What makes a class chatty?

This year I have one very chatty class. The class is designed to facilitate chat, but this group is way above the norm. It is a small first year seminar. 16 students, all first year students. Very diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. The purpose of the class is to provide an introduction to college, provide some cultural experiences, and generally facilitate the transition. Since I serve as the academic advisor for these students as well, I will see them several times over the course of the year. The class itself meets only for 2 more weeks.

I try to encourage the students to talk. I have lots of questions that they all must answer each week--favorite class, hardest class, favorite food in the cafeteria, advice they wished they had gotten before coming, etc. But this group just TALKS all the time. I have to resort to the elementary school tricks of clapping my hands, standing quietly, or reminding them of the rules to get them to settle down. I bring snacks to class, we sit around a big table, all things designed to make the class informal and to encourage TALKING. Boy, does it work with this group.

There are a few quieter students and I wonder sometimes if they wish the rest of the group would just "shut up." I think I might have been one of those students in my college years. I would have wanted to let the teacher talk, to be a good student, to follow the rules. I'm glad my students are willing to talk over me, around me, and right by me. I like that.

Play, again

Funny how some topics just seem to pop up over and over. I don't know if I'm just more alert to a topic and notice the stories, or if there is some secret topic generating meeting that news organizations attend to get ideas. I remember hearing once about the "color meetings" where the next season's color palette was discussed and decided (actually I think it was done a few years in advance.) So, when everyone comes out with "eggplant" or "plum" or "seafoam" at the same time, it was really planned years ahead.

Anyway, the topic of recent interest has been play. I think I ruminated on this a few months ago, based on a radio program I had heard while traveling to my nephew's wedding. Now, there is a NYTimes magazine article on the topic. The article is part of the "education issue" of the magazine and focuses on research showing the value of play for children learning self control and self regulation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=print

Apparently, engaging in role playing as a young child helps the brain to learn how to self regulate. If you are being a mommy, then you have to act like a mommy. You have to control your behaviors. One interesting highlight, they asked kids (I think they were about 4) to stand still for as long as they could. Most kids couldn't make it for a minute. Then they asked the kids to pretend that they were guards and that they had to stand at attention. While role playing, kids could stand for 4 minutes.

Part of the conclusions are that preschools and kindergartens have become too academically focused and should include more time for play. They do point out, however, that kids today may need some guidance in how to engage in imaginative play. As a kid I played a lot of make believe. My sisters and I had whole other personalities that we adopted (I was Leslie, because I really liked that name!) We played school, house, church, farm, just about any scenario.

Learning Names

I've lost my ability to learn names. I used to be pretty good at learning and remembering student names, not anymore. This semester I have about 100 students, 50 in one class, 40 in a second, and 15 in a third. There always seems to be one or two, even in the class of 15, that I just cannot cement into my memory. Maybe I've just had too many to learn over the years. I gave up trying to learn the names in my lecture classes of 150. I should figure out a better system, maybe a seating chart or something. This year we can access the ID photos of our students, maybe I could make myself flashcards.

It is even more complicated than that, however. Each year, as our student body gets more diverse, I have to learn new pronunciations and spellings. I'm not complaining, I love having the diversity in the classroom, and I've learned a lot about names and language from my students. I'm not sure I would saddle my child with an unusual spelling, though. It makes you stand out, but not necessarily in a good way. I have to write little pronunciation notes on my class rosters to remind myself of an "y" that is pronounced "ee" or an "y" that is pronounced "i".

Can I blame it on age? I have trouble accessing the names of people I have known for a long time, what hope is there for me to learn 100 new names each semester?

Population, Congress and 2010 Census

Tuesday, in my social research class, we discussed the "one person one vote" ruling and the shift of Congressional representatives from one state to another. Today in the NYTimes there was an interesting article about the very topic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/us/politics/18baker.html

Since each state is guaranteed one representative, the number of voters a member of Congress represents can vary considerably, from about 550,000 to 950,000. I thought it was interesting to read that the last time the membership of Congress was increased was in 1911, based on the 191o census. The huge waves of immigration between 1910 and 1920 meant that by 1920 there had been pretty dramatic population shifts, from the South to the Midwest and Northeast. There was tremendous political pressure not to adjust for these changes. The size of Congress has not been increased since then.

Should Congress be increased? And by how much? Do we want 1000 members of Congress (the number required to give equal representation)? Would that make the system any better?

Stressful life events

I was part of a dissertation defense this afternoon. The student was looking at race differences in stress and depression. One of the common measures of stress used in research is the "life events scale." This list has evolved over time as new research develops. Some researchers included both positive and negative events (weddings, birth of a child, death of a parent, loss of a job). Others use only negative events and include things like "victim of assault" or "victim of robbery."

