As promised, more to myself than to my vast blog audience, here I am addressing the topic of office hours again. I enjoyed the reading(s) on the subject and found that although the intended readers is faculty and more of the more professorial type, there were many lessons to be learned from Elaine S. Barry's "Using Office Hours Effectively"

Below I pull a few topics from the article and relate them to my experiences.

Communication
From the article: "Remember that what you say first will set the tone for the meeting, and what you say last the student will remember. Make sure to communicate clearly, listening to and understanding what the student says and making it easy for the student to listen to and understand you. Beware of one-way communication — some faculty are so busy making sure the student is listening to them that they forget to listen to the student!"
--in particular the "what you say first and last" reminder above is a good one for me moving forward. For the most part, the office hours have been of the "get-to-know each other" variety. But I try to end them with some substance; talking about paper topics, or relating students' interests back to city planning and the course material. Starting next week, this tip will be more useful as we'll be in one-on-one office hours and talking more seriously about paper topics as well as commentaries.

How to Give Praise and Criticism.
"Do not forget to point out the positives. Be sure to identify strengths and compliment the students’ abilities and successes. For the most effective feedback, provide specific, focused comments about the behavior, not the person. Start positive, describe the behavior and situation, give reasons for the criticism, and end with what you expect (Hanna et al., 2008). For example, “Your first draft was well done. Your sources were appropriate and you cited them correctly throughout. However, there were several places that were unclear and disorganized with some repetition of ideas. This left me wondering what the main point of the paper was. Your paper will be much more clear if you reorganize it and take out the repetition.”
--I've employed a bit of the above in my responses to the weekly commentaries. I ALWAYS start with a positive comment; while this seems obvious, I also know from experience that the feedback I have received from GSI's and profs has started with or at least included the good, making me much more likely to be able to read the "bad" and be able to see the room for improvement.

This is another tip that I will keep in mind as we move to more one-on-one meetings.

Back to my own experience — yes, this blog very teacher-focused, but perhaps this outlet allows me to be more student-focused in section and office hours! One can hope!) I find that at the graduate level I haven't gotten enough constructive criticism in order to improve my writing and overall performance. I hope that by giving each student a suggestion or more (following a compliment on student ability, success, etc.) those who want to, can work to improve the quality of the assignments they turn in. At minimum, (when necessary) I provide a tip or two about engaging with the material so that each student can be better prepared for the midterm and final paper.

I think I have a defensive student in the making:
The article suggests: Be sure to discuss the student’s behavior or performance, not the student’s personal attributes (ex. “We need to work on your writing skills” rather than “you are not a good writer”). See “how to give praise and criticism” below.

The student in question was quite vocal in section and even lecture at first, but has in week 3 turned in a commentary calling the class, readings and professor biased, saying that none of the previously mentioned belong in the department or the field of city planning. Rather than respond directly to the student's assertions about bias and content I initially complimented the student on his engagement with the material, his passionate response to it and his improvement over the course of 3 assignments -- he turned in two assignments in week 2 and met with me as he has a pre-thesis class that has deadlines he needs to meet plans to use the paper in this class to satisfy those requirements. I also pointed out that the student was making assertions without necessary providing evidence, needs to continue to work on sentence structure and verb tense agreement, and I invited him to do more research about the department, the field the professor who is teaching the class and the author that he was attacking.

He has been much quieter in lecture and in section. I hope that he will engage more this week in section and I intend solicit his input in as indirect a way as possible. We'll have to meet again within the next week or two, so I can check in better face to face. As well, this and last week's lecture material were likely to have inspired a similar reaction in him BUT the professor has begun to make the case for why this material is relevant and necessary for those interested in working with urban communities. AND the task of the GSI this week is to continue to make that case. I look forward to seeing his next commentary! (Kind of... No, I do, but I have to admit the idea of not being able to have a real dialogue with students like him makes my heart rate go WAY up and makes me ponder just what it means to me to "teach." Hmmm, more to chew on.

Why do I think he will be defensive? I might be getting ahead of myself. Let's see what his commentary this week looks like...