‘The Main Event’: Promoting Engagement in a Gen Ed Course

American higher education has always stood out for its strong commitment to general education courses, or gen ed, the premise being that undergraduates should not necessarily jump directly into a major but instead have the room to learn and explore a variety of fields before choosing a particular path.

With that principled purpose comes a practical teaching challenge: Most students enroll in a gen ed course to fulfill a curricular requirement, not because they actively chose to take that class.

So how do teachers make the best possible case for a required course? And how do they make it a good experience for the students who may never return to the subject when the semester ends?

A professor at Boston College and regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Carlo Rotella has written a book that follows 33 students through his own general education course and explores answers to questions like these.

Key Topics Discussed:

• A description of the required literature course Carlo teaches at Boston College and why he chose to write about it
• How he uses the first day of class to attempt to overcome students’ skepticism
• Leading with the utility of the course, even when you as the instructor believe in the subject’s inherent beauty
• The distinct value to students of coming together to participate in a classroom with peers and an instructor and why that value only continues to grow as technology advances
• Strategies for getting students to participate, including working with those who aren’t as comfortable speaking during class
• Carlo’s approach to managing the flow of discussions, why he doesn’t fear silence, and thinking of what goes on in the classroom as “the main event”

Guest Bio: Carlo Rotella is a professor of English, journalism, and American studies at Boston College. He writes regularly for The New York Times Magazine, and his work has appeared in a number of other outlets, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Best American Essays. He has written books about cities, boxing, blues, and literature and film, among other subjects; his latest, What Can I Get Out of This? Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics, was named a Forbes Best Higher Education Book of 2025.

Resources Mentioned:

• Carlo’s New Book: What Can I Get Out of This? Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press)
• Episode Transcript

Designed for Learning is hosted by Jim Lang, a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence and the author of several influential books on teaching. The podcast is produced by Notre Dame Learning’s Office of Digital Learning. For more, visit learning.nd.edu/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

(upbeat instrumental music) - Welcome to "Designed for Learning," a podcast from Notre Dame Learning. I'm your host, Jim Lang. (upbeat instrumental music) ( A unique feature of American higher education has always been the strong commitment that many colleges and universities make. to general education courses or gen eds, or sometimes called core courses. Students in other countries often focus on their specialties from their very first semester of college, taking classes that only lie in that narrow path, like History, or Engineering, or Chemistry. The premise of gen eds is that students should not necessarily jump directly into a major, but instead have the room to learn and explore a variety of fields. Case in point, I came here to the University of Notre Dame as a first year student, tending to major in classical languages, subject that I had loved as a high schooler, but I ended up graduating with majors in English and Philosophy, in part because of required general education courses. While these courses provide great growth opportunities for students, they can be challenging to teach with a few exceptions. Most students in a gen ed course are there to fulfill a graduation requirement, not because they actively chose to take that class. That means the teachers have to do extra work to convince students that the course will be worth their time. How do teachers make the best possible case for a required course? How do they make it a good experience for the students who may never return to the subject when the semester finishes? Today's guest has written a memoir teaching a general education course focused on a single semester. We're going to discuss how he thinks about in response to questions like these. Carlo Rotella is a professor of English Journalism and American Studies at Boston College. He writes regularly for "The New York Times Magazine." His work has also appeared in "The New Yorker," "Harper's," and "The Best American Essays." He's written books about cities, boxing, blues, and literature and film, among other subjects. His latest, "What Can I Get Out of This? Teaching and Learning a Classroom Full of Skeptics," describes what happens in the classroom. Welcome to Design for Learning, Carlo. - Well, thanks for having me. - So, tell us about "Lit Core." So, you've written this fascinating book that's almost like a biography of a college course, and it really resonated with me since I've taught a similar course for many years in