Julia Strand  0:03  
Hello, and welcome to the juice in the squeeze. I'm Julia strand here, as always with my co host, Jonathan Peelle. Hey, Jonathan. 

Jonathan Peelle  0:09  
Hey Julia.

Julia Strand  0:11  
So I am currently in the process of prepping a brand new class that I've never taught before. And I haven't prepped a brand new class in kind of a while I've been teaching the same classes. And of course, I changed them a little bit each time. But starting a class from scratch has made me be

So Jonathan, and I teach at very different kinds of institutions. For those who haven't heard us talk about this before. I'm at Carleton College, which is a small liberal arts college, my students are all undergraduates.

And they're also awesome undergraduates, they're thoughtful and excited and eager to learn and ask for extra reading when they're interested in something. And so the stuff that I talked about about teaching is is kind of going to be I just want you to view it through that lens and know, you know, kind of what's coming.

Jonathan, tell us a little bit about where you teaching.

Jonathan Peelle  1:27  
Yeah, well, first of all, we have awesome undergraduates too, just so you know. I teach it at Washington University in St. Louis. And the two courses that I typically teach are through the psychological and Brain Sciences Department, there is an introduction to cognitive neuroscience, which is a, an introductory lecture course. And I usually have about 200 students in that of all all years, and lots of different majors. And then I also teach a brain imaging course, which is much smaller, it's about 20 to 25 students, and usually a few graduate students, but mostly undergraduates in that so I think, anyway, most of the time, I think what we're talking about today, I'm going to, like my mindset is mostly my lecture class, the bigger one, which I'm also teaching now. But anyway, I might I might flip back and forth a little.

Julia Strand  2:21  
Sure. So that's also so what you'll be talking about is also mostly undergrad.

Jonathan Peelle  2:25  
Yep. Yep.

Julia Strand  2:28  
And I teach a introduction to psychology, sensation and perception, senior seminar, psychologies, credibility revolution, about open science, and a seminar called the psychology of spoken words. And I guess one difference is that my biggest class, my interest I classes is 35. So we'll probably talk about somewhat different approaches that we take for smaller classes versus versus bigger ones. So Okay, here we go. You're about to teach a new class, you've never taught it before, you know, a little something about it, I would hope. But, but but it's brand new. So when I first like, sit down to think about a class, um, the first thing that I typically think about is, is just content, right? This is basic, like, what's, what's the stuff that you want your students to know? Um, and so in order to make decisions about that, I'm going to think about like, what are the important like topics and debates in the field? scanning the table of contents in textbooks related to this could be useful to you for thinking about, you know, how other people kind of structured this and broken down the key ideas, what's, what's the information that needs to get to get paid? And, and the breadth of that depends a ton based on the nature of the course. Right? So when I'm teaching intro, psych, I'm like, well, there's all kinds of stuff they have to know about. What I do research on, but it turns out, I'm covering all of cognition in three days or something. So, um, so that that process of prioritizing, I don't know that sometimes super painful, it's so hard for me to teach a class and be like, wait, but you can't possibly leave without learning about this. Like, no, no, no, no, they'll take that in an upper level class, if they're lucky.

Jonathan Peelle  4:11  
Do you remember the first class that you taught and prepped by either at Carleton, or if you did any teaching before that, like?

Julia Strand  4:20  
Yeah.

Jonathan Peelle  4:21  
How did you approach the content? issue then? Because in a minute, I'll tell you what what I did. But I want to hear your story first.

Julia Strand  4:29  
Yeah, that's a that's a great question. I think I basically so the first class that I taught was intro psych. Um, and I think I basically just grabbed the table of contents from the textbook that I was using, and then taught exactly those topics in that order, because I had never done it before. And you know, for the first time teaching is hard, and I was pretty underwater. And so I think, I think I started with that and then have moved kind of farther and farther away from that over time. Um, and then the other the other. That other class that I taught that first term was myself seminars lack of spoken words. And to come up with a content for that. I mean, because it's my research area, I think what it is just like sat down and started making a list of all of the things. And I also looked at previous syllabi of people who had taught classes on like spoken word production and spoken word recognition and seeing the topics that they had covered. But it was definitely like, looking at what other people thought was important. And, you know, seeing what I agreed with, rather than trying to come up with a list out of my head,

Jonathan Peelle  5:29  
Because I have this clear memory, which in retrospect, at least, for me, it seems like not the best approach. But anyway, it's your, for my first time, I didn't know any better. So the first big class I taught was, was my introductory to cognitive neuroscience class, and I looked at a bunch of textbooks and picked one. And I was like, well, there's 20 chapters in the textbook, and I have about 20 class meetings, you know, you know, calculate, calculate, therefore, I will do one chapter, every class meeting, which is what I you know, which is what I did, and, and I, you know, I guess we'll come back to content, but I guess, anyway, I don't do that anymore. I kind of wish I could go back and tell myself like, you don't have to cover everything.

