I am going to delete the LSAT stuff for now, but will return if this paper flames out. Thanks for the comments.

Teaching 1Ls

The Ideal

Vision, Assessment, and Planning (VAP)

Teach For America, after investigating commonalities between successful classroom teachers, found that achievement is predicated upon (1) a clear vision of student achievement (2) plans aligned to that vision and (3) assessments that facilitate self-reflection while providing accurate information about student learning. VAP in the Classroom

To achieve high levels of student learning, a teacher must enter the year with a clear goal. He or she must know exactly where they are going and what their students will know and be able to do when they get there. Otherwise, the classroom becomes aimless or based on content coverage rather than student mastery. By itself, however, even an ambitious goal is insufficient. Strong teachers break down their goal into units, weeks, days, classes, and activities – each concentric circle aligned to the one before so that every moment is used in a purposeful, goal-aligned way. Finally, the best teachers recognize that assessments are useful, not only because of what they say about student learning, but also because of what they reveal about teacher effectiveness. Good teachers use assessments to improve their teaching.

Teaching as Leadership

This framework is not unique. It amounts to little more than applying fundamental characteristics of strong leadership to the classroom. When Eben says “all it takes to achieve a goal is to know exactly what you want to accomplish and exactly how to get there,” he is articulating the same concept. When Barry Goldstein prepares a class action lawsuit, he starts by thinking about the settlement he seeks and then traces back the steps required to get there. This is what leaders do. While this way of thinking is unnatural to some, it can be taught, developed, and mastered. One can learn to be a leader.

Current Practice

The first year program at Columbia Law School lacks teacher leadership.

I have spoken with each of my professors about their approach to teaching. Only one has mentioned concrete things they want their students to be able to do at the end of the semester. Vaguely, professors have articulated broad goals around critical thinking, speaking (listening is almost never mentioned), and information synthesis rather than concrete things students will accomplish. Their focus is on coverage of content not depth of understanding. Assessment is almost uniformly disastrous. Despite daily opportunities for informal assessment, syllabi are not adjusted for reasons other than time constraints. Where teachers should be determining student mastery and adjusting course, they are, instead, going through the motions of the Socratic Method, student by student, until they reach the end of their list. Calling on students is more an exercise in keeping us on our toes than in information gathering.

As for planning, the syllabi we receive are not roadmaps from ignorance to content mastery, but checklists covering various topics within a doctrine. We are taking survey classes as if they were Sunday drives: this is not mission driven education. Having students conform to a generic plan, rather than adapting instruction to student needs, prevents the majority of students from maximizing their achievement. The “read the next three cases in the casebook” approach to curriculum mapping is not mere laziness, but evidence of a misunderstanding of purpose. I am not saying our professors don’t care. Quite the opposite is true. Almost without exception, each of my professors have been truly interested in my learning. They want us to do well and they want to help, but they don’t seem to know how.

Excuses

Clearly, law school is different than high school. This is a professional school where instruction is designed to separate the wheat from the shaft and our professors are academics with research and writing to do. Fortunately, even if we accept those premises as true, much can be done to improve legal education in the first year. How can we get Better?

Improvement rests on teachers taking personal ownership over student learning. Therefore, Columbia must either (1) instill that mentality in all of our faculty members or (2) only allow those committed to student learning teach 1Ls. Either way, we must provide an opportunity for those committed instructors to align their practice with the teaching as leadership framework discussed above.

Quick Wins

First, I reject the idea that our professors do not take teaching seriously. Jack Greenberg, for example, doesn’t need to work another day in his life. He is here because he enjoys it. The same can be said about most (all?) of his colleagues. Faculty members are accessible, if not eager to assist, and already spend time preparing for class. Just as colleges and grade schools provide professional development, we should, in addition to opportunities for faculty to discuss current developments in the law, create space for learning about current developments in education. Armed with the tools necessary to improve student learning across the board, many of our professors would take the initiative to adapt their practice.

Second, the class curve masks teacher effectiveness. If every class has the same grade distribution, outcomes are not tied to teacher input. Instead, student grades should reflect how close they came to meeting ambitious classroom goals and they should be treated both as a reflection of student ability and teacher performance. Such changes would not destroy the school’s ability to differentiate student ability. Instead, it would ensure that every student reached their maximum potential while giving professors more precise knowledge about individual student achievement which they, in turn, could use to make judgments about a particular student’s work.

Conclusion

By aligning teacher practice during the 1L year with the basic principles of classroom leadership instruction will be more focused, student mastery will increase, and, therefore, Columbia will graduate more proficient lawyers. Since many (if not the vast majority) of the faculty already has the requisite desire to see students succeed, equipping them with the tools necessary to ensure such success does not present a major hurdle to a 1L curriculum focused on student learning.