Good morning.
We’re here this morning to talk about The Syllabus.
My plan is to talk at you for about 45 minutes, then we’ll take a break, and then we’ll come back and you will do some work in small groups.
There will be plenty of nuts-and-bolts stuff in this presentation; plenty of how-to.
But before I get on to that, I first want to lay out some PRINCIPLES OF SYLLABUS CONSTRUCTION.
A syllabus is merely a tool, and, like all tools, its use depends on the purpose the user has in mind.
So THE PURPOSE of the syllabus is the first and most important thing to consider, long before we get to the nuts-and-bolts.
What is the purpose of a syllabus?
I want to suggest that there are two main purposes of a syllabus.
The first is that the syllabus makes a PROMISE.
The second is that the syllabus provides both students and teacher with a PLAN.
Both these terms --- promise and plan --- need definition and elaboration
First, “promise".
The syllabus should serve as a contract between you and your students. The syllabus should say to the students
The syllabus should present this information in a way that is
A colleague of mine in the ed school says to her students at the first meeting of the semester that her syllabus is not a guarantee; it is only a guideline. In other words, things could change along the way.
This is one of those interesting issues in teaching where reasonable people can disagree, and she and I do disagree on this. My position is that she has this exactly wrong.
The syllabus should be a guarantee --- a promise.
Why?
The first and most basic reason that the syllabus should make a promise to the students is that it is the kind and humane thing to do.
Students --- and I would think that this is especially true of students in ADEP --- have busy, demanding, multi-faceted lives with a variety of responsibilities, in addition to the responsibilities they have to you for your class
It is the kind and humane thing to do to tell them exactly what they have to do, exactly what the requirements of the assignment are, exactly what price they will pay if they don’t do it, and so on.
This allows them to plan their lives, to figure out how to incorporate the obligations of your class into their already busy lives.
There is a more subtle reason: By making your syllabus a contract between you and the students, you are saying to them, I have planned this carefully and I am proceeding from the assumption that you will plan your participation in this class carefully, too.
Such an approach does not, of course, guarantee that students will be organized and methodical, but it may help.
The objection to this proposal is that we cannot always predict what is going to happen down the road. You may have to be absent; you may discover that the students in the class are more or less advanced than you thought; lectures may take a longer or shorter time than you planned; and so on and so on.
These are all legitimate and appropriate concerns. In fact, they are not mere concerns. Teachers know that these things happen.
Is it possible to make the syllabus a promise, a contract, in the face of these organizing difficulties?
I believe it is, and the key to doing so is the PLAN.
I am going to suggest that a good plan will allow you both to make a promise and to be flexible in the face of organizational disruption.
What is a plan?
“Plan” is one of those words that we use all the time, in a variety of ways, and we have different meanings for it depending on the context.
What is a “plan” in this context?
First, a word of two about what is not a plan.
Plowing through the textbook one chapter after another is not a plan
Sitting down with your textbook and saying, “Ah, ha! Sixteen weeks, sixteen chapters. That takes care of that.” is not a plan.
Even worse is picking out the three chapters that you really care about and spending all your time on them. That also is not a plan.
A plan requires a purpose. Simply put, you ask yourself, What do I want to accomplish in this class, and how should I go about that?
Again, “I want to get through the textbook” is not a good answer.
Answering the question, What do I want to accomplish requires
Careful thought:
Precise definition:
Imaginative organization:
We’re almost through with the conceptual part; soon we’ll move on to the nuts-and-bolts.
But before we do, let’s look at the three elements of defining a purpose for the course again, this time in reverse order.
Notice that in order to organize imaginatively, you must have defined the goals of the course; and to have defined the goals of the course, you must have defined the purpose of the course.
This is hard work, and it requires that we do something that we don’t do very often. It requires that we stop being busy, stop, and reflect.
In the world of teacher preparation, we talk about “reflection” all the time, but teachers are among the busiest people in life and have very little time to reflect. So I’m afraid the reality is that we pay lip-service to the notion of reflection, but we don’t really value it very much.
But I want to say to you this morning that the time you take to sit quietly and think about your course could be the most valuable time you spend on it the whole semester.
Ask yourself
Can such a process help you make a promise to your students and also be flexible?
Yes.
How?
First, going through this reflective exercise forces you to decide on what is most important, what is less important, and what is not important at all. In other words, it helps you edit the material for your own purposes.
That means that there is less material to go through and, more important, the material you have chosen is focused. Everything is aimed at achieving the clear, specific, precise purpose.
It also means that the material for any particular class presentation is not discrete, it is part of an organic whole, part of a flow. This means that if modifications are necessary along the way, they are more easily made
But the most important benefit of this process is that it forces you to be realistic.
Realistic about who your students are, what their interests are, what their backgrounds are, what their needs are.
Syllabi do not exist in a vacuum; they do not exist outside of context. And the most important element of that context is the nature of the students --- their intelligence, their motivation, their background in the subject, their interest in the subject, and so on
This was the first question I suggested you ask under “careful thought”: Who are my students?
The purpose of the course should be appropriate to the students; the goals of the course should be appropriate to the students; the amount and kind of reading and writing you assign to them should be appropriate to the students.
All of this is part of the plan.
If you will define purpose and goals in light of a full and rich understanding of who your students are, you can write a syllabus that will not have to be changed as you go along.
So writing a syllabus that makes a promise and presents a plan encourages both teaching and learning.
It encourages teaching by
It encourages learning by