CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

Thursday, May 8, 2008, 10:39 AM –
Posted by Gerry Hess

One of my colleagues organized a meeting of all the faculty members who will teach first-year students next year. The purpose of the meeting was for us to discuss our goals for first-year students and to explore ways to collaborate to achieve those goals.

I was hopeful. I was skeptical. My hopes and fears were realized.

Some of the meeting descended into faculty whining about students – indifferent work ethic, failure to listen, deficient writing skills, etc. I think these faculty members needed to get these comments out before moving on to more productive matters. The semester had just ended and my colleagues were feeling a bit of burn out.

However, I believe that my colleagues care about their students and work hard to be effective teachers. Much of the meeting reflected my colleagues’ commitment to their students’ learning.

We explored what level of analytical sophistication we should expect from students by the end of the first semester.

We agree that we needed to help students integrate their learning in their first year courses.

We discussed our obligation to give feedback to students in the first semester of law school and committed to giving a midterm exams (graded or practice) in October.

I left the meeting with hope. We had taken a small step to collaborate for the benefit of our students. We had reaffirmed the need for us to support one another’s efforts to help our students become effective lawyers.

Big changes start with little actions.