Health and Psychology

I've been teaching for a long time.  I was learning disabled, spastic, and gifted, (advanced placement math, a history of needing speech, adaptive PE, and not able to spell anything) so that meant I was bored out of my mind in elementary school.  In junior high (what people now refer to as middle school) I spent my class time drawing or doodling, occasionally looking up to provide the correct answer then went back to what I liked. One teacher suggested that I work with other students and teach them how to read and how to do math.  So I started teaching at 13.

The first thing I did was to change everything so it wouldn't be boring.  Why in the world would anyone deliberately want to make education a boring process of repetitive facts, rote learning, drills, and mindless recitation?  It's mind-numbing.  And the reading texts were not only repetitive, but uninteresting.  "See Jane.  See DIck.  See Jane and Dick.  Here's Jane's mother."  Not exactly on the New York Times best seller list. So I started by asking the students, my age, what it was they wanted to read and brought it in.  So my lesson plans included comic books, books on cars and automotive design, books on war, books on fashion, romance novels, anything they wanted to read.  My math lessons started with fractions.  It started there because everyone in my 7th grade had to take a cooking class.  So learning fractions was useful and necessary.

Now I teach college and graduate school.  Complex subjects like dissertation writing, psychological and neuropsychological testing and testing theory, and foundation courses like introduction to psychology, group dynamics and those things.  Students routinely tell me I teach differently than other instructors, professors, faculty members.  I've been teaching like this since I was 13.  So when I teach psychological testing I bring in toys and have the students get in groups and use toys or anything they can think of to devise a psychological test.  Three questions, three levels of difficulty.  Figure out what it is you want to measure in cortical functioning, use anything you want to help you, (reading, spelling and math or other academic subjects are not allowed), work with anyone you want, test it out on another group, revise it, and then show it to the class.  Welcome to psychological testing.  

The big difference between my course and other professors' courses is that I routinely get drop in students.  "Someone told me about your class, can I sit in?"  Yep.  The other thing that happens in my psychological testing course is that people want to do testing when they are licensed.  For a lot of psychologists psychological testing is boring, repetitive, monotonous work, that becomes drone like.  But it's not that for me.  So I don't teach it like that.  I teach it like I actually like the subject and I get to share with other people why I like it.

But to teach like that, and to get engaged students, you actually have to include them in course design and objectives.  "What do you want to learn from this course? Why? How do you want to learn it?"  Yes I get the course text provided by the institution in most cases, in some cases all the lesson plans are prewritten for me. But even then, I have some ability to make the course mine and to have students make it theirs.  So I get to ask them the same question I start with:  "How can I make this MY course?  How can I make this meaningful?  How can I make it something someone would actually want to sit through for anywhere from 2 to 8 hours  of instruction time?"   

The other thing I notice is that I like work.  A lot.  I go to work when I don't have to be there.  Whether it's my office, or a school where I teach, I like the places.  If I don't like the places I stop teaching there, turn in my key cards and wonder about how they ever got accredited or why I thought I would like them in the first place.  Sometimes it's problems with the required textbook, sometimes it's the scope of material to be covered in 10-16 weeks.  Sometimes it's the lack of preparation time I have to prepare for a class.  "Can you teach Psychological Testing it starts Tuesday" is not how to have instructors able to put a course together.  Not a course anyone would really want to attend.

For the first time in ages I now have some drop in faculty, not just students.  Really cool.  We can chat about their courses, my courses, and what we are doing that can make them better.  Why isn't this happening more?  There are a lot of courses I'd love to sit in and attend.  Not for credit.  Just to be part of the experience.  

Feel free to contact me at DonohueMA1@me.com if you want to talk about teaching.  I'm putting together an article.