In the autumn of 1999 I was asked by the university, for a competition I was involved in, to write about my philosophy of teaching. Below is the explanation I wrote. I've put it here so students can get an idea of what I'm trying to do and perhaps get more out of  my courses.
 
 

All good teachers share the common elements of a teaching philosophy that hardly needs to be detailed: a desire to broaden students' horizons, challenge them, convey a sense of intellectual enthusiasm and excitement, develop a close and nurturing relationship with the student, and serve as an appropriate role model.

But good teachers also differ among themselves in their emphases and approaches.  Each good teacher has unique strategies and commitments that set him or her apart from others.  What is unique about my own approach to teaching?  Let me begin with the concrete and then move to the more philosophical.

First, the most distinct feature of my teaching is likely that I structure a very large part of each course around discussion.  To facilitate this, I teach all of my lecture courses on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  On Mondays and Wednesdays I lecture in a rather formal fashion.  But every Friday I hold what I call my "Oprah Winfrey" classes.  Although they are really more like a large-group Jim Lehrer News Hour than an Oprah Winfrey episode, each is meant to be an extended discussion of the lectures and readings.  Undergraduate and graduate students participate together, and I try to bring to the discussions the most provocative elements of the issues we are studying.  Consequently on these Oprah Winfrey days the students are animated, heated, bothered, argumentative, and, most importantly, very intellectually alive.  Members of the class are able to discover and articulate their own opinions on Fridays, while at the same time they are forced to refine and defend their ideas against those who disagree with them.  The students love the discussion portion of my courses, and on the SIRS forms they always mention the Friday sessions as the highlight of the semester.

One quarter of each student's final grade is based on their participation in discussion--so discussion in my courses counts as much as the semester paper, the midterm, or the final exam.  I'm convinced that different parts of the brain are used for reading and writing than for speaking.  A history class is not merely to train students how to write history in their future lives, but to teach them how to analyze historical problems as they speak with others in their roles as future citizens and voters.  Discussion is essential to undergraduate education.

Second, I have tried to employ at FSU the best parts of the teaching philosophy of Reed College, where I was an undergraduate.  Reed is a very intense and monastic liberal arts college of about 900 students, and it has a reputation for instilling in its students, in addition to a curiosity about ideas, an appropriate skepticism and iconoclasm. So I begin every course each semester with a talk to my students about the benefits of intellectual and historical doubt.  I tell them quite directly that my lectures are not giving them the gospel, nor are the authors we read, nor are their fellow students.  I encourage them to challenge what I tell them, to form alternative hypotheses, interpretations, and explanations, and to test their own creations against those presented in the course.  Students often rise to the challenge and bring to the Friday Oprah Winfrey classes their own developing ideas.  As a teacher, nothing thrills me more.  As a continuing student of ideas myself, nothing helps me more.

Related to this, I very explicitly have no political or cultural party-line in my courses.  It is a matter of principle and pride with me.  My students constantly tell me in SIRS and in person that I am one of the fairest and most judicious teachers they have had.  In a course such as the United States Since 1945, for example, ideological passions become inflamed.  Yet I tell students at the beginning of the semester that I want to convert them to no political position, but instead make them the most intelligent and articulate proponents of the position they choose themselves.  I want to make liberals better liberals and conservatives better conservatives.  I try to present both sides of every issue in my lectures and readings, and in discussions I defend (as devil's advocate) any position that has no students defending it.  I know that my own politics must filter into the class, but students have commended me on running a course in which students feel free to articulate, refine, and challenge their own points of view without fearing subtle repercussions.

Reed's philosophy also is never to underestimate the ability of bright undergraduates to rise to a challenge.  Following that belief, I try never to condescend to undergraduates.  It is better to teach them as though they are graduate students.  It is better yet to address undergrads as though they are your equals, as though together you are fellow students.  We only fulfill our worst fears about the talent of our students, only perpetuate their underachievement, by speaking down to them.  As Reed found, students rise to the level at which they are addressed and expected to perform.  That is a lesson I try to follow.