No doubt all of us, with a few exceptions, face a challenge in making the material we teach relevant and compelling to a contemporary audience. I am a classicist. The following recounts my own struggle with the issue

Struck, Peter T

English

Kosmopolis

University of Pennsylvania
ScholarlyCommons
Departmental Papers (Classical Studies) Classical Studies at Penn
2-20-2007
Learning to Teach in the 21st Century
Peter T. Struck
University of Pennsylvania, STRUCK@SAS.UPENN.EDU
Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers
Part of the Classics Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational
Administration and Supervision Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Educational
Psychology Commons, and the Higher Education Commons
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/174
For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.
Recommended Citation
Struck, P. T. (2007). Learning to Teach in the 21st Century. University of Pennsylvania Almanac, 53 (23), 8-. Retrieved from
https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/174
Learning to Teach in the 21st Century
Abstract
No doubt all of us, with a few exceptions, face a challenge in making the material we teach relevant and
compelling to a contemporary audience. I am a classicist. The following recounts my own struggle with the
issue.
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Classics | Curriculum and Instruction | Educational Administration and Supervision |
Educational Methods | Educational Psychology | Higher Education
This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/174
ALMANAC  February 20, 20078   www.upenn.edu/almanac
TALK ABOUT TEACHING AND LEARNING
This  essay continues the series that began in the fall of 994 as the joint creation of the 
College of Arts and Sciences and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching.
See www.upenn.edu/almanac/teach/teachall.html for the previous essays.
No doubt all of us, with a few exceptions, face a challenge in mak-
ing the material we teach relevant and compelling to a contemporary au-
dience. I am a classicist. The following recounts my own struggle with 
the issue.
Kids Today
As the ancient rhetoricians teach, first, know your audience. When I 
began teaching at Penn I had a sense that mine was career-minded. Un-
dergraduates had a tactical attitude toward their educations, they were on 
their way to their professions and so not terribly engaged in life’s un-
wieldy, large questions. In surveys of their attitudes that I remembered 
reading about in the newspaper the goal of developing a “meaningful phi-
losophy of life” scored poorly. Without exactly consciously deciding to 
do so, I had classified this as likely a fact, a sad one, that I could do little 
about.  It had to do with larger cultural forces, or some such thing, and be-
sides it was confirmed by colleagues and my own experience—you know, 
grade-grubbing and that kind of thing.  
But after some intervention, mainly from students (on which more be-
low), I decided to try looking at this as a hypothesis rather than a fact, and 
started paying closer attention. It turns out that in class, difficult, open-end-
ed questions about human existence, human society and the fundamental 
structure of the world actually were, on occasion, coming up and students 
were not, in fact, showing any particular resistance to thinking about them. 
They were perhaps even eager to do so. On the other hand, I was pass-
ing these openings by. Teaching my students to read Greek was challenge 
enough, after all, and for that matter I have no professional knowledge or in-
sight into, say, the meaning of life, but I do actually know a lot about Greek 
optative verbs, so isn’t it reasonable that I should just teach them that in-
stead?  Besides, I thought they weren’t here to get that kind of thing. 
Big ideas
Attuned to my own resistance, I tried to adopt a new habit of willingness 
to discuss big questions when they come up. And as it turns out, I sometimes 
can, actually, offer my students a forum in which they can think construc-
tively and rigorously on them. I see it when I teach ancient philosophy or 
myth, as one might think, but big questions are not missing from the more 
technical material as well (you’d be surprised at how often the Greek mid-
dle voice sparks a discussion of human agency). I no longer brush them off. 
An openness to thinking on my feet along with students about the broad and 
unwieldy sends the incalculably important message that wonder is welcome 
here, and I can report, with confidence this time, that the wondrous remains 
the most relevant thing on the globe (and from wonder come all I would re-
ally like to be able to teach: curiosity, respect, discipline, a capacity for em-
pathy, and an ability to embrace both doubt and certainty). After starting 
