks of it memorized which also include when I will throw in a joke or a reference to pop culture. The only reason it seems seamless to the students is because I’ve had lots of Practice. Neuhaus underscores the importance of Planning and Practice; I discovered this on my own as a novice teacher. Practice, practice, practice. I tell my students the same thing. But the practice must be reflective to be effective. Students can repeat the same exercises over and over with little learning if they don’t do so reflectively. The same is true of the practice of teaching. I imagine I could go on auto-pilot having taught the same material many, many times. But then I wouldn’t improve. Actually, I would get worse because I’d be unaware of local context. Our students change. Each class is a new and different group. And it’s crucial I connect to them as individuals, and not just as a nameless crowd.

 

Of the many things I’ve read about the dreaded topic of the end-of-term student evaluations of teaching, Neuhaus provides the most balanced perspective I’ve come across. For that alone, her book is worth reading (or at least Chapter 3: Reflection) but there’s so much more that you might find inspiring and helpful if you’re a teacher who wants to get better at helping students learn. For the geek/introvert/nerd in me, Neuhaus explained (better than I could) why certain things I’d been doing worked well. It was a Know Thyself moment for me. Her book also gave me fresh encouragement to be and do better, not in an unattainable preachy way, but by reminding me that teaching is effortful and that it is a lifelong journey of learning how to help students become better learners. And it helped me embrace my geeky love of all things chemistry! Whenever I feel low about teaching, Geeky Pedagogy is the book I will be re-reading.

 

P.S. I’ve been working my way through the “Teaching and Learning in Higher Education” series. All short books, the ones I’ve previously blogged about are The Spark of Learning 1 2 (Cavanagh), Ungrading (Blum), and How Humans Learn (Eyler). Geeky Pedagogy is the best one so far.