Assumption University. It was called "Intro to Lit." And so before we get into the obstacles and successes of the course, so just tell our listeners about it. What's the course like? How many times have you taught it? Who takes it and why? - So, as it's called "Lit Core, Literature Core" at Boston College is the, you know, required. There's two required classes in English. One is a required writing class, and this is the required literature class. So, this is for most students, their first and last college-level literature course. And you know, there's many, many sections of it taught every semester by all kinds of people, from full professors to graduate students. And each section has its own reading list and its own theme. And the idea is to just get an introduction to reading, interpretation, and criticism of literature. I've taught it for years in various forms. At the moment, actually, I'm teaching a different version, which is for students who are English language learners, an MLL section. But there's, you know, there's various ways of teaching it, and, but almost everybody has to do it, and I think everyone should do it. You can place out, I think if you get high enough on your AP class, and I think that's actually not a good idea. I think everyone should encounter this class at some point. They either do it in their first or their second semester. - So, why did you choose this class to write about? - Partially because it is required, so that it's full of people who do not think of English as their specialty. Even if they got good grades in English in high school, they're often quite suspicious of both the mechanics of interpretation and the value of interpretation. So, it really kind of forces you as a teacher to reach way down into your chops to not only teach the craft of extracting meaning from books, but also to really explain clearly why we're doing this, what value it has, what the point of this is, and what you might do with it elsewhere in life. Which I think is a really good exercise. And you know, we're used to, especially if you teach graduate courses and advanced select is, we're used to sort of teaching fellow committed people. And it's good to have a class of civilians, basically draftees, if you wanna think of it that way. - Yeah, yeah. So, I know in the book you actually talk about your first day, and you know, see the, sort of walk, the book walks through the semester, right? - Yeah. - From start to finish. Of course, this was a semester in which the pandemic happened, so there's a big shift in the middle of it, and we could talk about that too. But, you know, you really talk about your first day of the semester, you sort of make that chapter about making the pitch to students. So, make that pitch to us like, you know, you're a, (chuckles) I'm a first year student in your class. I've been drafted in this class, as you say, and how are you convince me that this is a worthwhile endeavor for me? - Well, and as I said that, you know, so, I should just preface this by saying what I did is I interviewed all the students for a couple years, so mostly in their junior and senior years talking about their freshman year. So, it's not just, and we're not just inside my head, also, we can move around and be in other people's heads. And one of the things that really emerged from the interviews really strongly was the level of skepticism in the room, especially on the first day. And as I said, that skepticism about what the value of this is, but also skepticism about the mechanics of interpreting literature that these are people who got A's in high school English, but still kind of believe that the interpretation of literature is either magic or (beep) right? - Mm. - And so, and we're suspicious of people who talked a lot in their English classes, or resentful, or admire them, right? And so, we need to move on both of those fronts. So, on the mechanics front, it's, you know, to just demystify the whole idea that you need to be brilliant to do this. You know, if you can read, you can come up with an evidence-based argument for meaning in a text. So, it's about pattern recognition, about just noticing things to start with, noticing word choice, and imagery, and repetitions, and structure and all those things. And then connecting form to theme, basically, right? This is a class that could be reduced to three words on the craft level. Form expresses meaning, right? If you can get that, right, we can get somewhere. And then on the what's the value of this? That's the pitch that's really, we all do this and we need to do this as citizens, as workers, as people. We need to extract meaning from the world around us and build arguments for that meaning based on evidence. And we do this with, you know, as I point out, then we do this with the state of the union address. We do this with the state of our neighbor's yard. You know, like somebody's got a car up on blocks in his yard, he must not care about his neighborhood, right? We're close reading that yard when we do that, right? - Mm. - So, and to say like, you need to be able to do this, what things mean is extremely important in your life. And in fact, I would argue most people who have a career look at your job. The salary tells