Covering versus Uncovering Content

Now I already understand it's like look posts I'm saying verses and whatnot and I understand that these two things are not mutually exclusive or necessarily even combating with themselves. And yet at the same time, again, remember we're always challenging ourselves as teachers and what uh , and what we bring to the classroom and how we structured that classroom.

And so in regards to covering content or actually let's focus on uncovering content because Sean w you wanted to speak more directly about,

And this idea of this question of how much can I cover in a 16 week course, how much should I cover and how quickly do I have to move on from something maybe students are really excited about so that we can ensure that we're covering enough material.

And I think an advantage that I had early in my career was that I was given advice to not worry about that and to just make sure that in my mind, the way that I look at content coverage and especially a survey course, an intro course is that I'm both a recruiter and a representative of sociology. I'm somebody who's there to recruit people who find a lot of interest in the social world and researching it and studying and teaching and things like that.

But I'm also a representative of the discipline and in that way I don't need students to come away every single thing about sociology because they won't, they won't anyway, no matter what you do. Like you have your master's degree, don't know everything about sociology. I have my phd don't know anywhere close to everything about sociology and so it was like, why are we expecting our students to, to ex to know everything or to feel like we have to cover everything into space.

And so yeah, no, that's definitely important. And the research on retention is pretty clear that they're not going to keep a lot of that. After the summer or the winter break, right? But they do remember experiences and they do remember feeling like how like the emotional side of how they felt in the room. Um, and that can contribute to them wanting to persist and continue in education.

And while content is very important, especially if you're going to be a sociologist then , then we need to talk more, right? But if you're just taking this as a general ed course and I just need you to know more about the social world to make you a better nurse, to make you a better , uh , contractor to make you a better accountant, then that is just you.

You just need to know that sociology exists, what it does and what who sociologists are and how they think about the world and how they can help you be better informed about the world.

So uncovering content is not really about, not , not as focused on what sociology is and all of these different social institutions and realms of social life, but more about what it does, what sociology does and how it contributes to the body of knowledge of all of the other social science, social sciences, and other sciences. So that's really my approach to introduction to sociology and covering content.

Kind of like a blanket surface level, inch deep mile wide approach as opposed to this kind of going really deep with the basics. So then they have the tools to analyze any area of social life from a sociological perspective. Right ?

And you know , and here's the deal is that you can, you can figure out if , if you have more of a content delivery style or your classroom, if you have ever said this in a class now I'm not trying to shame anyone because quite honestly this is me when I first started, this is literally how I was teaching at the beginning. So I don't want people to come out this like come at me like I'm trying to shame people.

I'm literally saying it's like, look, as teachers we need to think about and think about how we can grow and do the things that we really want to do in a classroom. And not necessarily that all those things that I want to do in a classroom are not necessarily tied , wrapped around content delivery, right? So if you've ever said, this is the class man, we got into a really good discussion, but we had to move on, right?

We were, we were going real deep and then I had to stop it because x, y, and Z. It's like we , we

And by the end of the class I had only covered like, you know, out of like 15 concepts and terms and things like that. I'd only covered like three. And the students who were in the class, they were really frustrated. Some of them were really frustrated because they were like, okay, you got all this written up on the board but you only covered three things. And I'm like, Yo, I thought that was the best class ever. Which some students, they were like, Yo, that was the best class ever.

We went so deep and yet at the same time there was this pressure because of what was up on the board to get the content covered. And so , um, I fixed that. I fixed it in a really odd way of, I just didn't show everybody everything all at once. I'm just , I feel so old when I say this, this is the , um , with the overhead projector. And so I had my transparencies and so now only have like two concepts on each transparency.

And so now the students could write up the definition or whatever and then, but they don't see the whole thing that I'm trying to do. And so now they don't have that anxiety of Yo, we got to cover all this content and he stuck on this 15 minute, you know , dialogue with the students about, you know, how sexism happens in the workplace or how uh, how the , the last Avengers movie was actually really racist and this is and and whatnot. And it's like he , he was quote stuck there, right.

