Going the extra mile

During my undergraduate degree programme, I remember assembling with a small group of fellow students in a room to start our new module on social psychology. We knew our new lecturer's name, but beyond that we knew very little about her. So we sat and waited for her to appear. And we sat and waited. At around five minutes after we were due to start, we began to wonder if perhaps she was already sat in the room with us, posing as a student, conducting some bizarre psychological experiment. It's amazing how paranoid psychology students can become. At ten minutes we began speculating on whether she had been delayed by traffic, or worse, had been involved in an accident. At around 12 minutes past the hour, the door banged noisily open, and in burst this strange, dark clad woman with a black hat jammed down over her face. In her arms she had half a dozen old Tesco carrier bags, which she threw against the wall. She stalked over to the whiteboard and without a single word of greeting to us, began writing a string of strange and esoteric words. This continued for a few more minutes, as we sat bewildered, perplexed, and yes... increasingly annoyed, at having our time wasted by this strange, anonymous black clad woman.

Finally, she turned, removed her hat and faced us. She asked us to write down in a few words what we thought of her. She went out and changed into a more colourful outfit (which was in the Tesco carrier bags), and returned, a pleasant and friendly woman. 'This is the real me', she smiled. She admitted that what she had just performed, in front of a group of strangers, was a very big risk to take, and that it had taken a lot of courage for her to go through with the charade. She told us she had been very worried that the whole episode could so easily have backfired and been a total disaster.

It was a very creative lesson, and we learnt a lot about our perceptions and prejudices that day. We also learnt about powerful ideas such as identity, presence, interaction and representation of reality. Our opinions of our lecturer, when we examined them, ranged from 'weird', 'crazy' and 'rude', to expressions such as 'she should have been on time', 'she's bald!' and 'she must be a witch.' We all laughed, but we realised the import of the performance. We learnt a very important lesson that day which set us up extremely well for the entire social psychology module. We learnt a deep lesson about ourselves and the positions we take in the social world, because our lecturer had decided she was going to take a risk and go the extra mile, and in so doing, facilitate a very powerful experience that none of us would ever forget. I'm so glad she did.

As a teacher, how much do you do that is above and beyond the call of duty? Do you ever go the extra mile? How much does creativity cost you? Many teachers do put in that extra bit of effort, taking risks, trying something new and creative, to engage students more, make them think more deeply, or enhance their learning in some way. Taking risks is not just a part of being a teacher, it's a part of being human.

Image source by Richard Pullen


Going the extra mile by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Ten years of arguments

I know this is a strange title for a blog post, but let me explain: This week, in the north of the Czech Republic, I have just completed my tenth spell of teaching at the Technical University of Liberec. Each year, around half-term time in May, I am invited to teach a week of 'Argumentation and Rhetoric' to a group of international students of the University Neisse. What is argumentation and rhetoric? Well, as a psychologist, I interpret it as the study of interpersonal communication skills. To that end, when I was first invited to teach at University Neisse in 2002, I put together a 5 day programme which explored a number of social psychological theories around interpersonal skills, which involved lectures, demonstrations, discussion and games that focused on debating, argument and critical dialogue. Over the years I have included several social media elements including the use of blogs and wikis, when these were still seen as new in the education world.

Neisse is an international degree programme funded by the European Union through its Erasmus programme. Since 2002 almost 200 students have been through the classes, including many from Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, as well as a small number of students from Vietnam, Nigeria, China and, in my current group - from Egypt. One of my students today came up to me and asked me why I keep coming back to teach at Neisse every year. I thought for a few seconds and then replied that I enjoyed the challenge of teaching multi-ethnic groups of students. It's the only chance I get each year to teach students from so many different countries, all together in one classroom. The mix is a dynamic one, full of possibilities, and you never know what is going to emerge during the discussion sessions. Today we enjoyed a particularly animated debate on genetic engineering where some of the group became quite vocal about whether they should, or could argue from a perspective they didn't actually agree with. Others in the group responded that if one wasn't familiar with the other person's perspective, then it was difficult to argue effectively. And this is what Neisse is really all about - in their first year of study, the group lives together in Liberec, Czech Republic. In their second year, they move to the University of Wroclaw, in Poland. They complete their third year of study at the University of Görlitz, in Germany. During this time, they learn not only their own academic subject of information and communication management, but also take on board all the customs, social nuances and languages of the other nations, and of course they learn very good technical and conversational English in the process.

In conversation today with one of the leading lights of Neisse, Professor Jaroslav Vild, I asked what was the main aim of the Neisse programme. He told me that central Europe has had a history of ethnic tensions and problems in the past, including wars of course. University Neisse is a small part of the movement focused on bringing young people together from diverse backgrounds, to mould them into a force for better international understanding. I have completed 10 years teaching at University Neisse this week. If they invite me back, I won't say no.

Image source by Sludgegulper

Ten years of arguments by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.