you one thing, but what that job means, which you can understand by close reading what you do all day and how people respond to you probably means more what it says about you as a person and what you're doing with your life, and what you mean to other people. So, it's sort of the argument saying, look, this is a basic human skill and you need to be good at this. And we're gonna practice on artifacts expressly designed to carry meaning, so we know it's gonna work, (chuckles) right? And then later in life, this is gonna be a lot trickier 'cause you're gonna be working with all kinds of other artifacts, right? But you already do this. You do this with the lyrics of a Taylor Swift song. You do this with like cryptical comments that your aunt makes about your cousin's shirt. You do this now let's get better at it. We got 15 weeks, we have 2000 minutes together. Let's get better at this. - Mm, yeah, and so, you know, when you think about the purpose of a gen ed class and the way you're describing it right now, we could focus on the sort of high level skills like interpretation, finding meaning in things, which actually sort of absence you from the actual subject of the course, like literature itself. - Mm-hmm. - Like how do you feel about that? Like, do you feel like, you know, is there something special about literature that, you know, draws you to it, that believes like you want students to actually keep reading literature after this? Or do you care - Yeah, right. - about that or not? Yeah, - So, I am aware of that argument and I believe that argument, but I tend not to lean on that argument that it will like, make your life more beautiful, man. You know, like, I believe that that's actually true, but I kind of try to argue from utility, right? So, but there is a argument specifically for using literature for this, that it's kind of a storehouse and a laboratory for trying out ideas. Now, the theme of this course was the misfit, the social misfit. All the books were about misfits. So, this is a chance to keep asking versions of a question that any 18-year-old is gonna be interested in asking, which is what's, you know, what's the fit between the self and the order the society this person is misfitted to? And how do you deal with that? Do you accommodate yourself to the possibilities or do you try to find a new set of possibilities, right? So, we're always asking what's the nature of the fit between self and order and what should be done about that? And that's an evergreen subject for 18 year olds, right? So, yeah, I do think that it, the fact that it's literature matters, but I also don't wanna rest on this sort of default setting that a lot of English professors have settled on, which is it'll make your life more refined or more beautiful, you know, even though I think that's actually true. - (chuckles) As I do. (laughs) Yeah, so, I agree with you on that one. But let's talk about the thing I really wanna focus on today, which is about student participation and engagement in a class. And there's a lot in the book about, there's a whole chapter about two particular students who, you know, had trouble engaging and participating. You talk a lot about it on your first day about why it's so important to participate and engage in class. And in fact, the theme of misfits, even comes up in relation to this as well. 'Cause you say at the start of the semester, "Listen, you might think that you're the one person who's shy about participating in class, but in fact, most of you feel this way, it's hard for you," - Yeah. - "to participate in class." And so let's think a little bit about why it's such an important value for you as a teacher, and how you make that pitch to them on that first day again. - Yeah, so, and this is sort of, you know, this is a version of form following function, right? Policies, the class policies should reinforce what's most important about the class. And so there's a whole argument for this, obviously, and I won't give you the long version, but the shorter version is what's unique and precious about college is increasingly the other people in the room. That's what you're paying for. You're paying for the admissions policy, and you're paying for the hiring and promotion policy. And that's it. Everything else, at least theoretically, you could do at home naked, right? Theoretically you could read books and watch lectures on YouTube about books or listen to this podcast, and you could have opinions that you fire off into the electronic void. You could do all that, but what you can't do is meet 75 minutes twice a week with a bunch of people who've all read the same thing and try and extract meaning from it by paying attention to this book and to each other. So, the two main policies, one is no devices in the classroom, everything's hard copy. And the other one is, in order to qualify for any grade at all, you need to be a regular contributor to our discussions. And that means, you know, we should hear from you at every class. Now, there were 33 students in this class, so that's fairly daunting. And they were very clear about that, that that policy made them nervous and it also made them do the reading. 