Which is, I don't feel like I was stuck. I feel like we were actually doing some really good, a really good deep dive into social logical analysis of, of things.

But because all that content was up on the board and because I was thinking that that's what I have to cover and how, and I had to cover every single thing that it really drove the way that I taught the class that I was really like content delivery and whatnot versus really just establishing a dialogue with students and trying to get them engaged in what sociology is, how we view the world, what benefit you could have. Well, what would you see if you use this lens? Right?

Because you know, it's like a think about it. It was like , um, all the different disciplines think of them as different types of lenses, right? It's like there's microscopes in some space, there's telescopes, others, there's monoculars and others. There's, you know, there's glasses and others and it's like, look, I don't want to tell you what to see. What I want to tell you is what these are , what these lenses are useful for. Right.

And so our social logical lens, we get to see these types of things. Right. And so, and so then for the content then it's not as important. Yeah .

And we see that a lot and when we, when we get into these rabbit holes and we get on these tangents, I think our role as professors, as instructors has evolved to a place where we, we always appreciate the, the facilitator who can wrap it all together, right? Like there's all these different discussions, all of these different contributions and this is how it actually connects to the lesson. That , right. That it's a very difficult skill. I think some people just do it naturally.

Um, some people we have to work on it, but when we're able to do that, then the students don't feel like we're just going off into places. Even when we have a plan and it feels like we know how the dots connect. If we're not connecting it for them, then they're going to feel that way.

Like we're , we're just going off and it feels like missed opportunities everywhere because when you say when you're getting into this discussion and it feels like you're getting off track, if you can't wrap it together and you can't bring it back to the lesson somehow, if you're not able to do that in the moment or you have difficulty with that overall students will, it feels like a missed opportunity because you're not, you're not going to be able to go deep into the discussion.

You want to move onto the next topic. So you're missing out on that deep discussion and if you stay in that deep discussion and it does it feel like it really materializes into something valuable for the group, then you feel like you miss the opportunity to cover more content. And so it's really, I think staying in a space as long as you need to and as long as it's relevant and as long as you are the students, having them connect the dots is always a beautiful thing.

I mean I've been off on some things where I'm lecturing and then all of a sudden I'm like, why am I talking about this? And a student will say, oh cause it has to do with socialization and how the family is our primary agent of socialization. And you were saying that this is how your family shaped you to do these certain things and have these certain values and beliefs. And I'm like, thank you. And then I know they are learning and they're paying attention. Right. Which is ultimately the goal.

Yeah. And so , um, and whatnot and you know, and when it comes to content delivery, right? It's like, look , um , again, this is, I'm talking about me, I'm not talking about anybody else and that when it comes to this idea of content delivery, we literally, if you focus just on content delivery, we're doing, I strongly believe that we're doing our students a disservice when we just focus so much on content, especially when they can get it from normally two different spaces.

One is through their, you know, their phone if that like, you know, like to the computer or whatever internet. And I understand it's like we can do better in regards to helping them, you know, find valid sources and false news or whatever it is that we want to call any of that. Right. But, but we're doing them a disservice because they can find content when they want it. Right? And , um, but the other part is that you also have a textbook, right?

And so if you're having them read the textbook with respect, cause remember I'm , I'm telling you, I'm not talking about anybody, I'm talking about me, right? It's like if you're having them read the textbook and then you're just repeating the textbook back in class, then what exactly are you doing? What , what exactly are you telling? Teaching are the students , right?

Literally to me it feels like, well you're teaching them that or you're , what you're basically telling them is that they , they can't read for themselves. Right? And , and, and so that the content is there, but you didn't understand it. And so let me explain it to you again, versus uncovering content and going like, okay , so what, what, what struck you? What was interesting in , in the textbook? Now you can go about it like that.

Or you can set up some things that you want to talk about in class and just really narrow it down to bandwidth, right? It's like, you know, chapter one for us and introduction to sociology, there's all kinds of stuff in there. What I normally focus on is sociological imagination and then like double consciousness. And that's probably about as far as I go and a whole bunch of things. But it's like go over in that enemy.

