In Harvard Educational Review, 69 #4, Winter 1999, pp.447-455.

ON BECOMING A TEACHER OF TEACHERS

By Robert H. Bell

In 1994, the president and dean of faculty of Williams College urged me to devise a program for new faculty, with full institutional support, including a budget. After twenty-two years of teaching English literature, I was appointed the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English, designated for an effective teacher with particular interest in furthering the quality and effectiveness of teaching. Yet despite my confidence and enthusiasm as a teacher of undergraduates, I was unsure how or what to teach teachers. I had rarely contemplated pedagogy beyond the immediate challenges of teaching Shakespeare, Joyce, Austen, Milton, Yeats, and "my" other authors. At a selective liberal arts college renowned for its teaching I feared that advocating for teaching would be like carrying coals to Newcastle. I worried about expounding the obvious or pontificating platitudes. Though I don't believe there is any single way to teach, and authoritative prescriptions are not my style, I was wary of seeming to present myself as a role model or guru, or of appearing to be the patriarchal proprietor of "the Williams way to teach." My own teaching is intuitive not systematic, pragmatic not dogmatic, and conducted with a skepticism that I hope never to shed. I knew I wanted to help assistant professors become better teachers, but I frankly did not know how to do that.

Once I began asking around, it was amazing to discover that my own experiences as a beginning teacher no longer seemed to be typical. At the age of twenty-six, I had joined the Williams English Department, which was dedicated to orienting and training young teachers. Several of my senior colleagues in 1972 were eager mentors: they visited my classes, edited my essays, prodded, reprimanded, exhorted, corrected, and civilized the energetic, bumptious newcomer. It was clear to me that, however trying my apprenticeship, my senior colleagues cared about my progress and fate. Above all, we were joined by an over-riding commitment to undergraduate teaching. Everybody taught the staff course, English 101, and met weekly to plan the syllabus, devise assignments, compare grading practices, and debate tactics for teaching Frost's "Design" or Shakespeare's Henry IV. From these departmental discussions I learned the nature of our enterprise, the expectations and shared problems at a liberal arts institution. My department had formal visitations, in which senior and junior professors exchanged classroom visits and, supposedly, helpful advice. I always found the term "visitation" suspiciously inflated--as if divinely ordained, tenured angels were descending upon hapless, mortal, junior faculty. Still, not even the innocent, untenured, and put-upon junior faculty could doubt the active involvement of their senior colleagues with the business of teaching teachers.

Senior faculty now appear less willing or able to be mentors to their young colleagues than they were when I began at Williams. A new teacher may never be invited to sit down for a meal or coffee with a full professor. While my own cohort had a skeptical wariness about institutions and a queasiness about authority that made us harder to "socialize" than teachers who had come of age in the 50s or early 60s, skepticism definitely increased in subsequent years. By the mid 1970s, new Ph.D.'s were arriving not merely apprehensive but deeply suspicious of authoritarian structures. With increasing frequency, young faculty were substantially different from their senior colleagues, in gender, race, religion, training, or background and upbringing. Always problematic, often dicey, mentoring became more charged and sometimes even adversative. Suspecting that they were regarded as retrograde, some senior professors prudently retreated; reluctant to intervene, many abandoned their responsibility to teach younger teachers. Essentially, this dynamic interrupted the traditions of mentoring, and as those junior faculty moved to more senior positions, they in turn abdicated their responsibility for training and supporting the new junior faculty. This happened at institutions across the country, not just my own.

My efforts to create a program in teacher training and a role for myself as mentor were various. I read a lot of the literature of pedagogy. I attended conferences sponsored by the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) and the Professional Organization and Development (POD), where I met people dedicated to the culture of teaching and I heard Lee Shulman of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching lament that newly hired faculty must often make an instant conversion from expert learner to novice teacher. In subsequent conversations with assistant professors at Williams College, to find out what they thought they needed and could use, I found Shulman's concerns to be well-founded: surprisingly few of our sterling appointees had received much training as teachers. "I never took a class on teaching in grad school," one political scientist told me. "There weren't any. Occasionally there was a workshop, embarrassing discussions about sexism or something, where everyone agreed about the problem, and little practical advice was offered except of an insulting nature, like 'don't let the boys interrupt the girls.' "

My conversations with young colleagues also taught me, before I quite realized it, that the process of discussing teaching might be as important as the curriculum or course content. Building, fostering, sustaining a community of teachers and a culture of teaching are both means to multiple ends--and invaluable ends in themselves. After this modest revelation, I began to fret less about a syllabus or reading list on pedagogy and to think more about the process of collegial discussion.

