Energizing the Classroom

College classrooms can be dull places. As an English major in the early seventies, I remember listening to college professors drone on and on, kept awake only by the ever so-slow movement of the hands of the large clock on the wall. That was part of the dues to be paid, the price of a college degree. No one questioned it. Now, as a teacher education faculty member at a large midwestern univer sity, I have found that regardless of content, the college classroom does not have to be agonizingly dull. Frame works for energizing it are embedded in the research on teaching in higher education (Eble 1976, McKeachie 1978, Perry 1985, Dunkin 1986), effective teaching (Purkey 1984, Good and Brophy 1987) and teaching as a per forming art (Timpson and Tobin 1982, Rubin 1985). Two basic themes for en ergizing the classroom may be gleaned from this literature: (1) social interac tion methods of teaching and (2) the notion of the teacher as performing artist. These two themes were incorpo rated into teaching an undergraduate education course and are detailed here.