Professor Jerry B. Pierce

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Overview

Teaching is an important and vital part of my professional development. Over the last several years I have had the opportunity to improve my effectiveness as a teaching assistant, as an instructor, and now as a professor, while teaching a variety of courses, first in Religious Studies and more recently in History. My classroom experience includes surveys of both Western Civilization and World Religions, the history of Ancient Rome and Greece, the history of Christianity, Religion in Nazi Germany and Medieval Europe. In these courses, my goals include introducing students to a variety of historical perspectives by considering issues of ethnicity, class and gender and also providing them with the necessary analytical skills to interpret the past. In order to reach these teaching goals I believe that the instructor must be actively involved with both the students and the material. The first, and perhaps most obvious, way of achieving these goals is to learn each student’s name, even in the largest of my classes. The apparently simple act of calling a student by their name personalizes the classroom experience and lets the students know that I treat them each as individuals and not mere gradebook statistics. I also encourage face-to-face, individual encounters whether my class has ten students or seventy. From the first day of class, I stress to my students that personal meetings during office hours, as well as communication via email, are essential if they want to get the most of out their educational experience. My students know that I have an “open-door” policy regarding my office, which means that if I am on campus, I am available to discuss any issues or concerns they might have, whether it relates directly to class or not. This interaction allows me to move beyond the rather formal aspects of lecturing and engage the students individually on topics ranging from administrative concerns to argumentation to methodology.

When designing my classes, I begin with the fundamental question of what information and skills students need to learn by the end of the course. I create my courses with three components in mind: material, methods and evaluation.

Material

The first component, material, is the knowledge that I want my students to have about any given period: the historical “facts.” I firmly believe that students must also acquire the analytical skills both to comprehend those facts and also to express that understanding in a clear and meaningful fashion; in short, to become historically literate. To accomplish this goal, I incorporate exercises that develop writing and communication skills, from the fundamental creation of an analytical thesis statement based on a text (for General Education survey courses) to the more comprehensive research paper using historical documents and current scholarship (for upper division History courses).

For survey courses, I focus almost exclusively on the use of primary sources of evidence so that students can create effective historical arguments based on their own original interpretations. I am also constantly revising my reading lists based on student input (both positive and negative) and the effectiveness of various texts for conveying a sense of the past. For example, when I switched from teaching the first half of Western Civilization in the summer (in 3- and 5-week formats) to a full semester course, I decided to use the sixteen weeks of a regular semester to get deeper into the primary sources than the previously-assigned document reader had allowed. Specifically, I used Penguin Custom Editions, which allow instructors to choose from nearly two hundred document selections, to create a course reader that suited my interests and allowed for topical coverage (that is, Icould select relevant readings from ancient Israel and Egypt, the RomanEmpire, the Middle Ages and up through the Renaissance). Moreover, the length of the semester enabled me to assign whole texts for the students to read (The Epic of Gilgamesh, Lysistrata, Beowulf, Dante’s Inferno), which allowed them to get a fuller sense and appreciation of the various ancient cultures. However, I found that the reader and four separate works were a bit overwhelming for a survey course, and have since assigned shorter documents and fewer books. Far from appearing indecisive, I believe that this flexibility demonstrates that I can adapt course requirements to fit both my needs and those of the students. In upper-division and advanced courses, though I still utilize primary sources, I expose students to historiographical issues raised in the secondary literature, familiarizing them with debates, trends and issues in the historical profession.

Methods

The second component of my courses, methods, concerns the manner in which students comprehend the material; to this end I employ a variety of teaching styles, including the traditional lecture, individual and group activities, and a heavy emphasis on discussion and participation. Though I believe that lecturing is important to introduce students to new terms and concepts, I have found that this approach alone often enables passivity on their part. In order to promote a more active learning environment, I create cooperative exercises where the students engage the material first on their own and then in small groups. This method allows them to learn both from me and from each other, encouraging useful problem-solving skills. One successful activity involved dividing the students into various interest groups who then participated in a mock debate. Specifically, the class debated the benefits or costs of promoting or discouraging war between Rome and Carthage, making specific use of the relevant primary documents to support their stance. These discussion activities constitute a significant portion of the final grade (usually around 20%) because I believe that the learning process should not be unidirectional (the professor telling students how and what to think) but interactive (where students can discuss, critically evaluate and even disagree with the material). Sometimes these discussions challenge the historical narrative that some students have come to know. For example, in my Western Civilization 1 class, when we discuss the period of the crusades, I have discovered that many students have (mostly unconsciously) internalized a positive narrative where the western crusaders “liberated” the Holy Land from wicked “infidels.” Yet after reading some troubling accounts of cannibalism and torture committed by the crusaders, the students often reevaluate their views of the “civilized” West. Inevitably, in a post 9/11 world, the students always make comparisons between East/West relations in the Middle Ages and the present day. But rather than tell them what I think, I let students draw their own conclusions about whether these similarities exist, provided they support whatever claims they make with historical evidence. This method also works exceptionally well when discussing potentially contentious issues such as the origins of Christianity or the motivations behind the Atlantic slave trade because it forces students to present historical arguments, rather than mere opinion. Part of my philosophy, then, is to continually encourage students to take an active role in their education by challenging historical assumptions and raising questions that get them beyond a simple mastery of facts, names and dates.

