Faculty
"Why I Teach"


Catherine Crosby-Currie
Associate Professor of Psychology
"Teaching is part of the air we breathe"
As a child, it was elaborate stories involving my dolls. As an adolescent, it was figuring out my next sewing project. In graduate school, it was planning my gardens. Now, it is my teaching.
What is "it"? It's the object of my contemplation during those moments in the day when my behavior is more or less automatic and my chances of being interrupted are minimal-- walking across campus, taking a shower. During those moments, I might experience a breakthrough such as solving a perplexing advising issue or developing a new method for teaching a difficult concept.
Being a teacher becomes central to one's identity, especially at an institution like St. Lawrence. As another faculty member put it, teaching is part of the air we breathe. Certainly teachers are not the only professionals about whom this is true; however, what that means for how we view the world is different. We scan our environment for teaching ideas. Might that be a good example of this or that phenomenon? Hmmm... Would this simulation work to teach the impact of that variable? Hmmm...
Just like being a mother, a wife, a friend, a daughter and a sister makes me who I am, so does being a teacher. And having that role means that I see the world a certain way--through the eyes of a teacher. Hey, maybe I could use this as an example of the power of roles on our perceptions? Hmmm...

Robin H. Lock and Patti Frazer Lock
Professors of Mathematics
"Get to Know the Students"
On our first day as new graduate students, we were introduced and assigned offices next to each other. We have been talking about teaching since the first day we met, and when we married and received our PhDs five years later, we knew we wanted to teach at a place that valued teaching and that encouraged continuous conversations about excellent teaching. We found a perfect match at St. Lawrence. Here are some of the things we have learned and talked about over the years:
  • Get to know the students. One of the things we love about St. Lawrence is the wonderful relationships we develop with our students.
  • Be absolutely clear about expectations. Our students will rise to meet the challenge if they understand exactly what is expected of them.
  • Prepare carefully. Probably 90% of effective teaching takes place outside the classroom.
  • Use a variety of learning/teaching techniques. It is boring otherwise, for us and for our students.
  • Teach the students, not just the discipline. A relevant quote reminds us that "It's more important to uncover the material than to cover it."
  • Enjoy class time! Smile. If we're not happy to be there, how can we expect the students to be?
  • Treat every student with respect as an individual. Enjoy the students. They are terrific.
After 25 years of teaching at St. Lawrence and of talking to each other and our colleagues about teaching, we still find that there is a lot to talk about. We love teaching here. It's a great job and we're happy to keep working at it!

Traci Fordham-Hernández
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies & Gender Studies
Department of Performance and Communication Arts
"Un-Learning"
One day, in the middle of a class in my sophomore year as an undergraduate, my Communication professor asked a rhetorical question. It was a provocative, leading question, designed, I realized many years later, to be counter-intuitive to many people. This question was so provocative in fact, that some of my peers literally stood up and walked out of the classroom. Me? I had a different, most visceral reaction; the world just opened right up. Inspiration. Insight. An epiphany. This professor didn't "tell" me anything; through his question, he challenged me to reconceptualize what I "knew" about the world. On that day, I began the exhilarating, often difficult process of un-learning.
My professor taught me the importance of asking questions. So, I have come to frame what I do as helping students to learn and to un-learn. I think that un-learning is as important to being a student in Communication and Gender Studies as it is to "accumulate" knowledge in these areas. Being in the company of young people, having as my life's work the process of cultivating insight is, without a doubt, the most rewarding of professions.
I teach because I truly believe that the field of Communication and the study of gender are central to our lives. Helping people to ask questions about how they communicate means to enhance and enrich their perspectives, and, indeed, their possibilities for being-in-the-world. But, the place in which one does this work makes all the difference, really. Communication Studies is an interdisciplinary, or even trans-disciplinary discipline. Ideas from Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, and Rhetoric dance together in this field: to be a student of Communication Studies means engaging in multidisciplinary, liberal arts learning. At St. Lawrence University, we get to explore and un-learn together in small, intimate classes, with people who bring very diverse perspectives, people whom we get to know and who often come to make a difference in the fabric of our lives. Could there be a more noble or rewarding enterprise than that?

Laura Rediehs
Associate Professor of Philosophy
"Learning from Our Students"
Good teaching requires understanding where our students are in their intellectual development. It is surprisingly hard to do this. After our own long years of education, we have gotten used to perceiving the world through the intricate lens of our academic disciplines and can forget what it was like to be just starting this journey.
One technique I have developed to help me gain better understanding of my students is to require them to submit exactly one question in advance of each class. The question is to be on the material that we are going over in class that day, and I encourage the students to try to think of the best question they can that will help them to progress in their own learning. Then, as I prepare for class, I use their questions to guide how I will teach the material. In class, I read their questions aloud when we get to the relevant topics, so that their questions become the keys to unlock the important concepts we are studying.
This technique has helped me to understand my students better: I see more clearly what puzzles them and what interests them. But this technique has also helped me to keep learning from my students. Through their questions and our class discussions, I learn how to see more deeply into points of view that are different from my own, which enriches my own understanding of the various ways that people try to make sense of the world.