New Williams faculty responded enthusiastically to the prospect of having a time and place where they could talk about common problems and goals. Some felt inadequately mentored and others felt positively neglected, left to sink or swim without much guidance from or connection with experienced colleagues. Far from resenting my potentially patriarchal intervention, new faculty seemed eager for assistance. Confident that I had at least identified a genuine need, I launched the Project for Effective Teaching (PET). PET has now operated for five years, during which time it has grown, changed and acquired a life of its own. The PET program has three distinct but related components-- pedagogic, social, and individual.

The heart of the program is the regular lunch meetings devoted to pedagogy, which encourage first, second, and third-year faculty to discuss teaching and learning issues with a sympathetic, enthusiastic veteran, and, far more importantly, with each other. Our lunches at the faculty club are completely optional and deliberately informal. My budget pays for the meals, and participants are free to arrive and depart without ceremony for the inevitable classes, labs, and appointments. Topics are suggested and agreed upon by the participants, and I or someone else briefly introduces the day's issue.

Lunch discussions provide a confidential venue for new faculty not only to share their classroom triumphs and good ideas, but also to ask questions, air their concerns, voice their anxieties. I suspect that many of these issues are common to all beginning teachers, not just young academics at Williams. For instance, we talk about authority in the classroom, and how to assert or at least impersonate it. We describe egregious errors (especially our own). Simply admitting missteps can be cathartic and educational--especially if soothed by some communal laughter and followed by consideration of why they happened and how they might be avoided or handled in the future. Such discussions help to transform lingering humiliation into budding knowledge and power.

Teachers' mistakes are sometimes obvious: the mathematician who lectures to his blackboard or the historian who hides behind obfuscating jargon. But problems may also be more complicated. A chemist feels totally poised in small groups and in laboratories, but anxious in that large pre-med class. Occasionally he makes a mistake transcribing an equation or calculating the arithmetic, and he worries that such flubs undermine his credibility. When I suggest that he make a joke, he registers surprise: "I never thought of that." Then we try out some sample patter, and I remind him it needn't be Wildean wit to do the trick. What about an unexpected question to which the prof doesn't have a ready answer? I cite a distinguished medievalist who responded to a student's question, "I don't know. That's beyond my competence. But I'd like to learn the answer."

Anyone who's been in as many classes as I have is bound to have seen some excellent teaching. Using lessons learned from others, I offer practical advice; for example, I describe my favorite college professor, Peter Bien of Dartmouth, announcing with delight, "You know, I actually get paid to do this!" I conjure the example of my revered senior colleague Larry Graver, who intersperses brilliant analyses of complex literary texts with self-reflexive commentary: "Notice what I'm doing here is to subject Lawrence to the kind of inquiry I made of Hardy . . ." or "You see the method here: we're considering how Eliot's language shapes particular emotional responses . . ." Don't just teach the material, I reiterate; guide the students, teach them what you're teaching them, and explain why it's important. Such teaching, self-conscious in the best sense, articulates the rationale for particular details and (harder to attain) clarifies the larger structure of our course: why, for example, other than chronology, are we moving from one text to another?

Lucidity, commitment, and enthusiasm are placed at center stage during our discussions, as are the importance of clarity and the efficacy of summarizing the issues in question at the beginning and end of a class. "But I always run out of time at the end of class!" laments an anthropology professor. "Sure, but then come back next time and give a brief mini-lecture: here's what we investigated last time, here are the issues that emerged, here are some ways we considered the problems, and here's where I want to turn today. . ."

Often my role is that of a facilitator, as participants address and attempt to resolve one another's problems. A new religion professor four weeks into her first semester wonders why her students aren't inspired by her course's exciting theoretical material and worries that her discussion class is already a lost cause. Her PET colleagues pepper her for details about the time, size, subject and goals of her course. Then they begin to make suggestions, occasionally whimsical ("Bring them donuts!") but genuinely solicitous, some of it highly specific: "Try moving the chairs around and seating yourself somewhere different." "What about sending the members of the seminar particular e-mail questions for consideration next class?" Or, "How about assigning three students to work together as a team responsible for an introductory report on the reading?" "Yeah, but make the assignment specific--give them a passage or even a particular paragraph to analyze." A second-year psychology professor asks, "Do you have a sense of what kinds of things leave them clueless or bored? Maybe you could try the one-minute feedback. Ask them at the end of class to write an anonymous one minute response to two questions: what was the fuzziest idea in today's class and what was the most intriguing?"

In addition to our regular discussions of pedagogy, PET also sponsors occasional faculty development events, such as bringing outside speakers to campus. We've had a weekend symposium on teaching and technology, a Saturday workshop on race and gender in the classroom, and a book day with editors, agents and publishers conducting a panel discussion and meeting individually with untenured faculty. We often invite colleagues on campus to contemplate particular issues, such as special needs students, sexual harassment, college and community service, etc.