down this road, I have been struck by how much more I can do purposefully 
to produce an environment in which students are invited and encouraged to 
think about large questions, even to try to help them develop a meaningful 
philosophy of life, as someone might put it. 
College Houses
My conversion is entirely due to my time as a faculty fellow in the 
college houses. After some careful thought, my family and I moved into 
Stouffer College House where we lived for two years. Because I value pri-
vacy, I had to overcome some dispositional resistance. The privacy ques-
tion turned out to be a non-issue, and in the mean time I had the opportu-
nity to get to know some of the students and a few of them quite well. I 
gathered from this experience that I had been at some unarticulated level 
unfair to them. What did I learn? Impossible to convey with any granu-
larity, but the broad impression, drawn from countless examples of pas-
sions pursued for their own sakes, was that they were not in fact narrow 
careerists, but were leading vigorous lives. In case it helps, a few cases at 
random: there were the not entirely unexpected examples of the refined 
pursuits (amateur cellists, mezzo-sopranos, poets and novelists) the casu-
al examples of extraordinary discipline (a past life as a Buddhist monk, 
a 100–mile-a-week runner) and, not least, the inspired talents of the en-
tirely heedless variety (an all-night call-in radio show savagely satirizing 
the self-help industry; a character who occasionally emerged on Locust 
Walk, calling himself “El Diablo,” who did interviews for the Daily Penn-
sylvanian in cape, horns, and a trident; the untold hours put in by a cho-
rus member in the Law School Light Opera Company, which I don’t think 
was a resume-builder). The cumulative effect of a hundred such conversa-
tions over two years, meeting and listening to students speak of their lives 
(which none of them described as “extra-curricular”) even in the cursory 
way we did (we should have done more) made hash out of any predispo-
sitions I had unknowingly harbored about their impulses to explore, take 
risks, and look for lasting good in life. This new knowledge reoriented 
my expectations when facing a new group of undergraduates at the start 
of each semester. 
E.g., Assessments
In closing I offer one quick, concrete example of how this reorienta-
tion has changed what I do in class. Designing assignments and tests used 
to be a task for which one would need a micrometer to measure my inter-
est. The whole business was unpleasant, reminded me of the grading that 
I would have to do and the grade-grubbing my students would likely do—
in short, smacked of the instrumental side of learning that I found dispir-
iting. Somewhere between the cello and the Law School Light Opera, I 
started to look at it through new lenses, now untinted by my pre-conver-
sion suspicions. Right, so a lot of students care a great deal about their 
grades. If this were not taken as evidence that they are narrow careerists, 
it might mean only that they are highly motivated and value their perfor-
mance in my class. I also have complete and utter autonomy to devise the 
measures and means to evaluate their performance. Why not come up with 
a better set of evaluations? What if I could conceive of a way to test all 
the things I truly want them to learn? I haven’t yet come up with a way to 
evaluate someone’s capacity for wonder, but I don’t despair that I can do 
much better than I have been doing.  I am experimenting with a whole raft 
of what used to sound to me like buzz-words and bullet points—group as-
signments, role playing scenarios, real-world implementation of knowl-
edge (in my course on ancient magic), and project-based assignments that 
lead students to teach themselves and each other what they need to do to 
complete them. The default idea of midterm, final (and maybe a paper) 
has lessened its grip on my imagination. The improvement in the classes 
has been visible and (more important) ongoing. None of this has taken any 
particularly heroic efforts to achieve. In fact, from an entirely mercenary 
perspective, it has in the aggregate greatly improved the balance of drudg-
ery vs. reward in my own experience of creating and grading my assign-
ments, not to mention doing the student “follow-up” on them.
This is only one example.  My best advice on teaching?  You might do 
a stint in the college houses. My time there improved my teaching overall, 
even of Greek optative constructions—which after all is the mood that ex-
presses doubt and wonder—and I have found it easier to nurture my better 
angels, and to act on my belief that students are people for whose overall 
development and well-being I am in some part responsible.
Learning to Teach in the 21st Century
Peter Struck
Peter Struck is associate professor of Classical Studies and a recipient of the Lindback Award (2004).


