I'm the Teacher, You're the Student: A Semester in the University Classroom
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Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 378.12092
EAN: 9780812218879
ISBN: 0812218876
Label: University of Pennsylvania Press
Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 260
Publication Date: 2004-10-01
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Studio: University of Pennsylvania Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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What is it really like to be a college professor in an American classroom today? An award-winning teacher with over twenty years of experience answers this question by offering an enlightening and entertaining behind-the-scenes view of a typical semester in his American history course. The unique result--part diary, part sustained reflection--recreates both the unstudied realities and intensely satisfying challenges that teachers encounter in university lecture halls. From the initial selection of reading materials through the assignment of final grades to each student, Patrick Allitt reports with keen insight and humor on the rewards and frustrations of teaching students who often are unable to draw a distinction between the words "novel" and "book." Readers get to know members of the class, many of whom thrive while others struggle with assignments, plead for better grades, and weep over failures. Although Allitt finds much to admire in today's students, he laments their frequent lack of preparedness--students who arrive in his classroom without basic writing skills, unpracticed with reading assignments. With sharp wit, a critical eye, and steady sympathy for both educators and students, I'm the Teacher, You're the Student examines issues both large and small, from the ethics of student-teacher relationships to how best to evaluate class participation and grade writing assignments. It offers invaluable guidance to those concerned with the state of higher education today, to young faculty facing the classroom for the first time, and to parents whose children are heading off to college.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Delightful and Informative
Comment: Prof. Allitt's book recalling a semester of teaching a survey level US History course is the most entertaining and enjoyable thing I've read this year. I had some previous familiarity with his thoughts on academic subjects from several Teaching Company courses which he presented or in which he participated. All were quite good, but I found them generally orthodox, if accurate, approaches to the subject matter. In "I'm the Teacher" he shows a sharper critical edge, not to mention an abundance of dry British wit, each of which makes for entertaining reading while not descending to the "all my students are incomprehensible dullards" level. Nonetheless, Allitt implicitly delivers a powerful critique of American secondary education.
Although I've spent 7 years in undergraduate and post-graduate education, I must admit that I've had no idea of the professor's viewpoint, apart from that of a friend or two in law schools, given long after I graduated. In fact, as I read Allitt's book, I experienced a fair amount of guilt over my undergraduate attitudes, work habits and efforts, all of which were largely of the mediocre level of which he complains. Something, however, probably the efforts of the 4 or 5 excellent professors I had, motivated me to attempt continued learning and that pursuit is exceptionally rewarding in middle age. And that heightens the sense of what I missed by not being a better student years ago.
More significantly, "I'm the Teacher" led me to realize facts about the educational process nearly 35 years after I ended my undergraduate career. In particular, I feel embarassed about my lousy attitude and the frustration which that may have caused my most able professors and I can understand how a journeyman level of writing skills can compensate for all but the most deficient motivation. If Allitt's concerns were reduced to a single level of complaint, student writing would take the cake distantly followed perhaps by geographical ignorance. All in all, I wish that I either knew then what I now know (much better so, in fact, after reading this text) or at least had the maturity to intuit it. I'm not certain that this would be extremely helpful for a late adolescent about to enter college, but if I had a mature close relative in that position I would give it a try. As a matter of thoughtful reading for pleasure for adults though, I have no question about giving the highest recommendation.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A professor's reality show
Comment: Patrick Allitt's "I'm the teacher," has received strong reviews for its candor in addressing the challenges of teaching at the university level. Prof. Allitt combines a journal of his offering of one introductory course, together with his summary of a broad view of American history. He also includes the administrative duties that come with the position.
Allitt makes a good case for the social function of teaching a discipline and, as the title suggests, he has no sympathy for any approach to education that would diminishes the power relationships in the classroom that he carefully describes.
However, he does seem to miss one point: Why is it that US tertiary education is considered the best in the world? Allitt require his students to read vast amounts of material in original sources, although his course is supposed to be an introductory survey. If all the available texts in his field are as bad as he says, why doesn't he write his own (for exam like Gregory Mankiw, Economics, Harvard)? Allitt is Oxford-trained and seems to try to run his Emory class as if it were a nice little seminar at All Souls. Does he miss completely that Emory ain't Oxford and what students seek in a survey course may be a bit different that what he is force-feeding them?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Valuable account: one history class, one term
Comment: I liked the accounts of what Allitt admits is a topic rarely covered by academics: the day-to-day progression of one course taught over a semester. I envy his position at prestigious Emory; if he had taught, as I have and still alas do, at far less distinguished institutions, I reckon his report would have been far more discouraging about the lack of preparation and the dismal study habits of his students. Compared to the majority of American students and instructors, those at Emory enjoy a charmed life. He does acknowledge the limits of previous preparation among his students, of course, but he seems to forget that many students and faculty, not enjoying the privileges of being supported at an expensive and well-endowed private university, labor under far more cumbersome and challenging circumstances than he describes.