Julia Strand  6:13  
Yes, I think I think that's like a totally reasonable place to start. Like, if you don't, if you don't have another, you know, if you don't know what else to do, I think it's a totally reasonable place to start. And then my guess would be that most people, you know, once they teach it, they're like, Oh, this topic and this topic are kind of related, I should teach those, I can teach those in one class period. And this thing isn't actually that interesting. So I'm going to skip that altogether. But what I find, it's really hard to know. It's just to like, be able to make all of those connections before you teach something, right? And see, like, how the stuff you teach in week two is going to connect to the stuff you teach in week eight. And so maybe you should teach those closer together. So I think starting that way, you know, is a perfectly reasonable starting place.

Jonathan Peelle  6:50  
Okay. Good.

It was tough, though. I mean, anyway, so my problem was, and maybe some of you have come across this too. But you know, of the 20 chapters, I was like a pretty good expert. And like three of them, like the language and speech chapters, you know, and then a bunch of the other ones, I'm like, I'm more of an expert than the average person on the street, but I'm not an emotion researcher. So there's a whole chapter on emotion neuroscience, like I don't know, any of this stuff. And so I was really, you know, it was the, I guess the classic thing, we're like, the night before lecture, I was reading up on this stuff, and then the next day, I would try to teach you about it, which is, which is tough.

Julia Strand  7:35  
It is tough, it is tough. And and I think that you're selling yourself a little bit short, because even if you haven't studied that thing, you still know a lot about, you know, how research in this field is generally conducted and how studies are designed. And so I think one of the things that we learned in our training is how to at least get the broad strokes of research and how it's done. Even if even if you're not an expert in it, you know, and that's, and that's what we're teaching to students, especially at the undergraduate level. So yeah, to, to, to reassure people who feel like they're teaching stuff that is not directly in their wheelhouse. We've all done that. And, you know, it's obviously hard. Um, but, but you don't have to. I mean, obviously, teaching, teaching stuff that you know, well, is great, but you can still give students a lot of value by just teaching them in a thoughtful and compassionate way, even if you don't know, every single thing about it.

Jonathan Peelle  8:29  
Right. That's a good point, I guess, just to prove that my little tangent here was kind of related. You started off, you know, kind of saying that you think about what what topics are important in the field. And that's also how I started off. And that's how I would end up doing 20 chapters, because they all seem important than how, you know, am I a bad teacher for not telling them about all this stuff? And I think I've gradually added another like facet to that, which is sort of like, what what are the topics that I'm the best teacher add are the topics that I can convey the most enthusiasm? You know, I mean, in the absence of other ways to whittle down the 20 topics to I don't know what I do now more like six or seven topics. I spend more time on them. And I just, I enjoy it more. And I think that goes across to the students. But anyway, so it's like, what's important in the field, but then if that's too big, then I think you're allowed to use other metrics, other heuristics for limiting what you teach.

Julia Strand  9:26  
Yeah, yep. One of the other things that sometimes dictates what what I'm going to teach is, if students if I know students are going to take like upper level classes that expect them to have some prerequisite knowledge from my class, you know, thinking about how I'm going to be sure to check those boxes. And that's, I mean, that's, I guess that's somewhat less intellectually fun being like, definitely I've talked about this because then when they get to this class, they need to, they need to know it, but it's another you know, it's another consideration of thinking about how your class kind of fits into the curriculum.

Jonathan Peelle  9:55  
I'm going to interrupt you there and also because you and I have different departmental affiliation type things. But do you have like department meetings about curriculum? Like, how do you know how what you teach fits into the broader picture?

