It is the time of year when you I get really overwhelmed by the details of teaching -- the tests to write and grade, the last minute substitutions that will allow a student to complete a minor, the student who really really doesn't understand why it is so bad to turn in someone else's paper from three years before...
But it is important to every once in a while, even now, step back and think about what can be better and how I can make it better. It is invigorating, a way of problem solving (particularly when the problems haven't yet arisen), and it is kinda fun.
There are a lot of cool things that can be done in classes, interesting non-traditional ways to communicate things, possible assignments to get students to teach themselves, participate in active learning, and all you need for them is a bit of money, or time, or administrative support. For some of the cool ideas you just need to ask for help, and for others you just need to do it.
What would you do in your classes if you had all the time, money, and support you needed? Come with me beneath the orange labyrinth of doom for some ideas of what I have done and what I would do.
Sometimes I can do things that are cool -- I developed a museums class a couple of years ago which was very successful (several students got jobs, internships, and graduate school placements based on work they did in the class). This is even more remarkable to me because we are in an isolated rural community with a university that doesn't have a permanent art collection to speak of (there are a few pieces floating around campus in various offices, for example, but the museum we have has very limited display space and is largely historical material from alumni, i.e. things that are at most 150 years old). We have not very much to start out with but what we do have is a flexible, helpful special collections librarian and supportive library (which oversees the display spaces in the visitors center that serves as our museum). We utilized local historical and arts societies (who were happy to take volunteers!) for more opportunities for students. It was a very successful class. It was created because I looked at what we offered in my department, what my students were wanting to do, and tried to figure out a way to do it. I did have an extra cost for the class, but it was less than $700, which was the cost of a bus rental and transportation to and from St. Louis (4 hours away) where the students visited two museums and met with alumni. We covered transportation and lunch, and it was a really good experience for them, even if it ended up being a really long day. The school in which my department is situated provided the funding for the bus -- I am hoping they do it again this fall when I teach the class again. This time we will be going to Kansas City, where we hope to visit the WWI museum and the Science Center (specific details are still to be arranged).
One cool thing I wish someone at my university would do (someone who has a greener thumb than I do) is to build a garden as part of a class. We have some gardens on campus, but there are lots of spaces that just have green grass and are quite set aside from activities (spaces other than the quad, where you need lots of empty grassy stretches for frisbee and quidditch games). One of the nicest of them is a sunken space outside the library that would be a great place for a formal-ish garden -- an Asian-inspired place for zen meditation, or an English herb and flower garden that is a bit overplanted, a bit wild. Either one of those projects would lend itself to an interdisciplinary class involving agriculture and botany, history, architecture and art history, and Asian Studies. I think we could get help from the university architects (we would need proper permissions, of course) and the groundskeepers would be able to prepare the soil (we have great fertilizer from the horses on the university farm, too). The cost would be in the plants and paving stones or gravel if needed. A water feature might be nice as well.
If money really were no object I would love to spend spring break taking my art history class (whichever one I am enjoying the most!) to Europe to see a great cathedral or two, or spend a day or two in the Louvre or walk through the Forum in Rome. To spend seven weeks studying Greek and Roman Art, or Egyptian or to do the western Art History survey, then to take students to see objects in person, and then return for seven more weeks of class, would be ideal. They would see what the mists wreathing the cathedral in Chartres are like, or the light shining through the windows in Ste.-Chapelle, or climb up the stairs to the roof of the Temple of Dendera. It is a completely different thing to actually walk in a building, to hear the sound of birds in the rafters of an ancient temple, to smell the dampness, feel the coldness, listen to the organist practice and the echoing footsteps in an empty building. It not the same at all as looking at pictures projected against a white screen in a darkened building.
I have been able to travel with students to Egypt (Cairo and the Delta and Alexandria), Istanbul, Bulgaria, and England and Scotland. It was a great experience for them and for me. There is nothing quite the same as taking students through a medieval gate in Cairo or a showing them the mosaic of Justinian presenting Haghia Sophia to the enthroned Madonna and the infant Jesus, in the very church Justinian holds in his hands. Yes, there are things to see, but there are things to see and hear and taste and smell. All of that comes together to make a building experience.
The students I have traveled with have self-selected. They are majors or really know what they want to get out of the trip. They have spent a lot of money to travel with me. I know that they will get a lot out of the experience. I often wonder what sort of a life-changing experience it would be for those students who are in an art history survey class who are majors in biology or business or psychology or French. What would it be like for those who are doing the class for a core requirement to suddenly be taken up to France or Greece or Rome for a week? I wish I could find out. Would it change their understanding of the way these things have affected the world? Would they be more enthralled with the liberal arts and things outside their major if that were suddenly able to see them in person? And in the long term would it make a difference to them five or ten years along? Would they be more likely to visit their local museum? Would they be more willing to donate to the arts, to lobby their congresscritters for increased funding for art in schools? I would like to find out.
What are your fantasy things for your classes? What would be required to make it happen?