And after those three things though, if I get to anything else, great, but if not, well they already read it in textbook so I don't need to go over all of that again and you know, and we'll talk more about how that's actually functional and in my classroom, you know, with later podcasts or whatever. But I just wanted to drop that to everyone and just say like if you're having to read the textbook and then you go over the textbook again, well that's definitely a content delivery style.

And like I said, with respect, I would even say it's almost insulting for our students to be able to , to be in that space. As a matter of fact, students tell me that, it's like, Yo, all we do is just go over to the textbook. It's like, well, you know, all we do is just read over powerpoints that the students can figure out very quickly that the professor didn't even write themselves, that they got it from the t , you know, textbook , you know , uh , resources and stuff like that.

The teachers, and these are super long , uh , you know , powerpoints and all of this stuff that have a whole ton of content in it. And you're just sitting there as a student scribbling down things madly versus talking about anything , uh, of what's there. It's like you're literally going from definition to definition, concept, concept, and you're never going to very rarely going into a deep dive of , of anything.

And so, you know, so that's what , um , you know, it's like, as far as like uncovering content, I've been able to, to shift away from really, you know, like I said, covering the content and everything and just going into much more of a , uh , uh , a different of , uh , uncovering the content type of style.

I say acquiring knowledge, like trying to get more information in data or learning how to use new information in data in new situations, right? They always pick the latter , right? A couple of them pick the former and ask them why. And they say, well, because you're the expert and I want to hear it from you. And you know, we go through the whole thing of like if you read a thousand page textbook about riding a bike, do you know how to ride a bike?

And they're like, no. And I'm like, well we need to ride a bike. We need to get on the bike. Right? And reading the book would be really important too as a supplement to riding the bike, right? Right . But, but riding the bike would never be something that replaces the feeling of getting on there and being able to balance herself on two wheels and get going. And the same thing was sociology.

I told him like how odd I asked them , how odd would it be if you were in a sociology class for 16 weeks and you didn't talk to anybody, right? Like you didn't discuss these issues with the people around you that are in the same class learning the same content. Sociology is the study of people in groups where people in a group here. And so if we study ourselves, what w w what findings would we, you know, conclude what , what , what would we come up with?

We would really say that this is an effective way to do it. And so they say that acquiring the knowledge, I asked them, why didn't a lot of people answer acquiring knowledge, why are we going to use this space for that? And I said, because we could do that on our own. And, and that sets the tone. And so now it's not only about me trusting them to do the reading, right?

And it's not about me like trying to devise all of these different ways for them to actually do the readings and look for this stuff on their own. They came to that conclusion. So they're more likely to do it now and they're accountable to each other. Right. And so I think this is the beauty of flip classrooms, right? Where you have that content on the outside, that's the homework. Now you come into class to work, to actually solve problems based on the content that you've covered.

And also obviously my job now is to facilitate and to clarify and to give my perspective of someone who's been in the field over a decade. And I think that this is really, really important because as jobs evolve, I came from the newspaper industry, I used to print the newspaper. Okay. So I know about industries dying and being a part of that death and how it's a slow, painful process. And how if you don't see the writing on the wall or you choose to ignore it, you're going to suffer even more.

And so I look at that when I look at higher ed and I'm like a hundred years ago, you had to trust me as the professor. I tell you, this is how it is. You have to accept it passively, right ? Right . In a passive way. And now it's like, like you said, they look stuff up on their phone. If I say, this is the statistic of, you know, this is the rate of incarceration for this particular racial group. Yeah . They could call me out in 20 seconds and say you're wrong. That's not what it is.

And I have the source right here. Yeah . Right? So in that way , um, we now are in this state of evolution of like what is our job? What our job to me and to many of my colleagues, facilitating learning, right? Facilitating learning as opposed to purely delivering content. And that's not to bash anybody who is, you know, I have colleagues that are brilliant lecturers and I want to hear it from them. And, and I love their presentation style and that's a class that I want to be a part of.

But I know those people also do other things, right? They, so they , they, that's their main thing because they're good at it, but they also come at the students at all these different angles. And again, that becomes an equity, you know , um , an equity practice in that you're not just delivering content one way.

