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Sarah McMahon (History) on Teaching
Consultant Introductions
Learn more about a consultant, including some of their thoughts on teaching.
Joe Bandy
Rachel Beane
Deb DeGraff
Ed Laine
Sarah McMahon
Bill VanDerWolk
Enrique Yepes
I would characterize my teaching style and method as more structured than fluid, although I strive to make my classes and courses more flexible. In all of my courses-a mix of 200-level surveys that are era- or thematically-oriented and thematic seminars at the first-year, intermediate, and capstone levels-I begin with a detailed syllabus that designates the subject or theme for each class meeting and schedules the particular reading and writing assignments for that class.
In my 200-level survey courses, I have a prepared lecture which frames the regular class meetings. Within that framework, the class switches into a discussion mode-sometimes for either the first half or the last half of the class, and at other times, interspersed throughout the lecture-to discuss and analyze the assigned articles and documents. 
I also divide survey classes (generally between 25 and 35 students) into two discussion sections which meet roughly every other week to discuss the 6 or 7 assigned monographs for the course. In the discussion breaks and discussion sections of the survey courses, and in most of the seminar classes, the apparent structure is much more open and flexible than that of the lectures. Yet, at least in theory, an underlying structure remains. Each of my course websites has an online reading guide which gives students a series of questions to consider as they read and analyze the assigned texts for each class. Those questions implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, direct the discussions.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the writing assignments for my courses are formal essays-most often, some version of a critical analysis of a primary document-and all of the seminars culminate in a research paper, varying in length from approximately 5 pages for the first-year seminar to 25 pages for the capstone course.
My preference for structure serves my approach to the discipline. Since I do not assign history textbooks that would weave the various sources and arguments together, I believe that I need to accomplish this in class, either through a lecture or through some amount of direction in the discussions. Since most students, even history students, come into my classes with a fully-developed present-oriented perspective, my goal is to model the process of thinking historically-to understand peoples and places during a particular era, from the perspective or vantage point of those peoples and that era and place, and to apply critical thinking both to the "facts" of history-the material or content of the course-and to our reading and analysis of both primary and secondary sources.
My tendency toward structure also helps ensure, again at least in theory, that the assignments, expectations, process, and goals of the course are as transparent as possible. I have designed course websites for all of my courses, with links to course-specific reading and writing guidelines, to help guide students through the various assignments and to give them the best chance to fulfill the expectations and goals of the course. A number of students do not take advantage of these resources, but over time more and more students seem to find them useful.
For all my efforts to structure and shape my courses, I struggle with the recognition that I probably have too many goals for each class meeting and for the writing and research assignments. And I struggle over what I see as an inherent tension between a structure which I control and active student engagement in the course. In my efforts to seek ways to enhance or change what I do in my courses, I have benefited tremendously from discussions with colleagues in the various workshops on teaching and curriculum that the College has sponsored, especially during the last decade. Yet, in the end, I never stray very far away from my more structured foundation. I hope that my style and approach work in part because, while it contrasts with the more flexible teaching styles of many of my colleagues both in the History Department and in the College as a whole, it also complements those approaches.