Detailed Schedule
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Session 1A - Laying a Metacognitive Foundation for Growth in Law School and Beyond
Metacognition is, at its heart, about working to regulate yourself and your own learning. The idea of self-regulation and self-learning is an integral piece of what we teach law students, and what we do as lawyers. I have introduced a metacognitive process into my teaching this year, in which every student completes a pre- and post-assessment tied to the topics we discuss each week. I am completing my own pre- and post-assessment tied to the same topics, but from my perspective as a teacher. The presentation will be about why and how I have adopted and used this process, and what I have experienced both as an evaluator and a participant.
Session 1B - Diving, Not Cannonballing, Into A Case
Using analogies is a great teaching device to help new law students understand the process of legal analysis. By connecting lessons on critical reading, rule synthesis, and rule application to familiar experiences, law students are more comfortable with the process, more open to the challenge, and more engaged with the material. In this presentation, I will explore several analogies that I use in my first semester legal writing course, including my dive, don’t cannonball analogy, which reinforces the idea that students must read with a purpose.
Session 2 - Legal Writing as a Bridge to Practice: Teaching the Culture(s) of Legal Practice
Session 3 - Using Consistency to Improve Your Classroom Teaching
In reflecting on our years of teaching, we discovered that our best class sessions share a common set of teaching techniques, such as explaining the purpose of the skill taught, identifying its components, and using accessible language. Our presentation will identify these essential techniques, discuss their importance, and urge professors to consistently employ them in creating lesson plans.
Session 4A - How Failure and persistence Can Foster Professional Growth Within and Beyond the Classroom
This session will explore a unified schema for conceptualizing and teaching legal analysis across the first-year law school curriculum. To explain why he created the schema, Professor Rempell will review a series of projects he undertook over the past few years to try to address deficiencies in students’ writing and analytical skills. His narrative will examine the process of discovery through “failure” and persistence, weaving in many of the central tenets of learning theory and cognitive science that apply to the professional growth of both professors and students.
Session 4B - The Secret Life of Students: Using Feedback Dialogues to Prepare Students for Life-Long Professional Learning
Want to know what students do with feedback you labor over with care? The truth is pretty depressing: “not much.” Yet research shows strategically structured and implemented formative assessment and feedback opportunities are among the most effective methods for transmitting professional standards. In this workshop, participants will penetrate students’ “secret lives,” where students decide whether to engage and use professor feedback to improve their work. Then professors will explore how to influence over those decisions with pedagogically powerful feedback loops and use professor-student feedback dialogues as cognitive apprenticeships to enhance students’ capacities to evaluate their work with professional standards that stimulate professional life-long learning.
Session 5A: Starting with Me: Self-Regulated Learning for Legal Writing Professors and their Students
Session 5B - Make it Personal: How Personal Interests Contribute to Professional Development
In their presentation “Make It Personal: How Personal Interests Contribute to Professional Development,” Professor Whitney Heard and Professor Lauren Simpson discuss how passionately pursuing their interests outside of legal research, analysis, and writing has contributed to the evolution and enhancement of their teaching philosophies and course materials. More specifically, Professor Heard will discuss how her interest in parenting practices and child development has influenced her teaching, and Professor Simpson will explain how she has applied her passion for pollinator conservation and urban wildscaping to enhance student wellness. Time permitting, audience members will be invited to discuss how their personal interests have enriched their teaching philosophies and course materials.
Session 6 - Despacito: Applying the Principles of the Slowe Movement to Legal Education
This workshop will explore the benefits and challenges of applying the principles of the Slow Movement to education. The Slow Movement argues for a cultural shift toward a more thoughtful approach to life’s task, focusing on quality, rather than speed, in both personal and professional endeavors. The principles of the Slow Movement encourage techniques and practices that increase faculty satisfaction and facilitate a stronger, more supportive relationship between faculty members and with students. This non-quantitative approach discourages the notion of hierarchy and provides space for the faculty to interact collaboratively.