Teachers Get Happy Faces : UCI Class Spurs Fresh Approach in Teaching Style

A press conference was staged recently in the Dana Hills High School social studies classroom of teacher Ronald Buchheim. The date was July 5, 1776. There were reporters from London, Paris, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Richmond. The politicians being interviewed were named Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Subject: a document signed the day before called the American Declaration of Independence.

The exchanges were tough. The reporters had to know enough about the issues to ask pointed questions, and Jefferson and Franklin frequently had to defend themselves. It was a good show for the observers, too. They were all students--reporters, observers and Founding Fathers. And they were all participants in a learning process that sent them from the classroom knowing a great deal more about the dynamics behind the beginnings of this country than they probably would have learned from reading or the most eloquent of lectures.

Buchheim was telling some of his fellow Orange County teachers about his classroom press conference a few weeks ago, and they were listening and taking notes before sharing some of their own experiences. The setting was a large conference room at UCI. The occasion was a convocation of the graduates of the second annual summer session of UCI’s National Endowment for the Humanities Institute. And the prevailing feeling in this group of 60 mostly Orange County high school teachers was a melding of excitement, enthusiasm and creative energy.

There was Monty Armstrong from Cerritos High talking about the advantages of group teaching to catch the kids who “slide through the cracks.” There was Eileen Springer from Foothill High deprecating “little educational modules that move around within a school.” And Cheryl Swarner of Anaheim High standing up for the remedial readers “who can understand world problems, too, and don’t have to be treated simplistically just because they can’t read very well yet.”

Feeling of Accomplishment

Watching, dipping in and out, and feeling very good about what they had wrought were UCI teachers Tom Wilson and Richard Regosin, who set all this energy in motion two years ago. Wilson is UCI’s director of Instructional Development Services, and Regosin is a professor of French literature and former faculty chairman of the School of Humanities. Three years ago, both of them taught UCI’s Humanities Core Course (Regosin was also the director), designed to improve new students’ competence in English and introduce them to multi-disciplinary studies in literature, history and philosophy.

Both Regosin and Wilson were appalled to realize that their freshman students were “inadequately prepared to examine the material put before them analytically and critically, to determine its historical significance, to make reasoned aesthetic or moral judgments about it. They also lacked sophistication in their awareness of the uses of language.”

What to do?

To Regosin and Wilson, the logical starting point had to be at the high school level. Wilson said:”We thought that if we could help high school teachers think continually and creatively about their own subject matter and how they teach it, their students might be better prepared.”

They were also concerned--as Regosin explained--that high schools “were addressing the literacy crisis through a narrowly defined return to basics that sacrificed humanistic concerns.” So the two UCI instructors designed a program “to help secondary teachers understand and apply in their teaching the modes of thought and analysis employed in the humanistic disciplines.” Regosin put it this way: “We wanted to help teachers to generate thoughtful discussion, not just tell students facts they should be memorizing.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities liked the idea and agreed to fund it for three years. Regosin and Wilson were off and running.

Message to Schools

Calling their creation the NEH Institute, the two took their message to Orange County high schools, where they recruited 50 teachers--mostly in English and the social sciences--for their first class, taught in the summer of 1984. Last summer, more students than they could take sought them out. And next year--the final session of the pilot program when the group will include some math and physical science teachers--Wilson and Regosin expect demand to exceed supply by an even greater margin as the word gets around among high school teachers who have observed their NEH peers in action.

What word?

All of the NEH teachers interviewed by a Times reporter agreed that the benefits of the institute break down into two very distinct phases: (1) the knowledge and inspiration teachers gain from listening to experts from a variety of disciplines in the humanities, and (2) a revival of creative energy growing out of an increased sense of professional self-respect and a rekindling of enthusiasm for the craft of teaching. One NEH student recognized this in an anonymous post-graduate evaluation of the class when he wrote: “I felt misunderstood at my school, and it made a great deal of difference to me to experience the mutual respect and admiration that was so rich a part of the NEH. I feel very fortunate. I got to clean out the cobwebs. I can think!”

Wrote another: “I am excited about the new ideas introduced to me. I was presented options and alternatives in teaching styles, and I want to spend the next month doing more research, reading some of the books discussed in class, and reflecting on the institute.”

