Volume XXXV, No. 2 | January 25, 2013 Music, Anticipatory Sets, and Learning: How to Make Your Students Sit Up and Listen before the Lesson even Begins The Set The anticipatory set is but one component of Madeline Hunter’s “Effective Elements of Instruction.” Hunter, regarded by the Sierra Research Institute and the National [...]

Volume XXXV, No. 1 | January 18, 2013 The Impact of Small Goals on Student Success Goal Activity One of the classroom activities I use teaches students the power of setting and achieving small and very short goals. At first I have students discuss the similarities and differences between wishes and goals. [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 29 | December 7, 2012 Grammar Without the Teacher Unlike baseball players, such as Hunter Pence, whose special day was celebrated by Philadelphia even after he was traded to San Francisco, they do not make bobblehead dolls out of professors. And yet, I have often felt like a bobblehead in [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 28 | November 30, 2012 Global Horizons: The Promise of a Global Education In July 2012, Montgomery College, a three-campus institution in Maryland, was awarded the highest grant amount of six community colleges nationally, to carry out the mission of the National Endowment for the Humanities “Bridging Cultures” grant initiative [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 27 | November 16, 2012 Filling Empty Chairs Student absenteeism seems to be the main topic of corridor conversation these days among colleagues at our college. Many share the feeling that it is getting worse every semester. For me, who still gets a good number of students even when several [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 26 | November 9, 2012 Year Up: A Pioneering Program As part of my doctoral studies at The University of Texas at Austin, I recently read A Year Up: How a Pioneering Program Teaches Young Adults Real Skills for Real Jobs with Real Success. This text illustrates the workforce problem [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 25 | November 2, 2012 ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: A LETTER TO MY STUDENTS For the past few years, I have been giving my students a letter on the subject of academic integrity. At its heart is the idea that the principles of academic integrity apply as much to me as teacher [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 24 | October 26, 2012 Students, Economic "Fiaster" and.... The current economy has spawned a “fiaster” (fiasco and disaster) in many students' lives. Some students barely subsist. Others struggle to make ends meet. Though newsworthy, this is not news. Rather, it appears to be a long-term and punishing reality. One [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 23 | October 19, 2012 I Hate to Read Research confirms that a central component of breaking through the remedial wall is to get students to read. Without the ability to read, students have no pathway to progress and success. Language is at the core of academic study, and it [...]

Volume XXXIV, No. 22 | October 12, 2012 The Peer Review Course While in the process of flipping my English composition classroom from a writing class to a lecture class, I hit upon an activity that altered the way the class would run for the rest of the semester. I had set up [...]