In our discussion of the findings we went off on a tangent about what makes an event stressful. For instance, for anyone in the room being asked to get up in front of a room of 30 people and talk about some subject for an hour would not be considered stressful, we do it every day. For many people, however, public speaking is one of the most common items of stress. What determines a stressor for any individual? Can we define any life event as uniformly stressful for the population? How common of a stress does it need to be to be considered "universal"?

Social Networks II

In today's NYTimes there was an interesting corollary to the social network piece in the magazine section (I read the magazine section on Saturdays usually....) This article was about the collapse of financial markets and what, or who, was responsible. While it has been fashionable to blame the "quants" and their fancy formulas, this article argues that perhaps the failure of the models was not in their economic predictions but in their failure to understand group behavior. Panic spreads just like obesity. Financial engineers (got to love that term) are now thinking that maybe they need to include estimates of human behavior into their econometric modeling.

Quoting from the Times article, Unboxed, "Financial markets, like online communities, are social networks. Researchers are looking at whether the mechanisms and models being developed to explore collective behavior on the Web can be applied to financial markets." A former physicist says this effort is "intriguing but awfully ambitious." Do we need to model life? Will we ever be happy to just sit back and enjoy it?

Mowing Lawn

For many, many years we cut our grass with a push mower. We have, over the years, had some big lawns, so this was like an 8 hour job. My husband said that when he was 50 he would buy a riding mower. He got one when he was 49. The boys and my husband have done over 99% of the lawn mowing since. I barely know how to operate the machine.

Until today. Now I know why they kept me from it. It is too much fun. They didn't want to share! I put on my iPod, revved up the machine, and zipped around the lawn. The only thing I would change is all of the trees and shrubs we have, it is too hard to go around them. And I don't like the ditch. But the hill....WHEE! The hairpin turns....WOW! I might just have to make this my job from now on. Maybe I can switch with the laundry.

Social networks

The magazine section of the NYTimes highlighted the work of Nick Christakis today. Christakis made headlines 2 years ago with his study of obesity. Using some very interesting data he and his co-author showed that obesity may actually spread through a social network. At first, they may seem common sense, we are certainly affected by the behaviors of our friends, aren't we? But sociologists had not been able to document this before. We still may not have the "truth," even with Christakis' work. Is he just seeing the effects of shared environment? Or of homophily (the attraction of people with similar characteristics to one another)?

Regardless of whether he has "proven" the spread of social behaviors, he makes some interesting conclusions that resonate with a certain Buddhist flavor. After looking at obesity, smoking, and drinking, he examined the "spread" of happiness among social contacts. It appears that there is an effect, stronger for happiness than for unhappiness. He concludes that if we smile at others during the day, that good feeling will be transmitted to those with whom we interact. In turn, they will spread that good feeling to others. As Jim Fowler, Christakis' co-author notes, the effect of my smiles on my son affect not just him but his best friend's mother as well.

Interesting to think about. Do our behaviors ripple through the universe in ever expanding circles? Can we set off a sense of goodness through the world? Is that what happened in the days following Obama's election? Was there a spread of good feeling through social networks? Are there uber-contacts, people who can have a massive effect on the feelings of others? Are you one of those people?

New Babies

Today I got to hold a one day old baby. I haven't done that in nearly 14 years, since my own son was born. Babies are so miraculous. They are tiny and warm, they have incredibly long fingers and little mouths. It was quite a thrill for me.

Social Capital

This semester I chose the topic of "social capital" for my research methods course. I used to have students come up with their own research ideas, write a short survey, collect data, and analyze results. They tended to choose the same topics over and over "drinking and Greek life," "body image and exercise habits," "gender and ...fill in the blank." So, I started picking the topic. We focus on this for the course and I think it helps to create some continuity.

Today we discussed a few readings that addressed social capital. For those of you not in my class, social capital is a term used to describe the relationships we have with other people, our networks of support, advice and resources. Some of the poor outcomes associated with single parent families are thought to be related to lower levels of social capital, the absence of fathers in particular. Social capital can help in finding employment, in obtaining higher education, and in finding life partners.

One interesting area is the effect of family size on social capital. Having come from a big family, I'm always interested in how that affected my upbringing. For instance, I attribute the fact that I am a fast eater to being from a large family. If you wanted second helpings, you had to hurry or the food would be gone!

