Observation of Madison Bertenshaws teaching

Dr Keith L Harms
Assistant Director, Professional and Technical Writing, University of Arizona

Perhaps Madisons strongest characteristic as a teacher is her constant striving to be better. In

her first year as a graduate student at the University of Arizona, Madison was assigned to be my
teaching mentee. We met weekly with a group of four other new graduate students, had weekly
pedagogy readings, and discussed our teaching. Though she came to the mentoring group with
far more experience than the other graduate students in the group, she was nonetheless open
to new ideas for improvement, which in my experience has been rare for other graduate
students with similar levels of experience. When I finally visited her class, it was a pleasure to
watch the effortless rapport she had established with her students, and the way they were
engaged in a grammar lesson, usually a very dry topic, in ways that I couldnt imagine getting
my own students engaged. I mention the effortless rapport I witnessed because from this, it was
clear that her experience that she would not have had to be open to learning from her less
experienced colleagues. Nonetheless, she was very open to hearing ideas they had about
teaching. Now, years later, the fact that she is taking the class for which Im writing this letter is
evidence that she is still open to learning and improving her teaching.

This semester, Madison asked me to visit her class in order to solicit advice in getting what she
perceived to be an unengaged class. What I discovered when I visited was that Madisons
students were engaged, but that she has very high standards for engagement in her classes.
While it was true that students were slow to begin participating at the beginning of the session,
by the end they were all very engaged in the discussion. Interestingly, the most active
participation and discussion took place as the topics of discussion got more intellectually
challenging. I think this is due partially to masterful pacing of the lesson and care to relate every
discussion and activity in the lesson back to previous assignments, lessons, and key
vocabulary. What I think is especially significant about his is that the class, being a class
designed for previously underserved students--and therefore a student population often unfairly
stereotyped as being uninterested in or not good at learning. Frequently, it is assumed that
these students are not ready to discuss such academic topics such as ideology and how that
shows up in public discourse. Madison clearly does not think that these students should be
condescended to in curriculum design. What is more impressive is that this was an off-
sequence general education course, meaning that some in the class had probably previously
failed the same course, yet everyone in the room participated and was fully engaged in the
more complex material covered in the lesson.

The suggestions I have for improvement of the class I observed are small. For example, there
were frequent activities where students were asked to write on the board. Im a big advocate of
this, and I encourage her to continue this. However, there was one student in the class who was
in a wheelchair, and who didnt have a chance to participate in these activities. I suggest slight
adjustments such as giving each group oversized paper which can then be hung up on the walls
and/or board in order to allow this student to participate. I also suggest either putting instructions
for group activity on a slide thats projected on the board, or making handouts with the
instructions. During one group activity a number of groups were confused as to what they were
supposed to be doing until Madison explained it to them, and because multiple groups needed
explanation, some groups were sitting and waiting while she explained it to other groups.
Displaying or giving them instructions will not always completely eliminate confusion, but it will
mitigate it.

Overall, Madison is a masterful teacher, and I am happy to see that she has taken steps to get
even better by taking the class that I am writing this letter for. Its been an honor to both be her
mentor and to observe her teaching.