Herrje, where did the time go?

I made it through the first 3 weeks of teaching and besides some early hiccups, it surprisingly has been smooth sailing so far!

The class initially started out with 20 students and after some swaps and drops, I have a stable group of 13 students. I am very pleased with the students, they are curious, disciplined and very smart. Part of me wishes for them to participate more. But then again, the texts we have been reading so far and the way we talked about them „didn’t allow“ for that much engagement yet. (Since the students are new to both philosophy and academic studies, there are so many fundamental basics that they have yet to learn. I’d rather lay a solid foundation with them, even if that means that I have to resort to lecturing most of the time. But I’m very optimistic that once we enter the second part of the seminar in 2 weeks, both instruction and engagement are going to change.)

I am teaching 3 times a week for 50 minutes and so far, the plan has been the following: We read one text per week and on Mondays, I introduce the text and the author, address key moments and locate the work in its historical and intellectual context. On Wednesdays, after the foundation for the text has been laid, I pick out core arguments and concepts of the text and take a closer look at them. This is where students get a little bit more lively and ask mainly about problems they encountered and issues they didn’t understand. Finally on Fridays, we wrap up the text, cover whatever important points we couldn’t address so far and open the class up for discussion, which is encouraged to go bezond the text. My goal for these Discussion Fridays is to tie the topics back to our everyday life. Following my big love and inspiration Socrates, I strive to practice philosophy as a means for examining (and ameliorating) our personal lives.

My biggest challenge in keeping up this tripartite structure has been time. 50 minutes is brutally short. I always have a keynote presentation which often takes a moment to set up. Sometimes I also have to address some preliminary things, or have to catch up on what I couldn’t cover in the previous session, and before you know it, 20 minutes are already gone! With these aspects in mind, I had to figure out quickly how much material is realistic to cover, which meant committing myself to a careful but strict selection process. But I think I finally have a good feeling for this.

So how about teaching and the digital?

As I just mentioned, I always prepare keynote slides for my seminars. This really helps me to structure the classes and remain focused (with only 50 minutes, even small digressions can have a huge impact). My students told me that they are happy about the slides, especially since I always upload them and make them available afterwards. This way, I can more or less „ensure“ that they don’t miss the important points, and they don’t have to worry about writing everything down in class. Instead, they can actively listen and follow along. Of course, this also bears the risk that students use this as an excuse to not pay attention, but then again: you cannot make someone learn, and keeping everybody engaged is more of an ideal to aim for than an actual, consistent reality.

Having the keynote structure and interface also made it easy for me to incorporate Youtube videos, a Tiktok and a couple of philosophy memes (and some more serious pictures as well, of course). I think I will have separate posts in which I discuss my reasoning behind the videos and the Tiktok I chose, but generally, this is what I had in mind:

It is very important to me that my students understand that philosophy is nothing that only happens inside books and university classrooms. It is relevant for, and can be found in, almost all aspects of our lives. So my goal is to take seemingly non-philosophical things and (re)introduce them into philosophical contexts. This way, students get to practice critical thinking and the application of philosophical concepts, and might end up seeing their favorite movie. tv show or a funny Tiktok in a new light.
My first attempt at realizing these considerations was through a Tiktok about a reporter who interviewed Trump supporters. Without openly disagreeing with them, he asked them critical questions that eventually led them to either contradict themselves or simply dismiss the conversation altogether. If this isn’t a perfect modern day illustration of a Socratic dialogue then I don’t know what is!

There is obviously way more room to incorporate digital means. Given that these were my first 3 weeks of teaching on my own, I think it was appropriate to not go overboard and come up with sophisticated ideas and constantly try out new things. Because that can easily go wrong and jeopardize the students‘ learning.

Now that I have more confidence and a better feeling for the class, I can start to try out some new things. Keeping y’all updated!

Until next time,

Noah