While the regular lunch discussions usually usually highlight nuts-and-bolts considerations for teachers in the classroom, the special events focus on larger issues in our academic lives. It is here, indirectly but persistently, that I hope to extend faith and deepen joy in our vocation and to contemplate the nature and purpose of liberal arts education. As Donald Kennedy stresses, "The faculty member's understanding of his or her academic responsibilities is not prescribed by contract or institutional rule . . . . It is, rather, part of an inherited culture, and the route of transmission is thus of vital importance."

Our PET conversations aim to encourage and support as well as instruct. After all, good teaching always does both. The subjects for consideration need not be grandiose; neither I nor anyone else delivers prescriptions or sound bites. Discussions are usually concrete, practical, and focused on immediate problems that teachers confront daily. As Kenneth Eble writes, "A teacher's confidence grows most by minding the rivets, by mastering the simple, identifiable particulars of a teacher's preparation and performance." Participants learn and take heart from other people's insights and experiences. It's a group process that most participants find useful.

Some questions seem to recur more frequently and more insistently than others, for example, the nature of our authority. Younger teachers, sometimes only a few years older than their students, are naturally eager to seem cool and attractive but they also need to appear professional and authoritative. Sometimes these imperatives may compete or play themselves out in strange, troubling, and unanticipated ways. While it's merely human to want and need students to like us, in this era of course evaluations and consumer power, teachers often feel they must command not only attention and respect but affection as well. In such discussions I tell them that worrying less about one's image and concentrating more on one's subject is both a nobler intellectual vocation and a more effective pedagogical strategy. Of course, I still hope my students like me, but if I'm a fool for love, it's for love of Shakespeare, Austen, Joyce, and the blessed books we're studying. One math professor told me that the best advice she got from PET was to "Embrace Your Geekhood!"

Whenever we discuss authority in the classroom, gender always lurks as a tacit but potentially important element. Doris, an economist, describes a 101 class, conducted in the Socratic method. "A freshman asked me a basic question I could answer in my sleep. And I said, 'Gee, Matthew, that's a good question. Erin, how would you answer Matthew's question?' A month later on the course evaluations, Matthew wrote, 'It's kind of a bummer when your professor doesn't know the answer and has to ask another student.' " Doris, cheered by the reactions of her PET peers, comments spiritedly, "I'm a Ph.Blipping D. I could talk rings around that kid." Then, referring to a distinguished and imposing senior colleague in her department, she adds, "I bet Hudson 6-foot, 4-inch Raymond doesn't get that kind of crap on course evaluations!" Interestingly, though more than half of the PET participants are female, gender has figured less prominently or frequently than I expected. The young women faculty with whom I work only rarely foreground gender. Perhaps they feel that gender already receives enough consideration; perhaps they don't feel especially burdened, nor wish to appear over-concerned; or perhaps a senior male mentor isn't the ideal interlocutor.

We come back to other perennial issues that are raised and discussed in departmental halls everywhere: for example, to what extent do teachers have to keep the customers satisfied, make them happy, entertain as well as enlighten? No two people are going to agree on the line between charisma and showmanship, or showing off and showing forth. But we know more and feel better for trying to sort out even the most unanswerable questions. People disagree, sometimes pointedly. Once I showed a film produced by the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, "The Art of Discussion Leading: A Class with Chris Christensen." Samantha, the theater professor, noticed Christensen's extraordinary body language, his kindly, receptive tone, his constantly reaching and embracing gestures. He individually greets and personally introduces himself to every person entering his classroom; sitting in a chair, he seems to move all over the room. Professor Christensen doesn't merely make intensive eye contact with his particular interlocutor; he is also looking around, seeking indications from other students of things to use and places to go next.

Rosanna, a Chicana literature teacher, loved Professor Christensen's avuncular, courtly warmth. But Alex, a tough-minded physicist, objected strongly. "It's bogus. He's talking with a group of TA's who have voluntarily come to discuss and improve their teaching; that's a piece of cake compared to introducing physics to sleepy freshmen! He's like Santa Claus, dispensing little goodies to everybody! And whatever anybody says is just fine. No errors, no misconceptions. My students get things wrong all the time. I can't be all warm and fuzzy. He's Dr. Feelgood and I'm a Science Guy." Rosanna wondered how many students might be turned off by Science Guy's high road and difficult terrain. How does a teacher figure out how vigorously to pressure students? I confess to the group that after twenty-five years I still wrestle, every day, with the tension between kindly encouragement and challenging inquiry. Teachers' imaginary thermostats are always ideally set at 68 degrees, but for some students that will be too hot or too cold.

