I am surrounded by interesting faculty colleagues at Carthage, including the prof whose office is right next to mine, Dr. Dimitri Shapovalov, who is only in his third year at Carthage but who has already carved out a very important place in the life of our department. He is so smart, so imaginative, so committed to his profession – and his Music History students absolutely love the course and adore him. (If he weren’t such a fine human being, I would hate his guts! )
Today I enjoyed a moment where I felt quite professorial – because Dimitri stepped into my office to show me something quite extraordinary. In his hands was an ancient book which he just got through inter-library loan – a book of Russian poems and folk tales published back in 1841- a book which the great Igor Stravinsky used when preparing some of his own folk song arrangements. The book itself was fascinating enough to see, but what Dimitri most wanted to show me was the little yellowed newspaper clipping which he found stuck between the pages. The clipping turned out to be from the famous old Soviet newspaper Pravda, the paper which was the major voice of the Soviet regime and the means by which the lives of certain Russians in an instant could be brought to utter ruin. This particular article, however, was written to celebrate the virtues of Marxism. But what a fascinating little snippet of Russian history my friend Dimitri was holding in his hands- and I was so touched and pleased that he wanted to share this with me. It made me realize that part of what can make life at a place like Carthage even more interesting and fun is when we take a moment to share those kinds of delights with one another.
I absolutely love teaching at Carthage, but most of the time I don’t particularly feel like a college professor, despite the fact that I am indeed an Assistant Professor of Music. (It says so right in the campus directory.) I think the reason is that so much of what I do involves one-on-one voice lessons rather than classroom courses, and when I am in the classroom I’m often teaching simpler survey courses like “Exploring Music.” I get my best whiff of professorship when I teach the higher level stuff like “Opera” or “Vocal Diction and Literature” but what really gets me feeling like I deserve that word “Professor” in front of my name is when I teach Heritage. This is the course that all freshmen have to take- and it’s a series of courses which is pretty much detested by just about all of our students. Part of the problem is that the course is a bit vague and intangible – but an even bigger factor is that it’s something everyone takes and it’s easy to complain about- like the food in the cafeteria. In fact, I don’t think students hate it as much as they say they do – or think they do . . . but that’s easy for me to say; I’m on the delivering end rather than the receiving end of the transaction.
Anyway, Heritage is a departure from my normal Carthage duties – and although I groan a bit when my Heritage duties circle around every three years or so, I very quickly remember how much fun it is to do. The course basically consists of students reading books and essays, discussing them in class, and writing reflective essays on the material. I think the students, amidst their grumbling, often feel the same as I do – – – “This is what I thought college would be like! “
As I was preparing to teach this particular course (which I’ve not actually taught before) I checked out the syllabi of several of my colleagues and very much liked what I saw except for one thing which was part of every single one of them which I read: all of the professors in question include classroom participation in the letter grade- with some even calculating down to a certain percentage. I’ve done the same thing before, but this time around I was absolutely determined to jettison any mention of participation in the letter grade. And not only did I leave that out, I actually wrote a paragraph in the intro to the syllabus spelling out that neither class participation nor attendance would be figured in their ultimate letter grade. Why? The prevailing belief seems to be that it is absolutely essential to grade people for their class participation or everyone will just sit there like moss-covered tree stumps and never say a word. I have certainly tasted some of that, but I finally came to the conclusion that grading college students for their classroom participation felt too much like high school, if not junior high! I decided that it was my job to generate vigorous classroom discussions and that I would find a way to get people talking without resorting to tying it to their grade in the course. It was a crazy thing to do but well worth trying. And lo and behold, I am having the best Heritage experience of my teaching career. . . delighted with the level of classroom discussion that we’re enjoying together. Of course, we’ve only met three times, so I suppose it’s a bit premature to call it a success story – but so far so good. And it feels good that I am achieving this success without the use of any bells and whistles. I am a very straight and essentially unimaginative teacher- – – a real “Old Dog” incapable of learning any “New Tricks.” But that style of teaching seems to be just right for this particular group of students and together we are having the best time I can ever remember having in a Heritage class. And lo and behold, I feel like a real live college professor!
pictured above: Professor Shapovalov and the book of Russian poems and folk tales, complete with the clipping from Pravda