Good Advice From Our Main Man Boice: BDS
Sometimes Boice's advice is a little too Zen-like for me to easily palate. At other times though, I feel that his advice is practical and useful. This week's reading selection provided prime examples of both.
Chapter 4 falls into this later camp. Its theme is on how and when to best perfect one's stopping skills, but it offers little tangible instruction (other than to say no others' demands upon your time). To be fair, Boice isn't trying to give us an instruction manual, but the way he breaks down and presents his behaviorist perspective of what good teachers do correctly isn't in the most palatable format for those people who most need Boice's advice (new and prospective teachers).
Chapter 11 stands in sharp contrast; I believe that it offers a great piece of concrete advice. Here, Boice urges one to work in BDSs, or brief daily sessions, because “Writers”, he quotes Donald Murray, “write.” This is a suggestion I took to heart earlier in the semester, and while I haven't generated anything substantial, I've noticed that ideas stay fresher in my head and I can work with them more adeptly. It also is getting easier to just sit down and work as opposed to dilly-dallying around for twenty minutes while I gather the gumption. However, one trick of his that I have been less successful in is working at regular times, which at this point is unlikely to happen.
Matt, I agree that it's sometimes hard to swallow Boice's advice, or at least hard to figure out how to follow it. I, too, was frustrated by his minimal "tangible instruction" about how to avoid overcommitting my time. As a new professor, can I really just say "no" when asked to do extra work? Where's the line between avoiding taking on too much and dooming myself from attaining tenure?
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