Rather than providing absolute prescriptions, I usually stress the importance of authenticity, of finding and developing one's own teaching voice. Good teaching at any level inevitably involves an ongoing process of testing and revision and self-examination, balancing many competing imperatives: how much pain and how much pleasure should intellectual inquiry entail? Should I tout or interrogate my texts? In a narrow sense a teacher is selling a product--Shakespeare, quantum mechanics, Stravinsky--but in a deeper sense we bear witness to the capacity of our subjects and disciplines to provide a lens for framing and perceiving the world. To a degree, students take teachers' cues about the value of the material. David, the chemist, objects. Does that mean we have to be salesmen or entertainers? Doesn't this pander to rampant consumerism? And isn't clarity overrated? Rigorously lucid presentations may neglect the subtleties of truth. And so we plunge headfirst into the cultural and social issues that we teachers face daily, but too rarely discuss, unless a specific time and place are provided for it.

Teaching and talking about teaching is also fun, and I believe in fun. The PET program is partly but unabashedly social. If the main purpose of PET is to be useful to new teachers, another high priority is to promote collegiality, camaraderie, and community. New teachers, working very hard, may be painfully isolated, and institutions, however benevolent, rarely do enough to plant and nourish them. Young teachers coming to any new institution surely want friends and connections both in and outside of their departments. Through shared concerns and PET gatherings, young teachers connect and help each other: after meeting in PET, a Geo-scientist and a psychologist strike a friendship and team-teach a new course.

The social component of the PET program is crucial. Of course the lunches give us a chance to meet colleagues outside of our own departments and to make friends. Beginning and end-of-year dinner parties enhance the pleasure of being part of such a vibrant and talented group of people, enable friendships and closer relationships, and (no small factor in our small town) welcome faculty partners to the festivities. We have also produced a "survivor's guide" to help orient newcomers with pointers about everything from prenatal clinics to burial privileges. We've employed an e-mail listserve, and will soon create a web site. I'm actively looking for anything which builds and nourishes our "community of learning."

Hospitality and congeniality also help make possible the third element in the PET project, individual advising or "mentoring." I invite new faculty to lunch with me individually; I see them at special events and at social occasions. If and when these young teachers need particular advice, they have someone to whom they can turn. Untenured faculty may seek me out for individual advice about particular problems they face, whether it be difficulties in the classroom, anxiety over evaluation and promotion, thorny relationships with other members of their department, or even more personal matters.

I have found this new role a challenging and exciting one. A mentor must devote the time, energy, and consideration to develop both individual and communal or group relationships, to inspire trust. Strict confidentiality is vital. As head of the PET project I am not eligible for election to the Committee on Appointments and Promotions, nor do I ever report to department chairs or the dean of faculty. As a mentor I've edited applications for grants and vetted letters to chairs and deans protesting grievances or requesting consideration. Assistant professors have asked for help in coping with ornery senior colleagues. A new mother came to me for advice after her department chair suggested that she delay her tenure decision; she doesn't want to--her apprenticeship has gone on too long already! A second-year assistant professor who'd prefer to stay here receives a terrific job offer from an Ivy League institution: how, he wonders, should he proceed and what things might he reasonably request? While most of my energy has been devoted to working with the whole group, I'm doing more and more individual consultations about career dilemmas, departmental difficulties, and particular problems in the classroom.

Addressing the individual concerns of PET participants may entail visiting their classrooms. I've visited several classes and analyzed videotapes of teachers at work. A young professor naturally feels more comfortable discussing particular concerns with a senior colleague who will not be assessing his or her performance in a tenure decision. A sociologist teaching at an early hour worries about the low energy in her large class. It is certainly a tough assignment. I visit her class and I see a very lively, engaging teacher who continually disappears into the shadows while showing the slides she's meticulously prepared. I suggest perhaps she should use fewer slides, with less sleep-beckoning darkness; or perhaps she could move around more than she does, not only back and forth across the floor, but up and down the aisles toward her students. OK, she agrees, but she likes using slides because they help structure and prompt her lecture. We discuss another trade-off: yielding some professorial command for more student engagement. I urge her to set aside her notes and listen more often to the students.

Teaching is part art, part technique, and part personality and character. Parker Palmer does well to remind us that we teach what we are. Teachers can and must call upon upon personal qualities and private resources, to reach, touch, encourage, inspire. Yet teachers can also learn better how to proceed, how to evaluate their own effectiveness, how to make changes. I've learned that teaching teachers is as least as problematic as teaching students. I'm not confident that I aptly distinguish pedagogical and personal problems in discussions of teaching, or that anyone can. I do know that for all its perils and disappointments, I love this aspect of my work and find it infinitely fascinating. I'm engaged with new faculty not as guru but as a mentor: to listen, to advise, encourage, and help teachers. Working with some of the most gifted, idealistic, and committed young men and women imaginable, I regularly experience the double pleasure of teaching and learning. I never thought I could love any work more than teaching Williams students; now, it seems to me, the only comparable gratification is teaching their teachers.

Thanks to Wendy Raymond, Ilona Bell, Suzanne Graver, Susan Engel, Ronadh Cox, Lesley Nye, and Matt Hartley for their critiques of and suggestions for this essay.