Professor Sharon

100 Day Project – Day 29 – 8:03 p.m.

Less is more in so many ways in life.  Today, personally, I could sure do with less grief.  Too much to explain, but too many losses too quickly in the last three months.  Professionally, less is more in terms of my assigned readings for my classes is really working well.  I mentioned in a previous writing that I’d given up textbooks and am finding articles to assign for reading.  Students write a response and come prepared to discuss it in class.

The quality of the responses and the discussions are so much richer than anything I’ve ever encountered using a text.  Is it the chemistry of these particular students?  I won’t be able to know that, I suppose if ever, until I try this technique a few more semesters.  I think that less quantity of reading, and more in-depth reading, is requiring them to spend some time interacting in new and deeper ways with the reading.  It occurred to me – only in today’s class – that I was also assigning them the kind of material to read that they will read after they are holding jobs.  Professional articles written by their one day peers.  A student today remarked that they thought the articles respected her intelligence in a way that a textbook didn’t.

Nice.  Today I am thinking about less is more in so many ways.