And so one of the routine assignments in , in most of my classes are these discussion Taz and everybody does the same reading or listen to the same podcast and reads a reading or everybody watches the same video, whatever it is. And they are to come to class with a written reflection paper. But in a group of six, they're all coming at it from a different angle. Meaning they each have a different prompt responding to the same reading and you give them that prompt.

I give them the prompt and it's a through F and there's structure in the prompt, but there's a lot of freedom in it because it's, you know, I wouldn't say vague, but it's open for them to do what they want with it. Right ? So let's say it's a through f students are assigned a through f. They never do the same uh, discussion task twice. They rotate. So if you did a this time, you'll do B next time and seen the time after that. And so a is summarizing the reading.

B is connecting the reading to other material we've already covered in class. C is coming up with three concepts , uh, three significant concepts and terms and then defining them as the author defines the terms, but then also putting your own , um , interpretation of or analysis or your reason for why you think these terms are significant to the overall theme of what we're learning that week. And then D is coming up with two discussion questions for your group, for this group of people.

But then you are also answering those discussion questions with your own responses. He is finding an outside article, news, our article, a scholarly article, whatever it may be. And then making connections between this content we're covering and this outside article that you found and it has to be relevant within four years. And then F is relating it to personal experience and that obviously is a fun one.

Um , it could be a fun one and it could be kind of a dangerous, yeah, it could be a dangerous one. So I always tell them, never write about things that you're not willing to share with F. Right .

And I also say if it's a really touchy subject, because I cover things in my class, like abortion and I cover really heavy topics and I say I all eliminate f for that particular discussion task and I'll say you can do d instead, which is creating discussion questions because I don't want anyone to share even voluntarily share those things. And maybe they felt kind of like they had to, even though I said you don't have to. Right . And so I try to be really sensitive to that.

But the main thing that I love about this assignment is they are all are accountable to each other. So they are more likely to do the reading. It doesn't get stale and boring, they say because they do a different task each time. Right . And then when they come to discuss these things, they all have something different to contribute based on the same material. So they not only do they get to share what they have, but then they get the key concepts reinforced .

They get these questions that they have to answer based on however they approach the material. They get these outside articles, they get a personal experience. So you know that in a two you could look at it from, you know, a student equity perspective is that like when people are sharing their experiences and they often do it with the discussion questions too . You're getting to know how this person in your class relates to this material in very specific ways.

And it may be in very culturally specific ways. And so there's an extra layer of learning there that isn't even coming from me or the content at all.

For me , um , the uncovering content , uh , is what I use is the stink called immediate, I call it a media analysis. And what I do is I give like a certain, like the students are responsible or the assignment is that the students have to find media, right? Whether it's uh, and regular stuff, not I , it's like I don't want them finding someone else's lecture about the sociological imagination. What I want them to do is apply a sociological concept to media that they see, right.

That they experienced themselves, that they watched themselves. And , uh , you know, one of my first like points of clarification for that is that, look, I don't want you finding someone else's lecture on sociological imagination. I don't want you to give me a Ted talk on sociological imagination or some other professors, a video on sociological imagination. I want you to look at the world that you live in, right?

It's like, I want you to look at that and I want you to look at a meme that you have or look at a movie trailer or a comedy skit or ideas . I saw music videos is huge. Huge is a huge like music videos, all this stuff. It's like you can do anything except don't do those. Don't , don't just tell me where the concept is, want you to analyze this content for this concept, right? And what not is.

So , uh , one of the , the , the things that we just got finished doing, I did this in class and I always model this behavior in class. I show videos , um, that, and then I break it down sociologically. But I always get the reaction first. I don't, I don't just jump in with the sociology stuff. I always say it's like, Hey, so what did you think about that video? And you know, I play a comedy skit. One of my favorite skits to play is key and Peele.

