Speaker: Allison Lange
Share a piece of advice for a new, adjunct faculty member at Wentworth.
Allison Lange: My advice for a new faculty member at Wentworth when you're planning your classes is to really think about what our students respond to. Um I find our students to be very task oriented. They want to know what the task is, why they are doing it and that they will receive some sort of credit for it. So this has meant that I really focus on giving reading quizzes to kind of give them an opportunity to demonstrate. They've done a reading and give them a grade for it, give them a credit for the work that they've done. And I do find that really helps. So think about kind of what kind of task you can give them that um they see a meaningful result with. And I do find that is um more successful than more abstract um assignments.
Give us your protips for managing conflict in the classroom.
Allison Lange: I teach us history. So the kind of conflicts that I can have in the classroom is conflicting ideas over an interpretation of the past, over how we are experiencing the present, how those historical things might affect our present world. Um And so one of the things I really just encourage students to do is share their opinions, um, share why they have those opinions. And usually that is, is a pretty meaningful conversation. Um, that, that doesn't usually go too much, uh, become too much more of a conflict than that. I think it's really great to have conflicting opinions in the classroom because, um, then students get different perspectives, different ideas. Um, so I think that giving students the place to share them, uh, is a, is a really useful use of your time and energy in the classroom.
Describe any successful strategies for responding to student disruption.
Allison Lange: When I'm dealing with student disruptions in the classroom, it's most often about students perhaps chatting with each other, not related to the class. Um And if I um kind of ask them to, to stop talking so that we can hear, you know, perhaps the presenter um talk, um I try to emphasize that it's a professional, professionality question. I want them to, you know, go into meetings in their future workplaces expecting to be quiet and here um What everyone else is trying to say, sometimes you will find that they do need to be redirected to, you know, what we're actually doing, they missed a page number or something at some point further back and that can be useful as well. Um Usually I find that, you know, a quick, please don't do that or something like that is all it takes. Um But if you do have a larger problem with than that, please do reach out to um administrators. Um The DE I office title nine administrators, et cetera.
Provide some tips for unpacking unexpected assessment results with students.
Allison Lange: One way that I try and ensure that students are prepared for the grades that they get is by honestly preparing them and offering plenty of opportunities in advance um, to, uh, to try and get the grade that they want to get. Um, I offer my students, I teach us history. So a lot of written work, um, the opportunity to show me any assignment, come to my office hours and chat about any assignment they have um, before they submit it. Um I offer significant feedback on rubric so they can see exactly where, um, they earned more points and where they earned not as many points. Um And I also offer a paragraph or so of information kind of additionally allowing them to say if you have questions about this grade, please come to my office hours. Um, and we can talk about it. Um, and usually for the most part, I, I don't have many students asking about that because I give them a significant amount of feedback. So that, that really helps.
