TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF
We are already in the second week of class for the summer term and the campus is alive with teaching and learning. We are also seeing a good number of students who will begin their academic careers in the fall and their excitement level is very contagious. For those teaching during the summer (and the rest of us on break), I want to encourage you to journal throughout the semester. Critical self-reflection is crucial to any attempt to improve your teaching and add to your toolkit. The academic support staff is hard at work in the Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support and we stand ready to assist you with your teaching and learning needs. If you are looking for some summer reading, I want to recommend Ken Bain's classic What The Best College Teachers Do. Remember to keep calm and be engaged.

THE EFFECT OF FAIRNESS
There was an interesting research study published in the April 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience about how the brain responds to fairness. Using MRI scanners, Dr. Ryuta Akoi's team found that when people are offered the sames choices, they report being happier and their bran scans showed increased activity in the area called ventromedial prefrontal cortex. So how would you apply these findings in your classroom? I immediately thought of the awkward situation when students ask for extra credit work. It was validating to see that the explanation I always use related to the fairness of extra credit work is a good choice. By explaining to your students that your strategy to treat everyone fairly and equally will actually work to your advantage and leaves the student feeling satisfied.

DO YOU KNOW YOUR TEACHING STYLE
Reading a recent column by Dr. Neil Haave about teaching philosophies and how they are usually developed made me think about learning styles. Although there is not a consensus on the matter of learning styles, most educationalists agree that students do use different methods to learn. Dr. Haave pointed out that many of us also teach using the method that we find most useful to our own learning. So it begs the question, do you know your own learning style preference? Have you ever taken one of the many online tests to determine your bias? I encourage you to take that step, especially if you are asking your students to determine how they learn best (and you should be). Learning about learning (or metacognition) should be a learning outcome for everyone's class. Let me know what you discover about yourself.

SHOULD I WEAR SHORTS AND FLIP FLOPS
James Lang's book On Course: A Week-by-week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching is filled with wonderful tips for new and veteran teachers. The BRCC Libary has it available as an ebook which is terrific since access is unlimited. Lang says, "the teaching process starts with the construction of the syllabus, the document that will guide you and your students throughout the course. The process of drafting the syllabus forces you to think about the learning objectives you want to establish for the students in the course, and those objectives should be formulated by answering a simple question: What should students know or be able to do as a result of taking this course? Put more broadly, when students walk out of the final exam, or hand you that final paper, in what ways will you have changed them?" One of the best pieces of advice, in a book filled with nuggets of gold, is to spend the first day of class demonstrating what will happen for the rest of the term. Do not let them go early, or if you do, let it be 10 minutes at the most. Engage them in an active learning experience to set the tone and by all means, have them read and share the class syllabus. Research proves that one of the best ways to learn about something is to teach it. Lang has a great icebreaker in his book that asks the students to "teach" the syllabus. It is really a think-pair-share learning experience. 

WHEN STUDENTS CARE, THEY LEARN
Stanford Erickson, in his book The Essence of Good Teaching, writes that a student's engagement with a subject matter becomes ignited when it is linked to their lives in some way. He says, "students learn what they care about and remember what they understand." This is a great reminder as you approach each learning experience you plan to implement in your course. 

TEACHER EDUCATION
The New York Times reports that up to 25 states are moving toward changing the way they grant licenses to teachers, de-emphasizing tests and written essays in favor of a more demanding approach that requires aspiring teachers to prove themselves through lesson plans, homework assignments and videotaped instruction sessions. The change is an attempt to ensure that those who become teachers not only know education theories, but also can show the ability to lead classrooms and handle students of differing abilities and needs, often amid limited resources.

SHINING EYES
If you haven't heard of Benjamin Zander yet, you are in for a real treat. There are a number of videos on YouTube featuring this inspirational speaker who also happens to be a world-renowned conductor. One of my favorite quotes of his about what teaching is all about comes from his Shining Eyes clip. He says that our job as teachers is "to awaken possibility in other people."