'Cause as more than one said, "I didn't wanna sound like an idiot," (Jim chuckles) which is, you know, their great fear is that they'll sound like an idiot. So, and it's important to know, you know, various teachers do say class participation is important, and they say, you know, X percent of your grade is connected to it. But I think that makes it overly subjective. So, I take the other approach, which is just to set the bar very high, and all you have to do is get over the bar, which is to say, in order to pass the class, you need to be a regular contributor. And then I'm not gonna worry too much about whether you were great or okay, in class participation. - Right. - Yes, if you were particularly great, that helps you're grade. But the idea is to just move it up to, this is where citizenship needs to happen, is you need to be a participant. And it has all kinds of consequences, like doing the reading, but it also, even if you're faking it, even if you're pretending to be interested enough to participate, it does require you to ante up. You can't just sit there with your arms folded for 15 weeks and say, you know, impress me. You have to at some point put yourself on the line. And that does tend to lead to grudgingly or less grudgingly saying, "Okay, what are we talking about? What's the subject? What are we trying to accomplish? Fine, I'll participate at least a little." And it's that kind of buy-in that produces citizenship. And I love citizenship as a model for being a student because it comes with both obligations and rights. And that's why I really like it as a model for being a student. - And, you know, I, thinking back about the whole book, you know, I think two very sort of common themes are, this class will help you develop these skills of interpretation and finding meaning and form, but then also, you know, speaking and hearing your voice heard in class and engaging in these conversations being a citizen of the community, right? I mean, those seem like to me, like really strong values for you as a teacher, right? You're trying to- - They are, and they're getting, you know, only rarer and more precious as time goes on. I mean, weirdly, every educational advance makes face-to-face teaching and learning more cutting edge, you know, it's like MOOCs, then Zoom, then AI, you know, it's just putting more and more pressure on the face-to-face classroom as this place where you do something that you really don't get to do elsewhere in life more and more, you know? And so I do think that if you're in a room with 30, there's 35 people, there's 33 students, a TA and me, right? If you're in a room with 35 people, you're all trying to solve a problem together. You need to participate or else, you know, if this was your job, you'd be fired, right, if you didn't participate. But if you dominate, then you're gonna prevent other people from contributing, right? So, that it's this fairly complicated social interaction in which together we define a problem, solve a problem that generates a new problem, we move on to that problem, we get stuck, we back up, we go around. That's really an invaluable experience. And it's getting harder and harder to have that experience in any other setting, right? 'Cause we're, you know, the very large companies with a lot of money are really eager to push that whole experience online and it's very different online. So, I really think more and more that's kind of the value of the class. You know, my most important objective on the first day is to make sure everybody speaks, you know, if and only they introduce themselves, so that everyone becomes a person who has spoken in class as quickly as possible. - I love that the phrase you use, everyone will be in someone who has spoken in class, right? They're gonna become that person very early in the semester. - Yeah. - Now, we might think about the strategies that you use to do this. And so, you know, if I was expecting to, you know, read a memoir from someone who is, this is a real strong value for them, and they have all these little tricks and techniques they're gonna use to get students talking like, you know, the different active learning strategies, but you're more like, you know, kind of, I dunno, not so more like ad hoc, kinda like you just, you're working with students, and just trying to draw them out, and inviting students to talk, and just making it, I guess like a expectation of the course. So, tell me about that. In fact, I just was reading yesterday, which you're talking about using great small group work, which you say, - Yeah. - you use occasionally, but not that much really. And so mostly this is just like open discussion with students. - Yeah, exactly, and I am no virtuous of small group work. I have to admit, I should do it more. And I like it when I do it, but I think there's something about putting your hand up, and I don't go around the room, you know, and make people like you have to put your hand up. There's something about putting your hand up in front of all those people and saying, "I actually have something to say," you know? And so, but if I'm gonna require that, then it's also on. So, if it's on you, the student to have something to say, it's on me to really work with the whole group and say, this is how you generate something to say. Here, let's think