Kevin McCarron, a lecturer in American Literature at Roehampton University, also works as a stand-up comic. In April and May, under the auspices of the English Subject Centre, he met with groups of lecturers in Sheffield and London, where he discussed what techniques can be usefully transferred from the comedy club stage to the seminar classroom and, crucially, how the daring lecturer can reduce some of the stress and time connected to class preparation. Surprisingly, McCarron did not advocate that academics become masters of the one-liner. To the contrary, he highlighted what these two professions share in common: both ‘have the ability to expose people to the big issues of life,’ he remarked. Both comics and lecturers need to think flexibly, though lecturers are hardly ever taught to do so ‘on the spot.’ By the close of the day, McCarron had suggested a number of ways we might improve our teaching practice by borrowing from stand-up comedy: stop opening class with administrative information – could anything be more boring? Save such details for the end of class. Place a very high value on your opening lines: start with something that will grab their attention – a provocative question always works well. McCarron’s ideas resonated with many new lecturers when he acknowledged the reason academics often over-prepare is because of our inordinate fear of ‘being caught out’ by a student and our scholarly sense that there is always more knowledge to be had ‘out there’ and it is our responsibility to get it. Such an approach could not be more wrong, we were told, because it confuses our scholar selves with our teacher selves. In the classroom, it’s not our job to have read a specific book; it is to help the students in front of us make sense of it.
Want to know more? View Kevin’s London presentation on our website’s Media Player (select events)
You can also read ‘Wisdom and Wit’, an article about Kevin and this event, by Tariq Tahir, published in Times Higher Education.
