Where do you teach, how long have you been teaching, and in which capacity?
I am at Highline College in Des Moines, Washington — about halfway between Seattle and Tacoma. Seattle’s airport is located just north of us, and we’re in the flight path. Fortunately, they remodeled our classrooms about 15 years ago so the windows do an excellent job of blocking out the noise of the planes. I’ve been here since 2001. We don’t have rank, so I’m just psychology faculty. Before that, I was at New Mexico State University — Alamogordo for seven years.
How did you come to teach psychology?
I never thought that I’d be an instructor — of anything. In college, public speaking was not my thing. I went to graduate school intending to be a researcher. I was in a PhD program that awarded the MA along the way. After I completed my MA, I decided I needed a break, so I stepped away from my program for what I intended to be a year. As a graduate student, I had taught classes, but teaching traditionally-aged students at a university primarily attended by Caucasian, middle class students wasn’t very interesting to me. In my year away and needing an income, I was hired to teach as an adjunct by a community college located in the suburb of a major city. The student population was much more diverse making the classroom a much more exciting place to be. I was in my mid-20s, and most of my students were older than I was. Knowing I couldn’t be an authority figure, I opted for a partnership. I told my students, “I know the theory and you have the experiences. Let’s merge them together and see what we get.” That teaching philosophy continues to drive my relationship with students, the pedagogical techniques I use, and the content I cover. It was these community college students who got me hooked on teaching. I formally left my graduate program and have been teaching in community colleges ever since.
What is your favorite website to use for class?
I have several favorite websites. Spurious Correlationsopens in new window is fun for helping students see that correlation does not mean causation. There is, for example, a .99 correlation between the “divorce rate in Maine” and the “per capita consumption of margarine” in the United States.
I send students to Not Always Rightopens in new window to find examples of schemas. More specifically, I ask students to identify the schema the customer has and the schema the employee has. My students who work in a customer service industry often report spending an hour or more on the site.
When I cover memory, I send students to The Learning Scientistsopens in new window blog for their learning strategy posters.
I’ve been talking more complexly about collectivism and individualism thanks to a presentation cultural psychologist Alana Conner gave at the 2016 Stanford Psych One Conferenceopens in new window. I send students to her websiteopens in new window as background for class discussion.
For psychological disorders, I want students to get some sense of what it is like to live with different disorders — and for those who have been diagnosed with a disorder, an opportunity to see people who are actively fighting the stigma. At Stigma Fightersopens in new window, real people using their real names talk about their experiences with psychological disorders. It’s a powerful site.
To show how a few different drugs work, I love Mouse Partyopens in new window.
I’m also partial to the Big Thinkopens in new window, ASAP Scienceopens in new window, IFLScienceopens in new window, Invisibiliaopens in new window, This American Lifeopens in new window and Radio Labopens in new window.
I know you love to read, what is your favorite psychology related book (or books)?
"The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons" by Sam Kean is a must-read for anyone teaching introductory psychology. I mean it. Get the book now. Seriously. Stop reading, and order the book. I’ll wait for you to come back. In addition to telling us more about the brain and its functioning, Kean humanizes many of the people typically referenced in Introductory Psychology, such as Phineas Gage and Henry Molaison (H.M.).
I attended a book talk by Kean for this book. I asked him which of his stories, when he heard it, made him say, “Wait. What?” He said it was the split-brain research. And that’s what my students often say, too. For me, it is the conjoined twins who share a large portion of the brain, including the thalamus. That means they share sensory experiences. One girl likes ketchup, but the other doesn’t. That means when the one who likes ketchup eats it, the other also tastes it — and tries to scrape it off her own tongue. This ups the interest in the thalamus from practically nil (“It’s the sensory switchboard — and this is what a switchboard is…”) to through the roof (“Whoa! What other senses do they share??”). If neuroscience is one of your weaker areas, it won’t be after reading this book.
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
The best part is when students forget they are taking a course for credit and get caught up in learning for the sake of learning. Fortunately, in psychology the material is so good, it usually doesn’t take much to get students into that way of thinking.
What do you enjoy least about teaching?
Grading. But then does anybody like grading? As my teaching has evolved, I have more assignments where I really want to see what my students have generated and fewer assignments that are a grind.
What is your favorite unit to teach in psychology?
It’s a toss-up between sensation/perception and memory — and for the same reason. Both put students in the position of thinking about how much they rely on their senses and their memory, and that both only exist in their brains as representations of reality — and both can be dead wrong.
What is your perceived greatest challenge of teaching?
David Myers asks, “What should an educated person know about psychology?” In other words, what does a psychologically literate citizenry look like? I have been thinking a lot about the introductory psychology course and how the basic content in the course hasn’t changed in decades. If we were to create an introductory psychology course today, what would it look like? That’s the question that I wake up at 3 a.m. thinking about.
What is your single favorite day of psychology class?
The last day of the course, but not because it’s over. For the last day, students are asked, before class, to identify the top 10 most important concepts they learned in the course, briefly explain each concept, and then talk about why those concepts are important. In class, I choose one student and ask for their number one concept and why they chose it. Anyone else who has it on their top 10 list is asked why they chose it. And then I choose another volunteer who reads their number one. Once we get through the number ones, we move on to number twos. Students often will share their favorite memories from those particular class periods or will share how those concepts showed up in their lives or how they used the knowledge of those concepts in some way. This class session is truly a wonderful review of the course.
What are some of your other psychology-related activities?
I am currently serving as president-elect for the Society for the Teaching of Psychologyopens in new window (STP is my professional home) and serving as one of the college representatives on the American Psychological Association Committee for Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools.
I am a reader for the Advanced Placement psychology exam, which is hands down, the best professional move I ever made. Spending a week with 500 of the best high school and college psychology instructors is an unparalleled experience. Not only has my teaching improved through discussions I’ve had at the reading, but the friendships that I now have with people I first met or got to know through the reading gives me access to teaching advice and support year round.
I write a teaching of psychology blog for Macmillanopens in new window, and that has been a lot of fun. I get to keep my eye on current events and new research and then create classroom activities appropriate for introductory psychology.