There was a disconnect throughout this book, as a result. Atlanta's ivory tower seemed to have cocooned him and his charges too snugly. I wanted to know about his research, his other courses, the load of work (he did have an FA) that he had to balance against his own family and personal committments, and how much of his day was spent on this one history course vs. his other duties. I had no real idea of his own specialty in history beyond a few passing remarks; while this was an introductory class in which generalities predominate, I still wished to find out about the more specific encounters he had, by contrast, with history in his other courses and research.
By concentrating on the microcosmic world of the one course, he does explore well the dynamics that ebb and flow over the weeks among students and between them and himself; his preparation of visuals and supplemental material speaks well to his diligence. His frank explanation of grading and evaluation also shows the pressures that any faculty member--even more for those of us untenured--must face when balancing a stated determination to enforce rigor against the end-of-term tendency to play mercy against justice! Not forgetting that the students expect, as "customers," a good grade as return for their hefty investment, of money if not necessarily effort and achievement.
All in all, this is an honest and entertaining study. I'm sure that he is a respected and popular teacher, not condescending to trying to be trendy or hip or snobbish. He knows his abilities, uses his talents, yet remains a bit distant from his students--which is as it should be, in his explanation. I would have wished for a wider look at where this one course fits into the larger career that Prof. Allitt has pursued within a very contentious job market and gained despite a brutal pecking order. This shortcoming aside, it would be a well-chosen book for college students to-be, faculty members, and those who pay for both: parents of the students, unprepared or otherwise, who enable and demand, if grudgingly for such unremunerative majors, such courses to continue.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lively discussion of potentially dull subject
Comment: After spending 20+ years in a classroom, I always wondered if other professors felt the same way I did. Allitt's book confirms that they do.
Allitt's book describes the progression of one class through a semester, session by session. We watch him prepare for class, lecture and answer questions. We learn how he writes exams and handles office hours, including some humorous encounters with "weepy" students. I love his "excuse file," which resembles my own, right up to the student's injunction to "reply as soon as possible." At times students unwittingly sound more like bosses!
I'm the Teacher should be read in the context of the author's specific circumstances. He's a male in a liberal arts faculty. I doubt that a female professor could get away with some elements of Allitt's style. He wears the same old jacket, year after year. He's demanding. At one point he "towers over" a student who dares to open a fashion magazine: "Put that away at once!" And he refuses to get involved with students' personal lives.
Female professors are expected to be nurturing and empathetic. For a contrast, read Gail Griffin's book, Seasons of a Witch, a vastly underrated book based on the author's experience as a professor of English and women's studies.
And in the business schools where I taught, students often scoffed at learning ("It's who you know that counts"), but we were much better paid.
To anyone seeking to understand academic life, Allitt's book offers a glimpse of reality on one dimension: teaching and dealing with students. But a professor in a university also faces endless committee meetings and political interactions. Allitt's life seems peaceful, almost idyllic. We don't see the challenge of finding time for research along with teaching and the ever-increasing service.
Still I enjoyed this book thoroughly. Allitt has a gift for storytelling and his enthusiasm for his subject is contagious. Readers not only get a taste of academic life. We gain a fascinating taste of Allitt's perspective on some much-discussed events of American history.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Genial Trimming
Comment: I'm the Teacher--the story of one semester's U.S. History survey course at Emory--is worth reading by any college teacher, rookie or veteran. Rookies may here find classroom techniques worth implementing, and veterans will enjoy making comparisons with their own classrooms.
Allitt is a lively writer, and his unwillingness to embrace easy, politically correct interpretations of American history increases the reader's confidence in his classroom judgment. (But what does it say about the current state of the historical profession when a first-rate teacher refuses to assign a textbook even though many of his students are so obviously ignorant of basics?)
Clearly Professor Allitt is a good teacher, one who does much more than "turn the crank" on the survey course. Nevertheless, he also makes plain the wearying aspects of his position, especially what he perceives to be necessary accommodation to the rudeness and irresponsibility of his overprivileged undergraduates. For despite the truculent-sounding title, this book exudes a genial acquiescence to the trimming of academic sails.
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