Alan Searleman
Professor of Psychology
"Joys of Teaching"
All right, I confess! By the time commencement ceremonies arrive each May, I''m more than ready for a break from classes and students. The last three or four weeks of the academic year exhaust me, filled as they are with final projects and lab reports to be evaluated, draft upon draft of senior honor theses to comment on, preparing students for their SLU Science Festival presentations, and grading Final Exams. However, by the turn of August each year, and this year marks my 29th at St. Lawrence, I cannot wait for classes to start anew.
Why the transformation? Simple. It occurs for what is largely a selfish reason: I need the fix of soon being in a classroom again. After a good class, I feel energized and jazzed up. I sense an implicit challenge or tension every time I step in front of a class, and this tension keeps me on a gentle edge. Can I correctly gauge the class''s temperament today, and then play off this to achieve the goals I have set? Can I pace and monitor the time just right, neither dwelling too long on a topic already understood by all nor speeding through something that has not yet been fully grasped? Can I accomplish all this in an interesting way, a way that so captivates my students that they are often caught off guard when I announce, "See you next time"? I love the bewildered looks when they realize the time for class is over. When it all works well, I know that I have chosen my profession wisely. On any given day, my personal research may be going slowly, or my committee responsibilities may be bogging me down, but I know I can produce an instant psychic lift by successfully confronting the tension inherent when engaging my students.
Another joy of teaching for me is getting to know students on a deeper level. On the first day of every course I teach, students fill out an index card briefly describing and introducing themselves to me. Sometimes I can make quick connections with a student; for instance, any who self-identify as being a fellow RED SOX fan! Sometimes the connections are more profound. A few years ago, a student wrote he was from Springfield, Massachusetts, which happens to be my hometown as well. His last name sounded familiar, and in talking with him later, I soon discovered that his father was an oncologist, and in fact had been my mom''s caring oncologist before she died. This student later became my Teaching Assistant, and eventually did a yearlong senior honor project with me that was published last year in a good journal. Such students stay in my thoughts long after they graduate. Each year at commencement, I emphatically tell some students that they cannot now simply drop out of my life. Fortunately, e-mail makes it easy to stay in touch, and I truly savor the feeling when a favorite former student updates me or seeks my guidance.

Natalia Singer
Professor of English
"There isn't a more satisfying job on the planet"
Just as some of us are born with instinctive gifts in, say, spatial relations or fine motor coordination, the facility for language might very well be in our genetic coding.
Nonetheless, all students, regardless of the innate gifts they bring to the endeavor, can learn a lot of useful things in creative writing classes. Students learn to recognize their clichés and to note how their creative brains have been colonized by bad TV. They discover fresh insights and more distinctive ways to say what they have come to say.
A writing class can also provide some of the tools for living a better life. Three key ingredients of a beginning writing class are keeping a notebook, writing for an audience, and reading literature with an eye to craft. By keeping a notebook in which they practice recording the world as they see it, students learn to be active observers. Being able to write something that resonates with your audience's hearts and minds is a joy. And when we read attentively and learn to appreciate the craft of good literature, we study the imagination at work.
The imagination, fully stoked, ignites the fire of empathy, of compassion for our fellow humans. That, to me, is what a liberal arts education is for, regardless of the major we pick--to train us to take our place in our communities as more alert, attentive, compassionate humans. And when I remember that, I am convinced that there isn't a more satisfying job on the planet than teaching.

Barry Torres
Director of Music Ensembles
"The Spirit of the Teacher"
What makes for effective teaching? Behind the pedagogy, teaching techniques, and course materials is the human through whom knowledge is transmitted. Great teachers bring to their work qualities of humanity that enable them to connect meaningfully with their students, and it is at this junction where great teaching takes place. Here are some character traits I've observed in the teachers who have influenced my thought in the most profound ways:
  • An impartial love for all humankind, tempered by an understanding of the pitfalls of human nature.
  • A passion for learning and sharing the joy of the moment of discovery.
  • An enthusiasm for the subject, and life itself.
  • Humility and the willingness to grow.
  • Acknowledgement of the facts that 1) to lead well one must know how to follow well and 2) you can learn as much, if not more, from the students as they learn from you.
  • The ability to listen, to see the world through another's eyes, to meet the student where he/she is.
  • Discipline with a balance of organization and spontaneity.
  • Patience and kindness; firmness with compassion.
  • Seriousness tempered by a good sense of humor.
  • Wisdom; a balance of idealism and practicality.
Styles may vary greatly, but I believe that the substance of great teaching is the flow of impersonal love initiated by and communicated through the spirit of the teacher.