about how you're actually gonna say it. And definitely it's on me if a student falls silent to work with that student to make sure that they get in the game. So, but you're right. I don't, I do say to the students, "It's on you to have something to say," and then I try to help them, - Yeah. - come up with something to say, right? And if they fall silent, then I've got a whole routine. I call them into my office and we talk about, okay, what's the problem? And it was interesting to hear what the problem is. Sometimes the problem is just, "I'm terrified to speak in front of people," but sometimes it's, "I can't time the conversation, you know, it's just going too quick," or "I'm always getting preempted by other people, or, "You know, I like to talk this way and not that way." And one of the things I do tell the class, I spend a lot of time in the fight world, in the boxing world, and I tell them in the fight world, they say, "Styles make fights," right? Which means that it, you know, it's actually more interesting when, you know, you have a puncher against a tactician, right? And it's like, styles make fights in a classroom too. So, do you like to ask questions? Do you like to answer questions? Do you like to go first? Do you like to hang back and counter? Do you, you know, do you like to help arrive at an agreement or do you like to undo agreements, right? Think a little bit about what's your optimal way of participating? And it is difficult for them. And I do feel for them. And I'm also, you know, the worst kind of zealot, which is I'm a convert, you know, I didn't talk basically from middle school through the end of graduate school. So, I feel their pain, but I'm gonna cause them that pain anyway. 'cause I think it's invaluable. I mean, I'll say that I have the job I have because I took a class in college and the professor made everybody talk. And that's why I ended up doing what I do. - Yeah. And I think, you know, so I'm the same way. I was a convert also, I didn't speak that much in class, okay, actually a couple seminars here and there where things, it was much smaller. But for the most part, I tried to keep my mouth shut. - And write good papers. - Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. (Carlo laughs) Right, right. But I feel the same way. In fact, you know, when I give workshops and lectures on teaching now, I always say my core values as a teacher, every voice matters, and I wanna hear it in the room. And I understand that people will sort of have a couple things that some of now give some responses that people will sometimes come back at that statement with. The first is, what about having people participate, you know, through like, you know, other forms, just by writing things down in their own notebooks, or, you know, emailing you afterwards. So, again, let's respond to that one first. - So, I do some of that. So, I do a weekly reading response, like 300 words. I don't grade it, it's just, you know, and it's just, as soon as you finish the reading, I have a prompt, and the prompt is totally based on having done the reading. There's no extra thinking required. It's just like a paragraph to kinda get your thoughts in order. It's due a few hours before class. So, I can quickly look them all over before I go into the room. And I make clear that that is not a miniature paper. That is actually more a formal class participation, right. So, that, - Okay. - so, everybody has that as, and it's also a good pump primer. I say, "Just feel free to quote your own paragraph in class." - Right. - Right? So, there's that, and, you know, and different students are different. And I also recognize that, you know, some people just need to talk a lot and some people don't say as much, and that's fine. That's why, I mean, that's why I made the point earlier about setting the bar more of a pass fail bar, instead of like, - Right. - you know, constantly myself subjectively judging the quality of participation 'cause it's different. And sometimes some, you know, person will just say one thing and it turns out to be really valuable and, you know, so that's harder to measure. - So, there's sort of like a baseline participation. Everyone will do that? This written expression before the class. - Everyone does that. - In each class do a prompt, yeah. - And then the other thing, - So, this- - the other thing I try to do is, especially when we start a conversation, you can just notice things, right? You don't have to have, - Right. - an interpretive point. You can just say like, "Well, this word, you know, I noticed that," or "This image showed up twice," or "I noticed the first paragraph is really long." You know, like, you really don't have to start with meaning. You can just start with, I noticed form. And that bar lowering, I think also gets people involved. 