I have also found it extremely beneficial to use a variety of media to present course content: videos, audio selections, slides and photographs, PowerPoint presentations, Web-based documents, and even archaeological artifacts when available. PowerPoint-based lectures have proved extremely useful as a tool for organizing lecture material in a coherent and visually appealing format. For several years I have also made these PowerPoint lectures available to the students on-line after class, in the form of outlines, having learned that posting them before class often fosters intellectual laziness on the part of the students who (mistakenly) believe that the outline is sufficient for comprehension. Other active learning strategies for class projects include an analysis of ancient coins and their relationship to political propaganda, film reviews which discuss the differences between historical “fact” and Hollywood fiction, and hands-on activities where students suit up in the gear of a Roman soldier or sample cuisine from the period under study. Moreover, with the rise of electronic media, I am now able to give my students a virtual tour of Rome through the use of real-time Web-Cams located above the Forum coupled with then-and-now graphic reconstructions of basilicas, temples and palaces or take them through the virtual streets of medieval Paris. All of these approaches are intended to get the students to actively engage the material, because the more they can personally experience a topic, especially those relating to the distant past, the more they can understand, evaluate and learn from that past. My evaluations have consistently praised this multi-faceted approach because it appeals to students from many different backgrounds with many different learning styles and I have found that employing a wide range of teaching methods allows all types of learners (visual, active, passive, performative) to connect with the subject in the manner that best suits them.

Evaluation

The third component of my courses, evaluation, applies to both students and myself. I evaluate my students based on their performance on written exams (which include essays and short-answer identification terms), primary source-based research papers, reading responses (usually a thesis statement supported by a few specific points of evidence) and quizzes. Although I make writing an integral part of every course, initial student papers constantly remind me that I should not expect solid writing skills from my students at the beginning of the semester. To address this issue I have experimented with various writing assignments. In my survey courses, I used to provide a few in-class writing exercises, typically aimed at thesis construction, but then expected students to produce a short, but well-argued, document analysis. I have since modified these writing assignments so that they begin small (with a single document summary), move to an intermediate stage (developing a thesis statement and supporting it with one piece of evidence) and finally culminate with a short paper that addresses multiple themes present in a limited number of primary sources. In all courses, I encourage (and expect) students to turn in successive drafts of their papers, which allows me to assess their progress and also lets them see that critical writing and thinking is an on-going, evolving process of which they are a part.

For my own evaluation, I have students write both an anonymous midterm analysis of teaching and a final evaluation. I find that the cooperative element of teaching is reinforced for students by my use of these evaluations (particularly those at midterm), letting them know that I take their education seriously and that I am committed to creating the best possible learning environment. For me, evaluations help to identify those strategies that have been most successful and also those problem areas where my teaching approach might need improvement or refinement. Some of the success have been in the form of role-playing (having students take sides in a debate over imperialism and neutrality in the Peloponnesian War), which students have repeatedly said was the high point of discussions. One problem area that students noted, especially in the survey courses, was the lack of initial guidance when reading primary sources. To remedy this issue, I now make reading/discussion questions available online that help students navigate the readings. These questions start off very detail-oriented, but gradually progress to more analytical questions that attempt to place the readings in their larger social and historical context. Students have thanked me for posting questions in advance, stating that it helped them understand how to separate potentially overwhelming facts from an in-depth analysis.

Concluding Thoughts

When I think of what it means to be an effective teacher, I think back to the teachers who inspired me. They were the ones who stood out from the rest because they had a drive, an energy and a passion for the subject. Their enthusiasm made me want to learn. They had a teaching style that drew me in and made me feel as if I were witnessing the Spartans defend the mountain pass at Thermopylae, or watching the Black Death ravage Europe, or Joan of Arc defend her beliefs even as she was consigned to the flames. This is the type of enthusiasm I try to bring to the classroom, so that my students can participate in history, even if only vicariously. That is why, as a teacher, the best feeling is when I can step back from the podium and let the students tackle issues among themselves, debate ideas and each other, and arrive at a richer understanding of history. That, to me, is what an effective teacher is and does, and I try to achieve this every time I step through the classroom door.