Julia Strand  10:11  
We do? Yeah. I mean, we periodically will have like departmental retreats, where we talk about our curriculum, and what are what the what the goals for our major are, and where we think students are getting each of those skills, right. So if we say, We want our majors to have, you know, good quantitative reasoning in the following ways, then we look at all of our classes say, okay, where are we teaching them quantitative reasoning? What proficiency do we expect to the intro level? What do we expect when they're seniors? Um, and so yeah, so I think we have conversations about it, and are are all pretty, like, deliberate and mindful about, you know, what our, what our responsibilities are, in terms of conveying both in terms of content, and, you know, skills to help them be good scientists, and we're in the major they get.

Jonathan Peelle  10:57  
I think, I mean, just, well, am I allowed to say this? I don't know. So I teach in a department that's not my main main appointment department. So I don't, I don't go to all the psychological and brain science meetings. And so I I'm pretty sure they have those meetings, but I but I'm not, I'm not invited. So I am a little bit making up what I think is important for the upper level courses. And so I'm trying to be better about integrating, but I definitely feel, you know, kind of on my own for it for that part of it.

Julia Strand  11:29  
It's not, it's not a major part of what I think about when I'm designing classes, I think, is mostly the things that our learning goal for the kinds of classes I teach or stuff that I would want to teach anyway. So it's, it's Yeah, so it's a it's not a major force in how I design. The other like, big kind of content thing that is that is always present in my mind is in addition to like, the, like nitty gritty of content that is different for every class. Um, one of the things that my department really values I think psychology in general, really values I really value is that students are trained and becoming really critical consumers of science and well versed in the scientific process. And so we spent a lot of time talking about research methods and meta scientific stuff, and how do you know what to trust and replicability and that, in every single class that I teach, so the examples that I give her are different, you know, depending on like, what the research area is, um, but, but I found that like, as, so I used to when I taught intro, I would like teach research methods on day two, or whatever, and then kind of not talk about it again. And I found that the as I've been teaching more, I'm like teaching less and less content and more and more methodology and like, better scientific stuff. I'm in part because of the replication crisis. And I worry about, you know, what, what we can trust. And in part because that's what I want them to, like, walk away with, that's what I want them to like, to like, remember is not is not the fact of science, but like the process of how we do it.

Jonathan Peelle  13:10  
Well, that's also really transferable to different topics, right? And so yet, right I mean, I mean, either even outside of psychology, you know, gas, but certainly within psychology, if they forget all the all the quote unquote, facts, you teach them, you know, hopefully they'll have a bigger picture appreciation.

Julia Strand  13:27  
Yeah, yeah. Okay, I have two things that I want to say about that. Um, wait, let me just write down the second one first. I'm gonna, I'm gonna forget it. Okay, so the first one, um, well, this is gonna involve a funny story, too. Okay. So there's a thing that some faculty at Carleton Oh, I hope I don't get in trouble for No, no, this is okay. There's a thing that some faculty at Carleton do. That is called the first the first day challenge. And this isn't like a curl to my thing. This is like my nerd friends at Carl, where we get together before that before the first day of class Fall term, and we come up with a particular word or phrase or topic that is like, low frequency word, weird phrase, quirky topic. And then we each try to come up with creative and funny and inventive ways of incorporating that into our lecture the first day of class. And the hope is that some students will be like, Oh, it's kind of weird. Like every single Professor talks about the Oregon Trail on the first day of class, I wonder what that's about? Right. And it's just like a, you know, a funny little challenge and a fun thing to do. Um, so the the theme was the Oregon Trail A few years ago, also, because, like the creators of the Oregon Trail, have some curls infection was one of the reasons that we did this. But so when I was talking to my students, about like, the class and my philosophy class I was teaching. The metaphor that I gave is that the class itself is like in the Oregon Trail when you go out and you're like hunting, Buffalo and caribou and when Ever you hide, and you have that you have that little pop up that says, You You got 2000 pounds worth of beast meats, but you can only carry 200 pounds back to your wagon, or whatever, right? Those numbers might not be right. And the idea is that the class itself is like the 2000 pounds of beast meat. But what they're going to carry back to their wagon, you know, is like what they're going to take with them after this class, what they're actually going to remember. And so I said that the, the stuff about the process of science scientific methodology, that that is like, what they're going to what I want them to carry back their wagon, they can forget the other stuff, because they know how to look that up. But that's what I want them to really, like, carry with them. And so that's why, you know, I really hit that methodological stuff

