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5 Teaching as Nourishment for Complex Thought Approaches for Classroom and Practice Built on Postformal Theory and the Creation of Community Jan D. Sinnott “Once Upon a Time . . . ,” or How I Learned to Teach More Effectively, Honoring Mind and Heart My (Mis-)Adventures as a Traditional College Professor When I was nearing the end of my Ph.D. program in Life Span Developmental Psychology, I did not think of teaching as “nourishment for life.” But I did think teaching was good for passing information on from the informed to the uninformed. This was how I had always experienced it. One day I had what I thought was a bright idea: I decided to create a course that our department did not yet offer, a course in my area of interest: psychology of aging. I talked up the idea to a fellow graduate student with similar interests. We were both interested but a little hesitant . We had acted as teaching assistants before, but that was very different from creating and teaching a new course by ourselves. I also should mention that this adventure occurred in that time long, long ago when there were no textbooks on the “Psychology of Aging.” This meant that we personally had to compile all meaningful material and summarize it in some reasonable way before we presented it to students. 232 Teaching as Nourishment for Complex Thought 233 The idea was approved; the new course could begin. But, although getting the approval took considerable effort, the task of preparing for the class took even more. Being diligent, compulsive graduate students had paid off in our careers so far, so my colleague and I continued on that path. Articles and books and Xerox copies began to take over my house. And, having found all this information, we seem to have unconsciously sworn to use every bit of it! We would be thorough! We would present students with the whole picture of what was known about the psychology of aging! I apologize to those of you readers with any classroom teaching experience . I’m sure your anxiety is already beginning to mount. You know what is coming when professors, especially young and inexperienced ones, start to think like this, and it is not good for learning. The first day of class finally came, and it led to the first week and then the first month. Each class day I or my colleague would arrive with reams of notes and articles, and lecture, lecture, lecture. Rapidly! No bit of information would be ignored! Students wrote until their hands cramped and the board was full. But we lecturers felt great! We were doing a great job! The discussion of “death and dying” came near the end of the course, naturally. I gave my usual jam-packed lecture and the sound of notetaking instruments was intense. But toward the end of the class something very unusual happened, something that ultimately caused me to abandon my extensive notes: an extremely capable student burst into tears and said she had to drop the class. As she ran from the room I asked her to please meet me after class so we could talk. I was shocked. She did wait, and after class I talked with her further. Unknown to me, during the current semester this student had been the main caretaker of an older ailing relative who had just died in the last few days. She had not said anything about this significant experience when we’d lectured on caretaking or on cognitive and physical changes. But, upon reflection, I realized that, after all, how could she say anything ? We lecturers had never stopped talking! Now she was pouring out the whole story of the relative’s dying process and her experience of it. I knew what she was talking about. I had also been through some similar events, and we could relate to each other on that basis. But the thing that impressed me the most (in my role as a professor) was the richness she brought to the material we were discussing that day in class. 234 sinnott The studies had been interesting, but her real-life story was much more interesting. It made the conflicted feelings and the confusions generated by the real event of a death come to life in a way that a study report could not. “I just wish I could tell people what it’s really like,” she said. And I knew she was right, for many...

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