In the second installment of Inside Explorations, the Daily takes a look at the challenges faced by students who lead the University's popular Explorations courses, in which upperclassmen teach and advise first-year students.
Though students teaching Explorations courses begin methodically mapping their out weekly topics and readings months in advance of freshman orientation, these first-time teachers frequently observe that sticking stringently to the planned syllabus is not always the best strategy.
"We had a syllabus that we tweaked," said senior Heather Kenney, who is teaching the course "School Portrayals." "We rejected "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens; I didn't want to make them read this book that I wouldn't have wanted to read."
Other teachers have taken equally unorthodox tacks. Senior Erik Johanson and junior Zaki Beda created a football draft to liven up their class, "Sports Finance." They linked the draft to online fantasy football numbers, set a salary cap and other parameters, and utilized Blackboard technology to bring it into the classroom. "It actually went really well," said Johanson. "The students were pretty shy in the beginning, but now they're starting to open up a little."
Structuring classes to facilitate both learning and open discussion can be a challenge. "Our first two classes, we've crammed so much information in that the class seems to fly by," said senior Luke Brown, who co-teaches a course called "The Culture of Clothing." "We were sitting there thinking, 'Oh my gosh, did we get through this, this, and this?'"
Brown and senior Gabriela Jirasek, his teaching partner, felt it was important to build a base of knowledge for their class to work from, so that later classes could be filled with information, but also include loosely-arranged discussions.
In addition to careful planning, Explorations teachers need the energy and flexibility to pull off an interesting and informative class every week, for two-and-a-half hours. For first-time teachers, this can be an intimidating task.
According to Robyn Gittleman, program supervisor and director of the Ex College, the challenge is compounded by the fact that Explorations classes are pass/fail. Explorations students are required to complete a term paper and participate in class regularly, and students who do not take the course seriously risk failing and losing credit for the course.
But Gittleman said that "anybody who's teaching a pass/fail course, no matter who they are, will have more of a challenge in getting students to pay attention than if they were having it count as a letter grade."
To combat this issue, Gittleman supports Explorations teachers in their goals with a week-long training session before the beginning of classes. She also meets with them weekly throughout the semester in a seminar setting to discuss teaching methods.
Many teachers choose to fight student laziness by working to make classes so interesting that they naturally prompt active participation. "I spend a lot of time every week thinking, 'What would keep me in the class?'" said senior Jason Wang, who teaches a course called "Comic Books and Society." "It's two-and-a-half hours on a Thursday - that's a big chunk of time."
To switch things up at the beginning of the semester, Wang removed the text from some old comics and had students re-arrange the frames to examine their composition.
In addition to figuring out ways to engage their students, Explorations teachers have to fulfill two roles at once: they serve as both teachers and Orientation Leaders.
"It's an interesting duality of teaching and being a friend and an advisor: at the beginning of the semester, you're telling them not to get too drunk, and suddenly when the semester begins, you're more of an authority figure," said senior Katie Stewart, who co-teaches "Healthcare Inequities."
"It's not a normal student-teacher relationship because [campus is] small enough that we run into each other doing all sorts of things," said senior Elana Eisen-Markowitz, who is teaching "Multiracial Perspectives."
"But that doesn't mean that there isn't some sort of separation, some sort of boundary between the way we interact with them and the way we might interact with other random underclassmen," Eisen-Markowitz said.
Gittleman said that challenge serves as a valuable learning experience for Explorations teachers. "That's a hard line to straddle," she said. "As a peer, how would you handle a situation where they say, 'I'm not going to do the assignment, because I didn't like the book?'"
Most Explorations teachers agree that getting respect is just a matter of approaching the material seriously so that the students will do the same.
"We're not [a chemistry class]," Wang said. "We understand this. But [the students will] respect you if you respect them. As an advisor, I've found that you don't have to lead them around so much. They are adults, and we don't want to lead them like sheep."
New students, however, often do need help with various adjustments to Tufts schedules, course selection and other administrative tasks. "I had one student call me about class times, really worried," said Wang. "He was asking 'A-R-R? What is A-R-R?' and just freaking out on the phone. I just said, 'Relax, it stands for arranged - it means your professor will work it out.'"
While their students come away with a new perspective on campus, the leaders themselves also gain from the Explorations experience. "What these freshmen don't realize is it's as much of a learning experience for us as it is for them," Johanson said.
"[There is] a lot of preparation involved, but teaching something - anything - makes you really think about what it is you're teaching and how," Eisen-Markowitz said. "So it's a whole other level of analysis that's required to impart the issues to a group of students - especially peers - than would be necessary just to process it yourself."