Learning to Teach in the 21st Century

ScholarlyCommons@Penn

University of PennsylvaniaScholarlyCommonsDepartmental Papers (Classical Studies) Classical Studies at Penn2-20-2007Learning to Teach in the 21st CenturyPeter T. StruckUniversity of Pennsylvania, STRUCK@SAS.UPENN.EDUFollow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papersPart of the Classics Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, EducationalAdministration and Supervision Commons, Educational Methods Commons, EducationalPsychology Commons, and the Higher Education CommonsThis paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/174For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.Recommended CitationStruck, P. T. (2007). Learning to Teach in the 21st Century. University of Pennsylvania Almanac, 53 (23), 8-. Retrieved fromhttps://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/174Learning to Teach in the 21st CenturyAbstractNo doubt all of us, with a few exceptions, face a challenge in making the material we teach relevant andcompelling to a contemporary audience. I am a classicist. The following recounts my own struggle with theissue.DisciplinesArts and Humanities | Classics | Curriculum and Instruction | Educational Administration and Supervision |Educational Methods | Educational Psychology | Higher EducationThis journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/174ALMANAC  February 20, 20078   www.upenn.edu/almanacTALK ABOUT TEACHING AND LEARNINGThis  essay continues the series that began in the fall of 994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching.See www.upenn.edu/almanac/teach/teachall.html for the previous essays.No doubt all of us, with a few exceptions, face a challenge in mak-ing the material we teach relevant and compelling to a contemporary au-dience. I am a classicist. The following recounts my own struggle with the issue.Kids TodayAs the ancient rhetoricians teach, first, know your audience. When I began teaching at Penn I had a sense that mine was career-minded. Un-dergraduates had a tactical attitude toward their educations, they were on their way to their professions and so not terribly engaged in life’s un-wieldy, large questions. In surveys of their attitudes that I remembered reading about in the newspaper the goal of developing a “meaningful phi-losophy of life” scored poorly. Without exactly consciously deciding to do so, I had classified this as likely a fact, a sad one, that I could do little about.  It had to do with larger cultural forces, or some such thing, and be-sides it was confirmed by colleagues and my own experience—you know, grade-grubbing and that kind of thing.  But after some intervention, mainly from students (on which more be-low), I decided to try looking at this as a hypothesis rather than a fact, and started paying closer attention. It turns out that in class, difficult, open-end-ed questions about human existence, human society and the fundamental structure of the world actually were, on occasion, coming up and students were not, in fact, showing any particular resistance to thinking about them. They were perhaps even eager to do so. On the other hand, I was pass-ing these openings by. Teaching my students to read Greek was challenge enough, after all, and for that matter I have no professional knowledge or in-sight into, say, the meaning of life, but I do actually know a lot about Greek optative verbs, so isn’t it reasonable that I should just teach them that in-stead?  Besides, I thought they weren’t here to get that kind of thing. Big ideasAttuned to my own resistance, I tried to adopt a new habit of willingness to discuss big questions when they come up. And as it turns out, I sometimes can, actually, offer my students a forum in which they can think construc-tively and rigorously on them. I see it when I teach ancient philosophy or myth, as one might think, but big questions are not missing from the more technical material as well (you’d be surprised at how often the Greek mid-dle voice sparks a discussion of human agency). I no longer brush them off. An openness to thinking on my feet along with students about the broad and unwieldy sends the incalculably important message that wonder is welcome here, and I can report, with confidence this time, that the wondrous remains the most relevant thing on the globe (and from wonder come all I would re-ally like to be able to teach: curiosity, respect, discipline, a capacity for em-pathy, and an ability to embrace both doubt and certainty). After starting down this road, I have been struck by how much more I can do purposefully to produce an environment in which students are invited and encouraged to think about large questions, even to