Basically the NEH program is divided into three parts: a one-day pre-institute conference; a five-week summer program (for which the students are paid $125 per week from NEH funds) involving 82 hours of class time; and, finally, 10 meetings spaced throughout the following year in which the NEH students get together to be briefed on new information and share their classroom innovations and experiences. (It was one of these sessions that a Times reporter attended.)

During the five-week summer institute, student-teachers hear from experts--mostly members of the UCI faculty--in history, philosophy, ethics, literature, writing, language and its meaning, and the fine arts. Lectures are followed by spirited give-and-take discussions with the experts, then similar sessions within smaller groups of NEH students. The result, says San Clemente English teacher Ruth Geis, is “to send us back to work feeling 10 feet tall. Few people understand how much intellectual strength is needed by high school teachers. We are trying to teach material comparable in difficulty to the college level to students who have not yet learned academic discipline. The NEH provided academic giants as speakers who gave us respect and recognition--both mighty gifts to carry back to our classrooms.”

Enthusiasm Projected

This enthusiasm has been projected in Orange County high schools in a variety of innovative ways. For example:

- Kathy Brown of San Clemente High makes a contract with each of her students that carries a value of 50 points per week; how well the student carries out his or her contract commitments makes up half the student’s semester grade.

- Cerritos High School English teacher Janet Steger splits her English literature class into panels that sit in the front of the room and take turns leading discussions by posing questions of ethics and interpretation about the works being considered. Steger said: “Right now I’m asking a lot of the questions, but we’re working toward the students doing all the asking. The pressure is on the panel--not me--to break the silences.”

- Another English teacher, whose identity was lost in the burst of enthusiastic comments from the group, feels strongly that “learning must be generated by the students themselves” and to that end seats her class in a circle with five students sitting in the center of the circle, along with one empty chair. The students in the center generate themes to be discussed, and the empty chair can be occupied by anyone in the class who feels moved to take issue with the panel or wants to underscore a point;

- English teacher Conie Raub of Dana Hills High came up with the idea of organizing a schoolwide Renaissance Fair as a means of teaching her literature students the culture of that period. It was so successful that it taught all the students--plus a sizable number of community residents.

Some of the activities generated by the NEH graduates involve administration and faculty as well as students. For example:

- Betty Gibson of West High in Torrance (one of the few NEH students from outside Orange County) asked her fellow faculty members to list the moral dilemmas facing teachers today. The response, dealing mainly with teaching ethics, was so widespread and enthusiastic that it has already been the subject of several faculty meetings and has opened up a dialogue that promises to provide a communication link among teachers for a long time to come.

- Jim Utt, Bill Bailey and Jean Jerome of El Toro High are trying to initiate a regular teachers’ panel discussion--similar to those at NEH--in their own school that would be open to students to attend. “We want the students to see teachers discussing issues and interacting,” said Utt. “There’s not much enthusiasm for the idea right now, but we intend to keep after it.”

- Irvine High School English teacher Judy Teverbaugh rounded up 300 letters from her school to send Gov. George Deukmejian in support of the state Legislature’s Hart bill, which would have limited class sizes in public schools. The letters didn’t help; Deukmejian still vetoed the bill. But, Teverbaugh said: “I’ve been apolitical all my life, but since the Institute, I’m vitally concerned with power and change. I’m no longer a victim, and to me, the issue of class size is absolutely vital to quality education, something we should work very hard to achieve.”

Two Common Issues

Two issues came up repeatedly in the NEH refresher attended by a Times reporter: tracking according to ability, and grouping students heterogeneously for more effective teaching. The consensus was emphatically against tracking and in favor of grouping.

Jim Utt of El Toro said: “Instead of being segregated, the top students should be integrated with their classmates for two main reasons: first of all, tracking is undemocratic and fosters elitism, and secondly, integrating high achievers raises the overall performance of everyone.”

Why should that be true for the brighter students? What is their motivation in such a mix?

Answered Anaheim’s Cheryl Swarner: “We can challenge the talented in other ways--and we do. Especially in research papers and class discussion. We expect better quality from them in essay exams and push them to reach as far as they like. We’re looking at different goals for different kids, and we constantly ask ourselves: What am I doing to meet the needs of all these groups? We try to make quality happen for all of them.”