And it's Obama giving driving lessons to his daughter and how the white police officer pulls, pulls them over and he's about to give them a pass on running the streets or running a stop sign. And you know, the students are laughing at the end of it, right? Because , um, there's, there's this or the , the scene , the scene sets up to where Obama though , like I said, the white police officers about to give a pass. And um, but then Obama was like, Hey, you know what?

No, look, Malia needs to know what the consequences are of the, of the, of driving and breaking the law. And so, you know, treat us like we're regular citizens. And then that's when things take a turn. And the next thing that you see as the white police officers slamming Obama, you know, who's played by Jordan Peele up against the car, the car hood. And the, you know, the exit line is, this is not exactly what I meant, right? And the students are laughing, the students are laughing.

And I'm like, so what are , what are , why are you laughing? And I'm always, and as I dissect right what they're saying, it's like, look, it's, look, I have a styled , this might not work as well for your y'all as it does for me, but it's like I have a stall to such to where I can ask them those questions and get them to , to respond and then dissect what they said and , and them going like, oh, that's the , well , that's not quite right and, and what not .

And so I keep pushing, pushing, pushing, and then all of a sudden it's like, look, we're talking about master status, we're talking about chief status and ascribed status. That's what we're talking about. And then, you know, really focusing in on that space. And so then now they have the responsibility of doing that right on the , you know , over the weekend and coming back with their own media analysis, right? It's like they're gonna apply a concept to the media.

And you know, and break this thing down. And to me the best part of this and the student equity, right? It's like, because this is definitely about marginalized voices coming towards the center and the, the videos that people should give me. I showed them in class, I of course I don't show all of them. I select a few of them and uh , it's like a select 10 and then I only show like two or three.

It's like, that's just how my style goes and, but I'm always very purposeful about what I picked to show in class. And those marginalized voices now start migrating towards the center because now everybody's watching this video. Now everyone's analyzing this video and you know, it's like I've been so blessed to get some, some very real like very different images up there .

Like you know, Billie Eilish Eilish and Jesse Rayez , I got introduced to them before I even knew they were a big deal, but the students knew they were a big deal already, but I didn't even know who they were. And I got introduced to them in a classroom and then we really start breaking down what's going on in those spaces and all, like I said, all these voices are being pushed towards the center when before it would have just as easily been able to keep them on the margins.

And so when you have a , you know, especially like I said, people on the margins, like black and brown people, LGBTQ plus and all of that. And um , shoot, when I did my thing on the chapter eight, sex and sexuality , uh, sex, gender, sexuality, it was like over half the videos came in on sexuality and it was like, Yo, what time, whatever this happened to me in my class. Never. I would never spend that much time necessarily in just that one space.

But they gave so much information, you know , so much content that I was like, Yo, I gotta talk about this. This is what they want to talk about. And so that was the way of really bringing, like I said, marginal voices towards the center. So now you have to do it purposefully though because trust me, when I tell you, if you just try to put this on autopilot, you can still marginalize voices in that space. So you have to purposefully put the margins towards the center.

And so like I said, so the technique opens up , you know, the media analysis all by itself is not going to solve any student equity problems is how our challenges is going to, it's going to be how you use it. Right. And the heart that you bring to it when you use it,

We're done. Yeah . And I think sometimes we , we desire that in our classes, right? Like at the end of a semester. Like I just want that everything was in there, everything is good. Now I'm going to wrap a nice bow on it and it's perfectly packaged and we're done. And that may not be true to life.

Life goes on and those movies that we watch where, you know, it feels like you're in the middle of what's going on with these characters and then the credits just start rolling and there's something that like we're left unsatisfied. Right. And like you said, unsatisfied doesn't have to mean that we're UN happy though. Right, right . And it is a more realistic approach of like, no , we didn't cover everything. We didn't get all the things done that maybe we planned,

If you want to learn more about me or my open source introduction to sociology textbook, please go to Bruce hoskins.com in closing, I want to leave us all with a question. If you learned something today that you think would help close your student equity gaps, how long would it take to incorporate this into your classroom? A year , a semester, next month. Today, no matter the timetable , we must commit ourselves to becoming better teachers. Our students deserve it.

All of them, not just the ones that are good already.

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