try to help them develop a meaningful philosophy of life, as someone might put it. College HousesMy conversion is entirely due to my time as a faculty fellow in the college houses. After some careful thought, my family and I moved into Stouffer College House where we lived for two years. Because I value pri-vacy, I had to overcome some dispositional resistance. The privacy ques-tion turned out to be a non-issue, and in the mean time I had the opportu-nity to get to know some of the students and a few of them quite well. I gathered from this experience that I had been at some unarticulated level unfair to them. What did I learn? Impossible to convey with any granu-larity, but the broad impression, drawn from countless examples of pas-sions pursued for their own sakes, was that they were not in fact narrow careerists, but were leading vigorous lives. In case it helps, a few cases at random: there were the not entirely unexpected examples of the refined pursuits (amateur cellists, mezzo-sopranos, poets and novelists) the casu-al examples of extraordinary discipline (a past life as a Buddhist monk, a 100–mile-a-week runner) and, not least, the inspired talents of the en-tirely heedless variety (an all-night call-in radio show savagely satirizing the self-help industry; a character who occasionally emerged on Locust Walk, calling himself “El Diablo,” who did interviews for the Daily Penn-sylvanian in cape, horns, and a trident; the untold hours put in by a cho-rus member in the Law School Light Opera Company, which I don’t think was a resume-builder). The cumulative effect of a hundred such conversa-tions over two years, meeting and listening to students speak of their lives (which none of them described as “extra-curricular”) even in the cursory way we did (we should have done more) made hash out of any predispo-sitions I had unknowingly harbored about their impulses to explore, take risks, and look for lasting good in life. This new knowledge reoriented my expectations when facing a new group of undergraduates at the start of each semester. E.g., AssessmentsIn closing I offer one quick, concrete example of how this reorienta-tion has changed what I do in class. Designing assignments and tests used to be a task for which one would need a micrometer to measure my inter-est. The whole business was unpleasant, reminded me of the grading that I would have to do and the grade-grubbing my students would likely do—in short, smacked of the instrumental side of learning that I found dispir-iting. Somewhere between the cello and the Law School Light Opera, I started to look at it through new lenses, now untinted by my pre-conver-sion suspicions. Right, so a lot of students care a great deal about their grades. If this were not taken as evidence that they are narrow careerists, it might mean only that they are highly motivated and value their perfor-mance in my class. I also have complete and utter autonomy to devise the measures and means to evaluate their performance. Why not come up with a better set of evaluations? What if I could conceive of a way to test all the things I truly want them to learn? I haven’t yet come up with a way to evaluate someone’s capacity for wonder, but I don’t despair that I can do much better than I have been doing.  I am experimenting with a whole raft of what used to sound to me like buzz-words and bullet points—group as-signments, role playing scenarios, real-world implementation of knowl-edge (in my course on ancient magic), and project-based assignments that lead students to teach themselves and each other what they need to do to complete them. The default idea of midterm, final (and maybe a paper) has lessened its grip on my imagination. The improvement in the classes has been visible and (more important) ongoing. None of this has taken any particularly heroic efforts to achieve. In fact, from an entirely mercenary perspective, it has in the aggregate greatly improved the balance of drudg-ery vs. reward in my own experience of creating and grading my assign-ments, not to mention doing the student “follow-up” on them.This is only one example.  My best advice on teaching?  You might do a stint in the college houses. My time there improved my teaching overall, even of Greek optative constructions—which after all is the mood that ex-presses doubt and wonder—and I have found it easier to nurture my better angels, and to act on my belief that students are people for whose overall development and well-being I am in some part responsible.Learning to Teach in the 21st CenturyPeter StruckPeter Struck is associate professor of Classical Studies and a recipient of the Lindback Award (2004).

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