The method brought up repeatedly as the most effective way of achieving this quality was grouping students within the classroom. More than half the examples shared in the discussion session related to a wide variety of group teaching methods. But in none of the examples were the groups divided by ability; the starting place in each instance was an across-the-board mix of student types and abilities.

Cerritos social studies teacher Monty Armstrong breaks up his freshman students into groups of four or five to write term papers. “They help each other,” Armstrong said, “by sharing responsibility, each doing what he does best. I get 50% better performance that way. Each member of the group evaluates the individual performance within the group, then I grade the group paper. The next semester, they’re on their own--and I get better work from all of them.”

San Clemente’s Kathy Brown allows students within each group to help one another arrive at a consensus of correct answers. She also encourages peer pressure to check up on missing students who aren’t contributing their share. She organizes her groups at the beginning of each school year by asking the students to write an essay describing what they did over the summer. She then uses these papers as a means of getting a volatile mix in each group.

Student Outraged

One student this year was outraged because he felt this system was unfair to the better students who did most of the work. Brown told him: “In the real world, people have to work as a team. We also sometimes have to work with people we don’t like. If you’re being taken advantage of in your group, then do something about it. And give it a little time before you judge.”

Larry Lorenz of Torrance’s South High said: “A lot of students who are afraid to raise their hands in class situations and ask questions because they don’t want to look stupid won’t hesitate at all in their group.”

Several teachers reported that grouping also works well with the growing cadre of Asian students in Orange County high schools because--as one teacher said--”they are primarily concerned about competing with each other, and they learn a lot better if we split them up.”

Grouping has been especially attractive to the NEH graduates because this method worked so effectively in teaching them. “I’ve really grown a lot by learning the dynamics of the group,” said one social science teacher. “At the institute, I was in the fishbowl, and I’m a better teacher after going through it myself. It made me aware of what’s happening in my classroom, and as a result, my students are getting more out of their education. Learning is growing--for the teacher as well as the student.”

Not everyone is as high on such educational experimentation as the NEH graduates. Several reported that colleagues complained about the noise level in their classes. One teacher said she’s in constant hot water with the custodian because her classroom chairs are not arranged like everyone else’s. Another said a complaint was lodged against her because her groups tend to cluster in the halls after class carrying on arguments at a high decibel level.

And one mildly disenchanted NEH alumnus wrote on her post-graduate evaluation: “I am somewhat disappointed by the emphasis on things I did not deem important or relevant to carry over to my classroom. We seemed to spend a great deal of discussion time as a group going over concepts that could be done in much less time. I am one of the quiet ones who did not speak because (a) the same people spoke out with their views and (b) I did not always agree but did not feel like a hassle. How long has it been since the planners of this project have been on the front lines of today’s high schools?”

Teachers Not Released

Although most of the county schools gladly release their teachers--with pay--to attend the 10 refresher sessions, a few have refused, even after Wilson and Regosin tried to persuade them. So the teachers came anyway, using their sick leave.

One such special case was Foothill High School in the Tustin Unified School District. Although Foothill has sent five teachers through the NEH program, the policy of the administration to grant the teachers release time for the refresher classes was suddenly reversed after the recent teachers’ strike in Tustin. At first, their routine requests for a release day were ignored, then officially denied. They all came anyway--on their own time; now NEH officials have been told the release time for the Tustin teachers will be restored.

Tom Wilson said: “I think this institute has been particularly effective in two quite distinct ways. First, it has enhanced the way these teachers perceive their students and approach their teaching materials. And, second, it has changed their attitudes about themselves and what they do by giving them renewed enthusiasm and respect for their own profession.”

Wilson and Regosin are hoping that the success of the institute will generate a new source of funds when the foundation money runs out so they can continue to offer the program to an escalating waiting list of Orange County teacher-students. NEH graduates are pulling for the same thing, too; they would like to see as many of their faculty associates as possible exposed to the same training.

El Toro language teacher Jean Jerome said: “I hadn’t been back to school for 12 years. I got so caught up in teaching that I forgot how to think. The institute showed me I still can--and how good it feels.”

And as a Times reporter went out the door, Anaheim’s Cheryl Swarner shouted after him: “The whole key is smaller classes. Don’t forget to say that--and say it again and again.”