'Cause, you know, (indistinct) revealed that they suspect that what you really want is a fully baked interpretation of the text. And they don't believe that you're really saying, you can just notice something. So, you have to reinforce it when you hear it. Say, this is great, we're making a pile of these observations, you know, and then we'll work on the pile together. - Yeah, so, the other response then is, okay, there's certain students who really struggle with speaking in class. And you have a chapter in your book which addresses two of these students who were not speaking at all for their, you know, first several weeks of the semester. - Yeah. - And so tell us how you responded to Kathy and Colleen - So, that I have a kind of routine, which I had a lot of success with, you know, I don't know if it works for every single possible student, but it's worked pretty well, which is call 'em into my office, say, "Hey, listen..." You know, first send an email, you know, like, "Remember you are supposed to participate, if you wanna pass the class." Then call 'em into my office. We talk about it and we come up with a plan, you know, and the plan is usually, here's the first question I'm gonna ask on Thursday. Why don't you just write out a response? Just prepare something in advance. You can memorize it, write it out, whatever, you know. I come to class with notes. Why shouldn't you come to class with notes, right? And then I'm gonna call, you put your hand up, I'm gonna call on you first, and let's just rip the bandaid right off. We'll just get it out of the way. And think a little bit, do you wanna sit in the back row so that nobody can see you? Or you wanna sit in the front row so you can't see anyone or you happy where you are, or whatever. And then, and that generally tends to break the ice enough, right? Some people are so paralyzed that you have to take another page out of the basic, you know, behavioral psychology textbook, and you can actually just rehearse it in my office, you know, I ask the question, the student sitting there by herself raises her hand. I call on her, she answers it. I say, that was an excellent answer, let's do it again. I ask the question, she raises her hand. If you were in a band or if you were on a team, that's exactly how you would handle the problem, right? You're like, "Hey, we're just not getting the pick and roll, right? Let's just run the pick and roll 50 times," right? And or you know, this entry, the woodwinds are coming in too quickly, let's just work on measure 36, you know? And that really works, right? And that's just basic behavior modification, right. And what Colleen in particular said to me afterwards, so they both started participating in class because of this. And Kathy actually, when we rehearsed it and did it, and she spoke first, she put her hand up 20 minutes later. You know? (chuckles) - I remember that passage. Yeah in the book, yeah. (Carlo chuckles) - Yeah, and I had to resist, - You were- - running across the room to high five her, you know? (Jim laughs) But what Colleen said that really stuck with me is she said, "Look, you know, I'm also quiet in my relationships to other people, and speaking in this class led to me speaking in other classes. But I also learned that like, if I wanna have a conversation with someone, I can just say something at the beginning and then let them talk, and that just gets the conversation going." And look, Colleen wanted to be a teacher, you know? Speaking in class was the job she wanted to do. This was an, you know, an enormous hurdle. And it really was very little work for me. I sent her an email, we had a 20-minute conversation in class. I had a little note on my class note saying, "Colleen, if she raises her hand, call on her first," that's it. And, you know, it, you know, it's life changing for her as it was life changing for me to be forced to speak in a class. - Yeah, so, these strategies, essentially they're using are ones we can use to reach out to students who are necessarily don't feel comfortable speaking. And then help them - Yeah. - draw them into the classroom conversation. And we know both from our own experiences, but then also, you know, having many students have been through this process. It can have after effects on their college education. In fact, you talk about them interviewing them, you know, a couple years later and how they had changed, - Yeah. - And had learned to speak more in, you know, future classes, - Right. - after what you had with them, yeah. - Yeah, and, - Yeah. - and in general, that's part of a larger theme that came from the interviews too, which is the students' attitude towards their freshmen selves, when they talked to me was like, "Oh my God, I was such a rookie, you know, (chuckles) like, I didn't know how to do college." You know, and by the time they're juniors and seniors, they just have a much better sense of how to do this. So, I think it's important to remember when you're teaching freshman, you're also teaching freshmen, you know, how to college basically. And that's part of it is like, you know, you can just, you can say to them, "Look, speaking up in class, it's a great idea. You're much more engaged. Professors really reward that. If you do it a little, you can do it whenever you want to. It's just a technique thing." - Yeah, so, the idea of, again, you know, having these larger goals for a gen ed course or a core course, something like that of, you know, interpretation, participation and engagement. You know, trying to draw, - Yeah. - these students into these particular, you know, these values that are really important for you as a teacher. And I remember something you