Jonathan Peelle  15:47  
like that, in how many students like, Do they ever say anything? Do you ever let them in on the joke? And you're like, hey, just so you know,

Julia Strand  15:54  
I've had students who, like, know about it, and there'll be like, what's the word for this year, we'll house or something, you know, they're like, looking for patterns. But I also think that's really fun, right? That they're like, looking for patterns, and trying to figure out like, which are their professors are likely to be in on it, and like, you know, willing to try and do that. Ah, I didn't, we didn't do it this year, because, you know, academic, but I'll hit it really hard. Okay, good. Um, the other content thing that I thought I wanted to say about, like, what are students actually going to remember, you know, what's the content that they're going to carry with them, um, especially what I teach intro psych, I have found that it can be very hard to make topics to make it clear how topics are connected to one another. In intro psych, right, it's like, today, we're talking about development. Today, we're talking about intelligence, today, we're talking about psychopathology. And and they can end up feeling like really disjointed, disconnected ideas. And so one of the things that I started doing a few years ago, that I really love, and the students have have taken to also is identifying a couple of themes that persists throughout the course, or a couple of ideas that come up over and over again, um, that, that, that I want them to, like, really understand and be familiar with. And like, no, in their bones. Um, and, and so I'll introduce those themes. On the first day of class, I'll be like, there's five themes. This is what you're going to hear over and over and over again. And then every time I talk about some content that supports that theme, or relates to that theme, I'll like put a little note in in my slides, I like put a little tag in the upper left hand corner, that is like, you know, theme colon, and then whatever the theme is, that they start to, like, notice these these themes in in lots of places. And what often happens is that on the last day of class, when I do an exercise that's like, what do you think you're gonna remember from this class? If you had to summarize this content for you know, someone who's never taken? Who doesn't know anything about this? What would you explain? The students typically just like, tell me the themes back and explain the themes. And, and I love that, because I care so much that they're seeing these like connections between topics, and like understanding the big picture like big ideas, rather than just, you know, spitting back here at the end and stages of development or something. Not that those aren't important, sorry, developmental people. stages are important too. But so so teaching with teaching with themes is another way that I have tried to kind of help guide what I want them to be taking away.

Jonathan Peelle  18:47  
I like that too. Because that also, you know, for those of us who are in a position of having way too much content to, you know, cover everything, you know, I have three things I could talk about, but this one really fits into a particular theme, and the other two don't so much, or whatever, right? It can sort of help guide you to reinforcing a small number of big picture ideas instead of like getting lost in the weeds of period. Just more more facts about about a topic.

Julia Strand  19:16  
Exactly, exactly. It's also just really fun to like, hear him say my words back to me. I mean, not just like, you know, parroting but being like, Well, you know, you're these themes we talked about?

Jonathan Peelle  19:29  
Well, and obviously, you know, what, one of the things they know about memory is that rehearsing it multiple times, and retrieving it yourself is like reinforces your ability to remember it. And so like you've given them lots of rehearsal on these five big ideas or however many you have, and they are more likely to remember it for that reason, in addition to hopefully that they're interesting and relevant and tie a lot of things together and everything.

Julia Strand  19:54  
Yep. Alright, so what we've talked about so far is mostly about like content. Which is really the first thing you think about when you're designing a class. It's like, you know, what are the, to put it crudely and not in the way that we actually think about teaching? Like, what are the facts that I just want to like sausage stuff into the students? Obviously, that's not how we think about it. But you know, like, what's, what's the content? What's the content that they that they need to get? Um, so in addition to stuffing their heads full of facts Why don't I Why did I use that phrase, and I might like my, my tenure, my 10 year perspective, and I was like, what's your teaching philosophy? Just get stuff, the maximum number of heads? Yeah, um, one of the other things that I think about, think about a lot in my teaching one of like, like, meta things, um, is that, ah, I think learning is super fun. And I want to show them why it's fun to learn and how it's fun to learn, and model that, like, enthusiasm and excitement about learning. even, like, long after they have finished the class. So one of the ways that I that I do that is, you know, just by like, being cranked up to 11 on a thews e. Azzam, which is, which is how I tend to be generally,

