Rules of Engagement

For three years now, at the end of every term of my Beginning French class, I ask students to respond to the following question as the concluding question for their final exam: “What has been your favorite aspect of this class, and why?” I recognize this to be a loaded question, as it asks students to offer a uniformly positive take on the class no matter how they might feel about it over all. Nevertheless, I find there is great value in focusing on the joy of learning and reflecting on that joy.

The first year, a few students indicated that they loved the film we watched, Les Intouchables, which I consider a must-see. (If you haven’t seen this movie, plan to do so immediately, s’il vous plaît!) Most students, however, indicated that—more than anything else—they loved getting to know the other students. The second year I asked this question, the proportion of getting-to-know-others to film comments grew. Last year, every single student indicated that this class, a language requirement, was one they looked forward to each week because it was the class where they worked with each other, where work and play were structured interchangeably to foster learning, and where mistakes were treated as welcome and a natural part of the learning process.

I have reflected both on my own and in concert with students on this feedback, and in doing so have developed a set of principles and practices for creating this kind of environment in the classroom. I call this my Four Rules of Engagement, and I invite you to adapt these to your own groups of students as you see fit. Here they are, in order of importance.

1. Put the technology away. We all know from personal experience the degree to which technology renders focus on the present moment and face-to-face human engagement impossible—not difficult, but impossible. Many faculty whom I respect greatly hesitate to set a hard line in their classrooms about this. But I believe, based on both data and my own personal experience, that a refusal or even hesitation to shut the tech down immediately and consistently fosters disengagement and distraction rather than engagement and focus and gets in the way of supporting a student’s willingness and ability to be present and develop rapport with the others in the room. If a faculty member still hesitates to set and enforce such a boundary and expectation, I would suggest they consider the recent, thoroughly researched work of Jonathan Haidt on the topic of technology, smartphones and youth culture today. In every one of my own classrooms, phones, tablets, laptops and watches are “rangés,” put away, so that we can focus on the learning at hand and do so in tandem and in community. (Nota bene: Certainly, if a student needs to be in touch with someone, they are always welcome to let me know and keep their phone available. But this is an exceedingly rare request.)
2. Require, track and enforce participation (not attendance). At the beginning of each class, I lay my cards on the table and let students know what habits and attitudes will help them succeed in my classes as well as which practices, both mental and behavioral, will hinder their chances of success. The first practice to cultivate is active participation. I distinguish this from simple attendance, which can be interpreted as moving one’s physical body into the physical room, rather than mentally and psychologically engaging in the coursework of the day. Active participation, on the other hand, requires true focus, grappling, a certain amount of healthy struggle and honest and frank interaction with the material and people at hand. Without active participation, we cannot expect true development to take place any more than we can expect muscles to develop through a sedentary lifestyle or plants to grow without proper soil. Active participation is a necessary ingredient for learning and building community alike; it therefore stands to reason that it should be tracked and assessed.
3. Play and experiment in small groups. In terms of group work, I start small. Before asking any individual student to engage with the entire class, I ensure that they have engaged with each other in smaller group settings. Like so many learning objectives, engagement with the group at large is scaffolded. First, a student might work with a partner. Once they have developed a comfort and ease at this level, a group of three to five can begin to work together and develop rapport. Finally, larger groups and teams can begin to work with (and sometimes in opposition to) each other in order to test arguments, theories and intellectual practices. For example, in my first- and second-semester introductory courses in French, I frequently introduce a cultural topic, a set of related vocabulary and a grammatical concept. At each step, students complete exercises individually, then compare answers with another classmate. Finally, in small groups, they craft a response comprised of several sentences in the target language, and we discuss and correct each group’s work together. The goal is threefold: try, “fail” and learn. The goal is not to perfect or master. It is simply to try and, in making mistakes and correcting those mistakes, to learn. After even a few days of this, students become more comfortable with themselves, with their limitations and with each other. We laugh, we unpack, we try again. We play, we experiment, we learn together. With technology almost entirely out of our way, and with active participation set up as a fundamental requirement, we are free to engage, to trust, to be present and to learn in community.

4. Teach students that they can and should be valuable intellectual and personal resources for each other. When I was completing doctoral coursework, I took a course on French film with Professor Dudley Andrew. One day, he made a remark that we, the students, should view each other as great intellectual resources. This idea surprised me, as I had unconsciously integrated a top-down, professor–qua–knowledge producer and deliverer and student-qua-receiver model of intellectual progress. It also inspired me. To consider that other students in the room could help me improve intellectually suddenly widened my net of relationships to foster and conversations to be had. Knowledge and intellect could and should be cultivated not just in the classroom or during office hours but also in simple conversations with other students. Now, in my own teaching, I, like my former professor, explicitly encourage students to see and treat one another as partners in learning and intellectual and personal development. Every student presentation is followed by several minutes of open, collegial, frank, clear and honest feedback about what worked and why and what did not work and how it might have been improved. No student emerges without a greater sense of both their strengths and opportunities to improve. Perhaps most importantly, the process of critique is a collective endeavor that allows all involved the chance to do what they are in class to do, learn and grow.

Thus, as we conclude this term’s work and look forward to next semester, let’s keep engagement at the heart of student learning. I believe the practices and overarching philosophy described above can help reinvigorate students and faculty alike and can reframe the learning process as iterative rather than teleological, collective rather than uniquely solitary, and often funny rather than exclusively serious or intimidating. In conclusion, take a lesson from French class, and amusez-vous bien!