said in the book, which is, you know, it would've been so much easier for me to sort of let those students be like, you know, you talk about the idea that previously you would've said earlier in your career, students can do what they want. It's up to them to choose or to participate or not. But you had a shift at some point to say, you know what, (chuckles) no, actually I have a job here and part of my job is drawing them in. And so which caused that change for you? You know, in the course, - Yeah. - of your teaching career? - That's a many-factor analysis. But some of it is just getting older, having kids. My kids being of college age, you know? Oddly, now that I'm more than three times the age of a freshman, I have a better idea of what's in their heads than I did when I was just twice their age. You know? And that's in part 'cause of my kids. But also it's really important to add that this is not selfless. You know and I know that when you've got a class with like a couple of students who are really engaged and a lot of students who aren't, it drains your energy to even think about that class, let alone to teach that class. You're like, I would choose, - Absolutely. - these people again, you know? - Right. (laughs) - Whereas building community, you could just think of it for all the many reasons it's good for the students. You could think of it purely selfishly. There is nothing that makes teaching more joyful than having a genuine community of inquiry where everybody's anted up and everybody's engaged. You know, I think I say at some point in the book, what dictates the quality of a discussion in class is where the floor is not where the ceiling is. There's always gonna be two or three great students. And if there's two or three great students and everybody else is sitting there resentfully hating them in silence, it's a drag. Right, whereas if everyone's in and doing their best, you know, the class flies by, you come in with minimal notes. You trust them, they trust you, they trust each other. And you're like, "Oh, it's Tuesday again. I get to see my friends, my colleagues," you know? - Right, right. - There's an enormous difference. - Yeah. So, let's talk about two last things here. The first one is about the students who do speak a lot. And so how do you hand, - Mm-hmm. - that student that is just wants to jump in every time, - Yeah. - wants to talk a lot. - I mean, what do you do about that student? - So, I get asked that a lot. And it's not as big a problem as people seem to think it is. So, I mean, yes, there are students who wanna talk a lot and sometimes, you know, I've got this look that, and I'm sure you have one too, that look that you give a student when they raise their hand again that says, I appreciate you raising your hand again, but we're gonna wait (chuckles) and see, right? So, there's the people who wanna talk frequently, and that's pretty easily handled by calling on other people and by saying, "Okay, hey look, let's not get in the habit of always just waiting for Wilson to bail us out here. You know, he's willing, he's capable, but, you know, like let's, you know?" And I'll say, "Wilson, you understand of course?" And he always does, you know? So, there's that move too. But the more challenging one is students who take a long time to get to the point or who don't have a point. And there it's sort of, (Jim chuckles) I do have to, there I have to kind of vigilant ready to jump in and say like, "Okay, so, I think you're raising," you know, to interrupt them basically, and say, this is what your point is in order to move things along. Now, that said, there are times when a student will kind of be wrestling with something, and I think it's good to model that. You know, like student will say, she'll say, "I hate this character, I just hate him, you know?" And it's worth saying, "Well, let's just stop and ask how is the book a machine for producing your hatred of this character? Is it word choice? Is it the plot? Is it the diction? Is it what the character says? What is it you hate about this, you know?" And if it's like, "He reminds me of my uncle, okay, we can cut that short." Not that that's not interesting. And we can say, "Well, this is a readerly strategy to compare what you're reading to daily life." But if it says like, "Well, you know, like, look at this sentence." And you're like, "Well, there's two reptile images in that sentence, you know?" So, now we're talking about literary form, right? So, sometimes I will let a student flounder, if it's like good modeling of floundering and it leads to something. - So, the idea of, you know, the problem of the student who talks too much is not so much a problem if we've done all the preventive work at the start of the semester say, "It's important for everyone to speak." That's the baseline. - Yeah. - And this is a value that everyone has to sort embrace, and that student that has to, - Yeah. - well, then it's easier to go to that student and say, "Listen, more people need to have, you know, space in the room to share their own voices." - Yeah. - And so I think that that makes sense to me. - And you can also phrase that positively. You can also say, - Yeah. "Hey, listen, I noticed you're absolutely like, great on