Jonathan Peelle  21:19  
Shocking

Julia Strand  21:21  
and shocking, who knew? Um, and, you know, just like, when they ask questions that I don't know the answer to, if I'm showing that I am excited. This isn't the kind of thing like if you if you are not a super enthusiastic person, I don't like I don't think you can fake this, I don't think it works well, to fake it. But as it happens, I just, I get super excited about learning stuff. And I, you know, and so and so I show them that, um, one of the one of the lessons that I have learned about teaching that I think is so important for all of us to remember in conversations about teaching, is that there are so many ways to do it well. And, and figuring out how to become a better teacher is, is about figuring out what, what way of teaching which ways of teaching work well for you and are effective for you. When I first started at Carleton, there was an awesome professor in the psych department who was just about to retire. And he was in the cognitive area. And everybody said, you got to go see him teach, he's so great. You know, this is like a great thing for you to like, see, when you're when you're new. And so I went, and I watched him teach, um, and it was awesome. He's a great dynamic, wonderful teacher, um, and many of his teaching techniques included things like it's gonna sound harsher than it was, was, like, yelling and swearing and arguing with students, but like, in a very effective and friendly way that made everybody laugh and like, be really, you know, interested, it made him really engaging. But I could never do that. I'm like, I would be super uncomfortable teaching in that way. And when I first saw that, I was like, Oh, no, is this like what the teaching is? And it's what the teaching was for him. And mine happens to be super different. So if you're hearing me say, I try to model enthusiasm for students by being super enthusiastic. I just want to be clear that like, you don't have to do that. There's plenty of other ways to model that. That's what works for me. Because, because because I am I am, who I am. But so getting them excited about excited about asking questions. And I'm, and one, one of my favorite things that often happens in classes, his students will ask me questions that I don't know the answers to. And even after I've been teaching something for like, a decade, you know, my wonderful students will come up with great questions that I have never thought about before, and are awesome questions. And what I try to do is, I mean, I don't try to what I usually do is gasp and say, Oh, my gosh, I've never thought about that before. That's so fun. Let's think about it together. And then kind of like, talk through what I do know what I'm, you know what, like, if I had to guess these are the things that might contribute. Here's a parallel that I know something about, um, and then I go look it up. And at the start of the next class period, I say, hey, somebody has this great question. Here's what I looked up. And here's what I found out. Or sometimes, I asked on Twitter, because I didn't know the answer. And here's what all of these other people said to me. And I think that that is that that's a really nice way of demonstrating like, it's fun to not know things. And then it's fun to learn about those things. And it's fun to share that stuff too. Because that that's one of the things that I want them to come out of my classes with is just being like, boy, I don't know that. Let's figure that out. How can we how can we, you know, figure out what the answer to that is or what's what are some good ways of thinking about it? and things like that. So that like thinking about being excited about learning stuff, is one of the things that I really want to like a meta thing that I want to foster in my class.

Jonathan Peelle  25:00  
I think that that also ties back into, and that I harp on this point, but like, decide if you have some decisions over what content you're including that this can be really kind of critical, because I found, you know, for me one of my evolution of teaching, I would cut out the topics that I was less enthusiastic about. And I tried to expand the ones that was more enthusiastic. And the goal would be that I'm like, my most enthusiastic the whole semester, instead of like, oh, today, I have to talk about blah, blah, blah. But I'd have to say, I'm a good citizen, I'll try to fake enthusiasm and knowledge. I said, You know what, I'm just not going to talk about that. And I talk for two days about this other topic that we never get to talk about enough or whatever, whatever the thing was. So I like that. And I think, you know, again, whatever. However, that looks for individual teachers, we all have ways we can kind of push people towards that end. And I love modeling, not knowing. And also, if I ever done this, I've done this a couple of times, not often, but I actually think you know, time permitting, like doing some research, while you're sharing your screen is like maybe risky, risky, like probably just because it might be boring, but also just showing people like how do you if you have if you have five minutes to do like some web research, where do you look? What do you search for? How do you like judge the, you know, the likely truth of these different sources, you know, can also be useful? I think, I mean, I take that for granted, like, just go Google it, everyone knows how to Google things. But actually, you know, I think, anyway, those of us who've been doing this for 20 years have picked up some, some knowledge about that, that might be useful.

