by Lynne Perri
Team-teaching: Its own reward
7:02 am in Journalism, journalism education by Lynne Perri
What I took away this week, as I did in 2008, is how rewarding it is to immerse yourself in a project. We, and our students in government, political communication and journalism, fanned out across southern New Hampshire to measure and study voter engagement and campaign organization. In the end, we also measured how best to work together.
We divided three days of class before heading north into our various areas of expertise. These were managed by each taking the lead in 90-minute and two-hour chunks, and we mixed up not only which person or guest speaker was at the helm but also the format. That way, lecture-discussion might precede a hands-on workshop on how to shoot video; a brainstorming session on story ideas might follow a guest who had covered the state and its quirky and important primary for more than 20 years.
We divided up logistics, too, from arranging guest speakers at the university and on-site in New Hampshire to coordinating our trips to various towns once we arrived for the field component of our semester-long class. We managed by renting minivans and working through possible scenarios about when to go to rallies, diners, bakeries, churches, shopping centers and schools so we could get a feel for life in the week leading up to the presidential primary.
Low-tech mixed with high-tech: We used paper ripped from flip charts to fill the walls of our newsroom, a hotel conference room filled with out laptops, cameras and school banners. We posted schedules and allowed students to form ever-changing various groups, depending on story ideas and longer projects.
Then, using Twitter, text-messaging , Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr, as well as creating our own edition of an online newsmagazine, The American Observer, we talked to each other and to our audiences.
This mix of technology and conversation was always informative and instructional. What I always end up liking about working with other faculty was true again — I learn from watching them work the room or change their tone of voice or respond to questions. I also put myself in the role of student easily, listening to a colleague as he or she uses paper or PowerPoint or one-on-one to clarify a topic.
I again found myself in the role of parent as well as a professor as I figured out how much slack to cut a newcomer to the topic or the assignment. Or whether a student’s cold meant a trip to the 24-hour pharmacy or just extra time to sleep in.
And, as I know from being a parent, sometimes the best conversations happen in the car. Our vans were our mobile classrooms, but they also gave us time just to listen, such as when four students jumped in and excitedly told me how they saw a high-profile politician, quickly figured out their approach and questions and then chased her across the lawn to try their luck with an interview.
These car talks about nerves and decision-making — recounting disappointments when someone made a mistake in his approach to an assignment or forgot to charge a battery on an audio recorder — became as telling as any prepared lecture.
And because I’m team-teaching, there are colleagues to share those moments with later, who, in turn, help shape the conversation about how to improve the class the next time around. In the end, team-teaching allows me to circle back and see what worked and what didn’t. And those conversations reinforce that I have five friends now to count on for the remainder of the semester.
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