Re: tips for teaching? (3 responses)

From: "Frank, Michael" <[email protected]>

hi amanda -

much of my life is devoted to teaching intro to cinema to non-majors for whom this will be their only film course, and perhaps their only humanities course, so i've developed a raft of strategies

i expect, though, that this conversation may not be of interest to the majority of h-Film folks, so I encourage you to contact me off-list [[email protected]] if you'd like to pursue an exchange

good luck

mike

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From: James Ivy <[email protected]>

Hi Amanda and colleagues,
I think that this is a fine discussion to have, not only for younger
teachers, but for those of us who have been doing it for so long that the
technology has changed radically since we began, offering new challenges
and opportunities.

I am not a film scholar, but as a cultural historian I've dipped often into
the history of film for my courses.  I will be teaching, for the first time
in four years, a course on modern American culture.  My students by now
have seen more movies on their laptops than in any other venue.  I don't
spend class time having students read texts of course, but I've always
devoted some time to film clips, even occasionally showing a
complete--early, shorter--feature film.  I always talk about a film clip
before showing it, and I never run a film to the end of class.  That's like
ending a paragraph with a quotation.  You need time for elaboration and
discussion.

In planning my course for the spring semester I wonder if I'm anachronistic
in my thinking that the experience of watching Chaplin's *Modern Times* on
a laptop in a dorm room is so very different than watching it on the screen
in a classroom, sharing the experience with an audience.  I too am curious
what is working for you.
Cheers,
James

James Ivy, Ph.D.
Department of History
Trinity University

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From: Bill Schaffer <[email protected]>

Good question.

I was a tenured lecturer in film studies in both Australia and the UK for over a decade. At the risk of sounding immodest, I came top in student feedback every year amongst dozens of colleagues.

Here's my two cents worth.

1. Lead from the films in question, not from a theoretical stance. I think the tendency to reduce films to mere examples of rarefied theories and ontological poses is the main thing that kills the potential joy of studying film.Not that I am anti-theory (far from it), but you need to address the undergrad students that are sitting in front of you, not an imaginary academic who is watching and checking your references.

If students don't come out of the course loving film MORE than they when they started, you have failed. The motivation for theory should be to explore and deepen that love, not to become an end in itself. Students who want that will do philosophy.

2. Following from the above, try to read from prepared notes as little as possible. As I see it, the role of a humanities academics is to model passion for thinking, not to transfer verifiable knowledge. Personally, I use no notes at all. The only prepared material I take into a two hour lecture is a sequence of clips. As I watch each clip with the class, I am reminded of the points I need to make, but also hopefully see something new, make new connections. That means the students see thinking happen in real-time, and they see it happening in response to the film itself.

3. Resign yourself to doing this for its own sake, because your institution DOES NOT VALUE TEACHING. You can have a stellar career giving soul-deadening lectures all your life, so long as you attract external funding and/or find the right theoretical niche to inflate your publication count.

Sad, but true.
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