Katharine Fitzgerald

Dr. Thomas Dunn

675 - Pedagogy
Master Teacher Assessment - Dr. Carcasson

I observed Dr. Carcasson on Wednesday, September 17th, for his introductory deliberation
class. Before the class, Dr. Carcasson and I discussed what the history of his class was and his goals in
teaching it. He placed a great deal of emphasis on the practicality of deliberation and its applicability
versus the similar but different "debate" class setup. In particular, he was clear that he wanted the
students to understand that there may not be an objectively "correct" answer to any particular problem,
for which the common understanding of debate or public deliberation often does not allow. This sense
of applicability and an understanding of subjectivity on particular issues was very important to me. So
often through our youths, we are presented with a "right" way and a "wrong" way and those are the
only two options, and in our discipline of communication, this simply does not gel. There are too many
variables and individual opinions and viewpoints to claim a particular path is best for everyone, and I
greatly appreciated this acknowledgement and goal from Dr. Carcasson.
When in class, Dr. Carcasson was very familiar and flexible with his students as he handed back a
previous assignment, acknowledging he didn't have everyone's names down quite yet (something that
was reassuring to me since I was having trouble with that myself), making gentle comments and
suggestions individually as he set down papers, and then drawing the class's attention to himself as he
began to review and lecture for the day. He was very supportive in his comments and critiques,
especially on citing which seemed to be the problem issue of the day, allowing that he would be
generous in his grading of citation style, but also that proper citation was going to become more and
more important through college. This acknowledgement that the students might have no idea what they
were doing, but there were still expectations that they had to meet, was encouraging and yet firm,
keeping students from panicking that they did it incorrectly and instead giving them a chance to improve
without too much of a penalty.
There were a few tricks I noticed that were interesting and I will likely use in my own teaching.
For one, his having the students hold up fingers (1 through 5) to poll comfort level on concepts, rather
than simply asking/assuming everyone was okay with the material. This allowed students to be more
clear than simply a nod to avoid being singled out or the ambiguous grimace and hand waggle that I
have seen before to indicate not completely clear. Another example would be when someone asked a
definition question or a question based on a particular concept, he would begin by pointing out the page
number of the book where the answer could be found before answering fully, letting the students know
where the information was if they needed to look at it themselves or find more explicit details. This
demonstrated both Dr. Carcasson's familiarity with the material and his expectations of the students to
also be familiar with the material, without him explicitly having to state as much.

A few techniques that Dr. Carcasson used that I might not use in my class for my particular topic:
he lectured basically out of the book (a coursebook, it appeared? I wasn't quite sure what the material
was that the students were using, though Dr. Carcasson provided me with the relevant pages to the
lecture so I could follow along, which I found very helpful and thoughtful). The only reason I would avoid
this in my own class is the difference between the way the books for our two classes are laid out: his
book was basically an outline of the lecture, while the textbook for SPCM 200 is a bit more anecdotal
and reading-intensive, so making a PowerPoint or using the board makes more sense for me as a
teacher to draw out the relevant points. That said, Dr. Carcasson used the board frequently for examples
and diagrams, which was especially helpful in confusing concepts like the Toulmin Model, which some of
the students were struggling with at the beginning of class. The one downfall of the board was it
became crowded and overlapping very quickly, since taking the time to erase fully and redraw would
interrupt the train of thought, so by the end, it became something of a haphazard tangle of scribbles
with perhaps one emphasized drawing that had been traced over several times through the course of
the lecture.
Overall, Dr. Carcasson's class was a joy to sit in, even if I didn't have any of the prerequisite
knowledge of the class's workings for this particular session. He was friendly and open to questions and
examples, while still keeping the class moving and covering material in a thorough and brisk way. It was
almost like a conversation between him and the students, as he drew in their examples and projects
frequently to relate the topics at hand to their lives. He made the class feel important to living one's life,
which is really just my ultimate goal in teaching: helping people to make their lives better through
knowledge.