just jumping in at the beginning of the conversation. So, for the reasons that you just described, I'm gonna ask a favor of you. I want you to end it, I think it'll also help you. Like, let's think about doing a little more counter-punching. Like let other people start and then see and work on crafting your response from what other people have said, rather than, I know you're coming in with a lot of notes, and I know you're coming in with a well marked-up text. This is a useful skill and it will be a useful skill in whatever you do next," you know? - Yeah. And these these sort of like comments to students, I mean, it really comes off in the book, you know, you have this very gentle way of coaxing students into the classroom participation. And so it's really, it's wonderful to read all that. And last question here is a simple one. You don't fear silence. Why not? You don't fear silence in the classroom. - Yeah. It's not radio, you know, it's not TV. It's not dead air. We're not here to entertain you. So, I think a good ruminative silence is a good thing. And I also, I think we should not fear getting stuck. So, and let me add that students really fear silence in the classroom. - Yeah. - I mean, their greatest fear is that they will say something and then there will be a yawning silence in which no one says a word. And it's so embarrassing what they said that nothing can happen next, right? So, when we have a silence, I say, "Okay, are we stuck? Let's..." You know, since modeling is what we do best and it's most effective, like what do you do when you're stuck? What are we stuck on? What's the nature of the problem that we're stuck on? Do we need to redefine the problem? Do we need to go find more evidence? What should we do? And a nice long pause, it has that effect. And the other thing about it, and this is why I try to legislate the occasional pause, like every once in a while when I ask a question, I say, "Okay, on this one, how about everybody just like, jot down a couple thoughts for a minute," and then we'll continue, and that allows the people who have fewer or fast twitch, you know, mental muscles to, you know, who often have deep things to say, but need to cook it a little bit, you know? 'Cause we're always rewarding the quickest, glibbest, the people who hit the Jeopardy buzzer first, right? So, the other thing about a pause is it sometimes gets other people in the game, but it's not dead air. And I think that's really important, especially that's important for novice teachers, I think. 'Cause they're so, you know, what they do is they panic and answer their own question. And it's like the first pause is an opportunity for you to prove to the class that you are not hiding the answer behind your back. And it's like, well, if we're stuck, we need to get unstuck, 'cause we're not cowards and fools, right? So, let's get unstuck. Right? - Yeah. So, you just mentioned novice teachers. Let's finish with this, actually. So, this is a memoir, a biography of a class. It's not a advice book for teachers necessarily. But let me ask you, you know, sort of final thought about this engagement and participation piece. You know, what's your best piece of advice for a new teacher who's, you know, concerned about having participation in a course and getting students engaged in a like a discussion-based course? - Well, I do think that the first two weeks of the semester are the whole thing. If a student doesn't talk in the first two weeks, they won't. And if you don't prove that you are willing to wait. Right? In other words, it's sort of a trust fall. (laughs) You know, it's like I, you know, I tell them, "I do not have 75 minutes of lecture. And the thing that we're doing in here together is the main event, and the midterm and the final are about what we're doing with the text in class, right. This class happens in two places. It happens with you off by yourself reading, and it happens with us together, right? And the midterm and the final are about what we did in class with the reading. So, this is it. This is the main event. And I'm not a trial lawyer. A trial lawyer should always know the answer to any question they ask in cross-examination. If I know the answer, I'm just gonna tell you the answer, right?" So, and you know, I've taught some of these books before and every time I teach them, we come to a different understanding of their meaning because there's a different group of people in the room. And you gotta prove that. You have to show them that you are not hiding the answer behind your back. And that to me is the most important thing, you know? - Yeah, yeah. That's a great pitch. Okay, the book is called, "What Can I Get Out of This?" It just came out earlier this year, is that right? - It came out in September. - Mm-hmm. September of 2025. - Yep. - Yeah. All right. I definitely recommend it. A great, you know, sort of thoughtful reflection on a gen ed class, and so thanks for joining us today, Carlo. - Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. - You bet. (uplifting instrumental music) "Designed for Learning" is a production of Notre Dame Learning at the University of Notre Dame. For more, visit our website at learning.nd.edu. (uplifting instrumental music fades out)