Julia Strand  26:42  
Yeah, that's, that's really nice. I have never done that, like shit, like, shown them my process for searching for it. But that might be a nice thing to do, like, you know, time and time and circumstances permitting. I have done it where if somebody like asks a question during class, and then they're doing some small group work for a couple of minutes, I'll like quickly go Google it, and then report back. Um, I have also a couple of times when somebody asks a question, and it's like, seems like an easily Google a bowl thing, if I see a student who like has a laptop out, you know, when we're in person, obviously, um, I'll be like, hey, Jonathan, we quick Google that and see if you can find an answer. Um, one time that happened in the student, like, said, they found an answer. And it was an answer that I did not believe. And I was like, um, what website are you on? And he was like, BuzzFeed, and I was like, I'm gonna look that up in some more detail and get back to you next time. But that but that, you know, might be a nice, yeah, like, also like contributing to scientific literacy and evaluating sources and things like that.

Jonathan Peelle  27:43  
One of the things you've talked about before, Julia, although not in a ton of detail, but it's sort of the hidden curriculum that you I think you're very intentional about, about building into your your teaching. And I wonder if you could remind us what what you mean by that?

Julia Strand  27:59  
Yeah, right. So the hidden curriculum is the information that you learn as part of education, but often aren't explicitly taught. And it's one of the places that, that inequities among incoming students can be perpetuated. So for instance, if you, maybe our I'm just going to use these two examples here, like a first gen college student, who went to went to a underfunded public school, versus professors kid who went to a great prep school, and you get to college on the first day, and the professor says, These are my office hours, why don't you do a literature search to find a topic that you're interested in? And then, you know, let's talk next week about what you found. The first student may not know like, what office hours are for or the circumstances under which it's appropriate to go to them? Or how to book an appointment, or how to talk to the professor, once you get there. They may also not know what literature search is or what search engine to use, or what key keywords are, how to use them, or things like that. And so I try to be really explicit, like the portal put a lot of thought into what are what is the information that students need to know to be successful in this class that they don't already know? And how can I make that explicit? So for instance, when I teach intro psych, the first unit that we do is about is about cognition and memory. And the first assignment is to read a review article that describes study techniques, and the way that study what cognitive psychology has shown about what study techniques are effective today, read that paper and then make a plan for studying for the first exam in our class using the recommendations for that from that paper. And there's some other like method stuff that they do with it too. But the idea is that students are supposed to know how to study And they know some things about how to study. But there's a lot of research about the most effective ways to study. And I want everybody who's taking that first exam to have that not just the kids who went to good prep school. So, you know, I'm explicit about teaching people how to study and intro, I'm explicit about what office hours are for and the circumstances under which you use them, and how to book appointments. And if you want to come and talk to me, but you aren't quite sure what to say, or how to do it, here are some prompts to get you started. And the other one that I really emphasize, is about how to ask for help and extensions, and what the circumstances are, that you are likely to be granted those. I have had students I had a student years ago now, say, my friend told me that she got an extension for this assignment. And I got a really bad grade on it, because like, I didn't know that extensions were a thing I thought, if I like didn't turn it in on time, I just wouldn't get any points for it. And so I think being really explicit with students about how to ask for help, and, and, and, and why. And what kind of help is possible to get is a really useful way of, of trying to reduce some of those inequities, I think it's especially nice to build those into your syllabus, right to like explicitly say, I'm just gonna drop your lowest request grades, no questions asked. You don't have to explain it. But for things that are like that are that are bigger and more substantial. And you know, people may need to ask for help. Tell them how to do it. And the way that I frame it is that asking for help is not a sign of weakness, or a sign that you're, you know, not cut out for this or not capable of doing this. But it's a sign that you have good self knowledge and know when you need help. And so it's important to remember that other people are going to ask for help when they need it. And if you don't, you're not being tough, resilient, you're just putting yourself at a disadvantage. I really try to frame it in terms of like, if you ask for help, I'm going to say, I'm proud of you for knowing when you need to ask for help. Let's figure out how to, you know how to make this work.

Jonathan Peelle  32:11  
I think that's good. And I Why do I particularly like trying to be explicit about office hours, because I do think that's something I don't remember when I learned what office hours are for. But I mean, I think it was always a little bit vague, even, you know, even for me, who was kind of comfortable with academic settings. And so I've been trying to be, you know, more explicit about that to both in writing and in the syllabus, but also just in sort of, you know, having a conversation with students early on in the, in the semester about it.