The standard thinking is that having many siblings will reduce the social capital of any one child because the time and attention of parents will be diluted. Each child receives less. I am sure that this is true. I wonder, though, about the effect of sibling interactions. There is some evidence, for instance, that having an older sibling who has attended college helps a younger sibling in the college admissions process. But what about other, perhaps more difficult to measure, aspects of sibling relationships. Do older siblings introduce new ideas to their younger siblings? Our dinner table conversation would sometimes revolve around our older son's reading or science topics. I'm sure that our younger son picked up on some ideas, just by being present at the table. I remember vividly a bedtime conversation with my older sister when she revealed the mysteries of multiplication to me.

Is the effect unidirectional? Do only younger siblings benefit? Or is there some benefit to the older child, in terms of social capital?

As I age, I'm increasingly interested in sibling interactions as an area of research. Is it too late to embark on a new line of research?

Challenge

I just felt that I needed a new challenge and decided to post two entries in one day. Trouble is, nothing that exciting happens in my life! So, let me just give a run down on my day. I lecture at 9:30. I don't really like the teaching station in my room, and have to struggle to get all of the technology working the way I want it to. But, I started off strong. Then came the fatal error described earlier, or, as my boys would say "epic failure." It was 10:45 now and I was already behind the 8 ball. I took a minute to run up to my office to center myself, and came down to the lab that had started at 11 (thank goodness for great TAs!!) Everyone was working away, there were no computer issues, great comeback. I left a little before noon, planning to catch some lunch before my next class at 12:30. Of course, someone stopped by my office and with one eye on the clock I chatted until after 12. I had time to eat my watermelon, gather my notes, and get down to class. That class was going okay, except nobody has tried the homework assignment, so they don't know if it will work or not. They are all tired. It is the first day after a long weekend, middle of the day, crowded room. I sent them out into the halls for a little exercise, and then tried to finish up. Went back to my office to drink a diet coke and eat my lunch before heading back down for the 2 pm lab session. That session went quite well, and I stayed for lab session 3 that starts at 3:30. Most of the students were making good progress and we ended lab at 4:45. I had time to go up, check my email, and then attend the sociology department welcoming party. It was nice to touch base with the sociologists. It was really nice to come home, eat a big juicy peach and take an evening walk. That is Tuesday for me!

Lecture errors

I have a lot of sympathy for politicians. At least for the part of their lives where they are subject to intense scrutiny for every clothing decision, haircut, and word that they utter. I am surprised, actually, that they don't make more mistakes than they do.

Today in class I did something I learned long ago to never do (well, apparently didn't learn well enough, since I did it again). I tried to do something in Excel that I hadn't already tested out "at home." There are so many little mistakes you can make when typing or writing a mathematical formula. I usually go over exactly what I want to do ahead of time and then very carefully reproduce that in class. This time, I was just going off the cuff..."I can do this! Watch me!" Okay, watch me make a complete mess of the example is what you saw.

Could I recover? I tried. Went back to first principles. I guess I proved that even professors make mistakes (do students really need that proven to them?) Oh, well. Another opportunity to learn.

First Day of Class

Yesterday was the first day back teaching after a year long leave. I felt a little rusty, but I'm hoping, like riding a bicycle, it will be something I haven't forgotten. The two classes I'm teaching are very similar in content, so I will have to be careful that I remember which topics have been discussed where. Combined, I have just over 100 students, so that will be a lot of names to learn. That is one of my goals this year, to learn the names of my students better. I think as I get older it gets harder.

Also different this year is having my own college age student. I can look out in the classroom and imagine my own son sitting in a similar classroom across campus. When I told him I was always a little nervous on the first day, he said, "Don't worry mom, remember they are more afraid of you than you are of them!"

cooking, eating, and obesity

I really enjoyed the movie Julie&Julia and would recommend it to all. I love Meryl Streep, and she is great as Julia Child. Since my area of interest is obesity, stories about food are always interesting. There was an interesting article in the NYTimes a few weeks ago about cooking and eating. Here is the link

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html

It is written by Michael Pollan who wrote the book "In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Delight." He argues that we need to go back to eating real food, things that we can actually identify, as opposed to manufactured and processed food. This fits well with Julia Child's desire to have people learn how to cook with real ingredients.

Over time there has been an increased emphasis on food that is easy to prepare and easy to eat. We have Campbell's "soup at hand" that can be prepared and eaten from the same container. We have bite size cookies, crackers, and other snacks. If this link still works, there was an interesting article in the NYTimes, feb. 12, 2006 "Twelve Easy Pieces" that discussed the need for foods to be "snackable" now to be marketed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/magazine/12apples.html?_r=1&scp=13&sq=february%2012%202006&st=cse

One quote..."True convenience now means being eaten with one hand, no utensils, outside the home and alone." As a sociologist, what does this say about our connection to other people? The use of mealtimes for social bonding?

Women's increased participation in the labor force becomes an implicit, sometimes explicit, culprit in these changes. Are there other possible explanations?