When senior Bronson Kussin was a freshman, he enrolled in an Experimental College film class. As a first-year student at Tufts, he was amazed that he was being taught not by professors or lecturers, but by Tufts upperclassmen. Kussin ultimately enjoyed the class so much that he decided he'd teach a class himself.
Two and a half years later, Kussin, along with then-junior Benjamin Rausch, applied to teach a course similar to the one he took his freshman year, entitled "Perspectives: Comedies of the 1970s to 2000s." As rising seniors they were eventually granted the opportunity to teach the class to 14 incoming freshmen during the fall semester.
The ExCollege, established in 1964, offers juniors and seniors the opportunity to garner leadership experience by teaching a class on anything from religion to films and TV shows.
"Ben and I wanted to take that unique advantage," Kussin said. "It's a very rare opportunity for an undergraduate student to teach a full-credit undergraduate course to students."
The ExCollege offers a variety of courses to Tufts students. Freshman students often choose to take the ExCollege's "Explorations" or "Perspectives" courses with their orientation groups as a way to meet other freshmen. In the case of these courses, both the teachers and students receive pass/fail credits for their efforts. Other courses are open to all classes and are taught by either student instructors or visiting instructors.
Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education and ExCollege Director Robyn Gittleman said that because student teachers are given a fair amount of liberty in the design and structure of their courses, the ExCollege has become a popular opportunity among upperclassmen. The program administration has therefore had to devise a rigorous method of selecting which students will be permitted to teach.
"Our voting members make decisions as to which courses we choose and different policy decisions," Gittleman said. "Once [the chosen applicant] is given the OK, they can teach the program to first- to fourth- year students."
The application is not, however, the most difficult part of the process. To ensure that the students are well prepared and professional, the ExCollege requires that the chosen students attend peer-to-peer teaching sessions early in the semester.
Kussin recalled the difficulty of structuring a new course.
"The importance of preparation was shown to us very early on," he said. "Ben and I did prepare quite a bit beforehand — if you don't come well prepared to class, it won't go very smoothly."
Once the semester begins, the work involved in teaching a course is substantial. In addition to teaching a weekly two-and-a-half hour class and grading 14 short papers per week, Kussin said that he and Rausch had to come up with a list of movies, determine which scenes were important, devise in-class activities and identify an overall theme for each class.
Kussin commented that planning was essential, as any lack of preparation would make the instructors more nervous than they already were.
"There will be 12 to 14 kids staring at you with nothing much to say," Kussin said.
Senior Stefanie Marx, who taught a Perspectives course about sports movies, echoed this sentiment. "At the beginning, we were all pretty nervous — none of us have ever taught before," Marx said. "But we got a week of intense training over the summer, and it made me more confident."
Marx, Kussin and senior Alec Jahncke, an instructor for a class on contemporary French films, all admitted that they were initially wary of treating their peers as students. They said, however, that as the semester continued, they began to embrace their roles as authority figures.
"It took us a few weeks to get our bearings, but we had great kids and we were like advisors to them," Marx said.
Jahncke, too, got to know his students on a more personal level.
"It did definitely get easier knowing the kids going on," he said. "Halfway through we realized that the freshmen coming in are not that judgemental and you kind of laugh it off."
One issue that student instructors have to handle appropriately is their relationship with their students outside of the classroom, particularly so when their courses are open to all Tufts students.
Kussin said that even before the semester began, he knew that maintaining a teacher-student relationship with his students would be a struggle.
"[If] they become more comfortable and they tend to loosen up a little bit, then they don't take it as seriously," Kussin said. "There's a sense that ‘I'm your peer, I'm your decent guy, so I won't get furious at you,' so being some level of an authority figure was a semi-difficult thing."
Freshman Paul McBride acknowledged that it can be difficult to treat ExCollege instructors as an authority figures when students develop a social relationship with them. Nevetheless, he maintained that in class he viewed Rausch and Kussin not as fellow undergraduate peers who were three years older, but as teachers.
"We're all in the same boat; he's a senior, you might see him at a party," McBride said. "But while it seemed like a very laid-back class at times, they put pressure when they needed to."
"I often say that if you have friends in the classroom it can work one of two ways: They might strive to be the best student in class so you succeed as a teacher, or they'd want to take advantage of the friendship and not do the work," Gittleman said. "However, there have been no problems so far."
McBride said he enjoyed the program so much as a student that he plans to teach a Perspectives course during his junior or senior year.
