Teaching Seminars - Pedagogy and Potential - Gary J. Simson

• Citation: Vol. 63 No. 3
• Publication year: 2012

Teaching Seminars — Pedagogy and Potential

by Gary J. Simson*

I love teaching, especially seminars. In my many years of law teaching, I have taught a seminar in all but a handful of years, and in some years, I have taught two. My first experience teaching a seminar came in my very first semester of law teaching, and my most recent experience was in the semester that came to a close a couple of months

ago.

In this essay, I hope to encourage other faculty to reap the benefits of seminars for their students and themselves that my students and I have enjoyed. Although the selection of subject area for the seminar is important to the seminar's success, I have long believed that the choice of format is even more important. As a result, in deciding whether to offer a seminar for the first time and, even more so, in deciding whether to continue offering a seminar, I have been strongly influenced by my judgment as to whether the subject area is well-suited for the format that I have in mind. Before turning to selection of subject matter, I therefore first discuss, and spend most of this essay discussing, the ingredients of, and rationale behind, the seminar format that I have come to use. That format is not dramatically different from the one that I used early in my career. It does include, however, a number of components that I have adopted over the years to respond to perceived shortcomings and that I would like to think qualify as improvements.

I. My Seminar Format

The centerpiece ofmy seminars has always been the students' papers. Broadly speaking, the early weeks of the semester are devoted to discussing assigned readings that I have put together with the students'

* Dean and Macon Chair in Law, Mercer University. Yale College (B.A., 1971); Yale Law School (J.D., 1974). I am grateful to Rosalind Simson for various helpful comments.

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preparation of a substantial research paper paramount in mind, and the final weeks are devoted to discussing the papers themselves. Other than the class meetings devoted to discussing readings or papers, the seminar does not meet as a group. The seminar is structured in a way that the students do not start working on the papers until after the classes devoted to readings. To free up as much time as possible, within this framework, for the students to work on the papers, I schedule at least one make-up class early in the semester and at least one late in the semester. As a result, all the classes devoted to readings take place within roughly a three-week period at the start of the semester, and all the classes devoted to discussing the papers take place within roughly a three-week period at the end of the semester.

I typically begin the semester with five classes, each two hours apiece, in which we meet to discuss readings. The readings generally consist primarily of United States Supreme Court decisions that I have edited, but they also commonly include one or two lower court decisions, perhaps a statute or two, excerpts from law review articles, and a few brief transitional notes that I have written. As I explain to the students on the first day of the seminar, my principal focus in putting together the readings is the student papers to follow. In general, the readings are designed to serve two purposes: to ensure that the students have the basic background in the subject area of the seminar needed to prepare a substantial research paper in the area; and to stimulate the students' thinking about topics on which they would like to write.

I set aside the second hour of the fifth class for topic selection, but I begin to lay the groundwork for the topic selection on the first day of the seminar. At that time, I hand out a list of topics for consideration that I emphasize is intended to be suggestive and not exclusive. I tell the students that I will approve their writing on any ofthe topics on the list. In addition, however, I encourage them to think about the topics on the list as illustrating, in scope and ambition, the type of topics that I have in mind and that I invite them to propose.

On the first day of the seminar, I also tell the students that they are welcome to discuss with me at any time in the coming weeks any topics that they are considering for their papers. I make clear, however, that topic selection will be done as a group activity in the fifth class and that one of my objectives in that class will be to ensure a reasonable spread among paper topics. In keeping with that objective, I encourage the students each to try, during the weeks devoted to the readings, to identify as specifically as possible paper topics that he or she would be interested in pursuing. I tell them that, in the fifth class, I will begin the selection process by asking each student to tell me his or her first choice and then writing (or, in this era of computers and smartboards,

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projecting) everyone's first choice on the board in front of the room for all to see.

I promise the students in our initial class meeting that ifany ofthem signed up for the seminar with his or her heart set on writing on a particular topic, I will not deny them that opportunity. I underline, however, that the final weeks of the semester devoted to discussing the papers will be far more beneficial and interesting for everyone if they as a group are reasonably flexible about their topics. As I explain to the class, it is hardly uncommon in the group selection process for two students to lay claim to the same first choice topic or to two topics that substantially overlap. Moreover, at times, the problem of topic duplication or substantial overlap extends to more than one pair of students. As I further explain, it almost invariably has been my experience that, with a minimum of prodding from me and peer pressure from the class, one or both of any two students with matching or substantially overlapping topics have offered to pursue instead his or her second choice topic, and it would be my hope that the current group of students show similar flexibility.

As I tell the students on the seminar's first day, each student is expected to devote the ten to twelve days immediately after the group topic selection to researching his or her topic and preparing for me (1) an outline that sets forth in as much detail as possible the student's plan for the organization and reasoning of the paper and (2) a list of the principal cases, books, and articles upon which the student expects to rely. To facilitate the students' research and outlining, I e-mail each of them within a day ofthe group topic selection a short list ofsources that they should find useful in getting started. Having previously asked them to e-mail me the times during the week when they have class or other time commitments, I also send them at that point a schedule ofthe times two weeks hence at which they individually will meet with me in my office for about forty-five minutes to discuss the outline and list of sources submitted to me.

I typically spend at least an hour poring over each student's outline prior to the time that we meet to discuss it. As I tell the students as they embark on writing the outline, it has almost always been my...