Classroom Climate

College students laughing during a lecture

Bringing Authentic Humor into the Classroom

Humor has a place in education. College teachers can use it to create a welcoming classroom environment, increase learning, improve attendance, and reduce test anxiety (Banas, Dunbar, Rodriguez, & Liu, 2010). Such results should encourage all who teach to explore how to integrate humor into

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rethinking policies that stifle creativity

Rethinking Policies That Stifle
Student Learning

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.” That line from an e e cummings poem has been following me around all week.

So much of our educational system is wrapped in how-not-to’s. How not to

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making connections in teaching

Making Connections in Teaching

As teaching professors, we know first-hand how complex an endeavor teaching is. The sheer number of instructional interactions, decisions, and processes can be overwhelming to enact, much less to master. To streamline such complexity, I have adopted what I consider a beneficial perspective. In its

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Appreciative close: creating classroom community

The Appreciative Close: A Strategy for Creating a Classroom Community

“What you appreciate appreciates” (Twist, n.d.). One of the practices I have employed in most of my classes during the past several years is “the appreciative close,” which is an offshoot of “the appreciative pause” recommended by Stephen Brookfield (Brookfield, 2015, pp.95-96). Brookfield suggests using

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classroom management

Teachable Moments about Privilege

Many faculty wonder how to help students in the dominant group understand societal privilege without making them defensive. One day, a situation arose in my course that changed my approach to this topic. I was teaching about using APA citations, and, in the course of

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Helping our Students

Helping our Students: Too Much? Or, Not Enough?

As teaching professors, we try to change students, whether it’s a change that increases their factual knowledge, one that gives them a new way of thinking, or one that develops an important new skill. Frustration, stress, and tension frequently accompany change, especially change that involves

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The Teaching Professor Conference 2024

June 7-9, 2024 • New Orleans

Connect with Fellow Educators at The Teaching Professor Conference!