Julia Strand  32:46  
And I think I've seen people talk on Twitter about kind of different approaches to this being being flexible and explicit about expectations. Because I know that like this method I've described, like, if things are tough, you should talk to me, it probably doesn't work. If you have like, 500 students in your class, right? If you have that many students, it's probably necessary to like, figure out ways of just implementing some flexibility as part of the syllabus. So I know some faculty who who say things like, you have two free passes on turning assignments in on time. You don't need to tell them tell me when you're gonna use them. Just, you can turn into things late, and I won't care. Um, but but I think still, like being really being explicit about those is more helpful and democratic across the board.

Jonathan Peelle  33:37  
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think I think we're planning on continuing this discussion next week with more details. And maybe we can also get into some more like, approaches for flexibility. And what's worked well for us, cuz I think that is something I feel pretty strongly about, too. Yeah.

Julia Strand  33:56  
One of one of the other kind of meta things that relates to this, too, is helping students think about. So I mentioned like study skills, but also kind of like, organizational, like, how do you approach big projects, kinds of things. So if I have big projects and classes, um, and we can talk about this more about this next time when we talk about like the nuts and bolts II stuff, but think about like how we scaffold those projects to show them like, first you come up with some ideas, then you write an outline, then you do the following. Because I feel like that that process of scaffolding is also a way of teaching them, hey, next time you have to write a big paper, even if there aren't all of these components along the way. These are some useful you know, sub steps in between I have nothing and I have a 20 page paper. also kind of teaching how to like Break, break project into pieces. And and knowing how to approach really big projects without getting overwhelmed is another one.

Jonathan Peelle  34:56  
I mean, one thing that that strikes me as we talk about all these big picture issues, Is that, for me, it's very easy to start with, you know, content, like I have to cover X number of topics. And then like, and then like, think about the structure so that, you know, flip right into the structure. So like, well, how many exams do we have? And how many quizzes? And how much does everything count for? And like, that's all important. But I think a lot of these, like, you know, what we're calling kind of meta meta aspects of teaching or whatever. I've typically added on after the fact. So I do all the nitty gritty, I get my syllabus, and then a year later, I talk to you and I'm like, Oh, yeah, I actually do care about this thing. And wouldn't it be nice to do a better job with it, but I, I mean, for myself, I feel like the next class that I rework, or teach, or whatever I want to, like, make a list of, you know, make a list of these themes, and some of them, you know, non academic or meta hidden curriculum things first, and then write the syllabus and just like have that in mind. I just seems like it'd be easier, right? I mean, it sounds like that's kind of, you're more towards that end of things.

Julia Strand  36:04  
Yeah, I mean, I feel like that that would be, would be a really nice way to do it. And I think it's really hard to do that stuff. Without thinking about the content. I don't know, I guess, you know, if you're thinking about, like, what are my learning goals for this class? What do I how do I want them to be different? At the end of this class, then at the beginning of it, um, I think some of that you can do before thinking about content. Um, but, uh, but a lot of it, it seems like, it seems like it'd be hard to do really separately. Um, and maybe I'll get better at that, the longer I do it, but I feel like, they often kind of happen happen hand in hand for me?

Jonathan Peelle  36:50  
Well, I think another possibly related point is that, like a lot of things, I think it's really hard to get better at teaching without teaching. So you can think about all this stuff, you know, before you teach your first class, or like, now, as I'm thinking about my next class, but like, at some point, you just have to jump in and do it and kind of like, you know, have the practical lived experience of what works and what doesn't for you as a teacher and things like that. And so, you know, I kind of anyway, I laugh at some of the things that I did my first semester. But in the end, I kind of felt like I had to make those mistakes to feel comfortable with where I ended up. So so for example, having a mixture of multiple choice and short answer questions on the exam, which of course, like, I probably could have just started there. But I worked. I don't even remember all the things I tried that were like, trying to be inventive. And then I just ended up with kind of what people do. But having like, struggled through that myself, like I kind of know why I got there and what I like about it and things like that.

Julia Strand  37:51  
Yeah, yes. I also remember like when I first started teaching, and I, you know, went to the sessions at Carlton's, leaning, learning and teaching center, and they were talking about, like, you know, course goals and all this, like, you know, pedagogical considerations. And I was just kind of in a panic sense of like, No, but I just need to know what I'm going to teach tomorrow. And like, I just got to figure out, we just, I just got to get something on the books, because I need to give them a syllabus. Um, and, and I feel like, you know, every time I teach, I learned how to teach better. Every time I see somebody teach, I learned how to teach better. And it's always a work in progress, right? You never never finish it. And I feel like that's true. Both have individual individual class periods. Like, I never finished a lecture, I just run out of time. And then and then do it, and then make a bunch of notes about how to do it better next time and then run out of time. I mean, I don't mean, like, run out of time, not preparing. I mean, like, I would keep tweaking and changing being like, Who is there a better example, or if I do this differently, I'm forever, both for individual class periods. And like, every time I teach a class, I changed it. And so it's never like, it's never done. And it's one of the things that is both super fun about teaching for me, right? That it's like, always gets to be different. And, and it's really fun to be the captain of your own class and be like, Well, how do I want to make this happen? What are the you know, what are the ways that what are the things I could do to make this better? But it's also somewhat um, you think about like, when you with a research project, you like, just collect the data, write your paper, send it off, paper is now published, it is done? Sure. You might do more work on it, or build on the theory or whatever, but like, you've got like this thing, and you can say this thing is done. But I feel like classes are just, they're just always in flux. They're always changing. And so it doesn't ever have that sense of like, total completion, completeness, but some other things do. I mean, clearly, I like that and I think it's fun, but it's, you know, it's never done.

Jonathan Peelle  39:58  
Right. Is it perfect? pros and cons of that, I think on the one hand, you've can't really rest on your laurels. But on the other hand, it's fun because because it stays kind of new and exciting. And I assume I assume this is not. But anyway, I bet you found this too. But I'd be curious. Every every class has its own, like personality. Right? And I don't know, I don't know why, and especially in a class of 200. How do I get a sense of that? I don't know. But, but the whatever, whatever I did last year doesn't work this year, the same way. The some sometimes they go faster, sometimes they go slower. Sometimes I make the same joke. And every you know, everyone laughed at it last year, this year, no one laughs at it. I don't know. But every every class seems to have its own kind of group dynamic. And so I you know, that's what this is another topic, but I struggled to think about like recording a lecture and then using it every semester. Because because I feel like when I give them live, that doesn't work. It for whatever reason, I just I don't get a good sense of, you know, of things working in the same way. Which is, which is fun, but also means you have to be a little flexible.

Julia Strand  41:08  
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that is that is a really a really striking thing. And I feel like even in years where I haven't changed much, I'm always amazed at how different different the different dynamics classes can be. And maybe it's just the humans in the room. And maybe it is, the time of day, or the classroom or what's going on with the world. Or even if I don't mean to have changed everything, anything like, last time I taught it, it was new, and this time it isn't. And so maybe I'm different or presenting in a different way. But yeah, they're there, they're always different. One thing I really like to do is, I take a picture of each of my classes on on the last day of class, just not not to let students opt out if they don't want to be in it. I tell them, that I'm not going to share it or anything. But I just love to be able to look back and like see all their faces in that room. Because it's such a good reminder for me of like, what that class was like, and you know how that how that term went? Because they are all like, actually different.

Jonathan Peelle  42:17  
Mm hmm. That's cool. I like that. 

Julia Strand  42:21  
I just looked back at pictures of my students previous classes when we were like, all in person together. like humans, they're sitting so close to each other.

Jonathan Peelle  42:31  
Yeah. How are you? How are we doing your class photos in like pandemic times?

Julia Strand  42:35  
I just I do a screenshot zoom.

Jonathan Peelle  42:37  
Yeah. Which actually, for that purpose works pretty well. Everyone and

Julia Strand  42:43  
I know cuz usually I'm like, wait, so it's so your heads being blocked? A little bit. But yeah, I do, actually.

Jonathan Peelle  42:51  
Um, so as we as we think about next time, and we get into some details, you know, this would be a great time for our listeners to send in questions to us because there's lots of stuff we can talk about. What questions or suggestions really, right, we'll take we'll take everything. So you can find a contact form at juiceandsqueeze.net. The show notes for today are at juiceandsqueeze.net/38. And we always love to hear from you. So send us an email. And we've got stickers if you want some juice and squeeze stickers, drop us a line.

Julia Strand  43:25  
And next time we'll talk about some more of the nuts and bolts of teaching.

Jonathan Peelle  43:30  
Yeah, sounds good.

Julia Strand  43:31  
Sounds good.

Jonathan Peelle  43:33  
All right. Thanks, everyone. Bye