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48 Duq. L. Rev. 499 (2010)
Would You Say That to Your Children - Enhancing Learning through Improved Communication

handle is hein.journals/duqu48 and id is 503 raw text is: Would You Say That to Your Children? Enhancing Learning Through Improved Communication Karin Mika* When I began teaching in 1990, I was twenty-seven years old, barely older than most of my students and much younger than some. I had a youthful appearance and demeanor that made me seem like a teenager. I was high energy, sharp-witted, and, simi- lar to my age contemporaries, relatively anti- establishment. I was far from an authority figure and tended to use the similarities with my students to my advantage as a teacher. For the most part, we grew up with the same types of parents in the same types of neighborhoods. We tended to watch the same television shows and listened to the same type of music. We were all familiar with the same movies and laughed at the same jokes. These similari- ties provided for an analogy and a Connection.' They served me well in the classroom. Fast-forward twenty years. Although I see myself as the same person when I look in the mirror, the reality is 1 have a twenty year-old daughter who is more connected to the interests of my students than I am. Instead of looking at me as a buddy, my stu- dents look at me as an authority figure-a person who holds their employment future in her hands. Even though I still see myself as a pal who can plop down beside any of my students and make jokes about professors or other topics of concern to college kids, such behavior would be about as inappropriate as the behavior of my mother trying to join in with my own group of friends when I was in junior high. The reality of the situation is that the age dif- * Professor of Legal Writing, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. I would like to thank my Research Assistant Matthew Harris and Law Librarian Sue Altmeyer for their invaluable assistance. 1. For discussions about effective teaching through connecting with students, see Kristin B. Gerdy, Making the Connection: Learning Style Theory and the Legal Research Curriculum, in TEACHING LEGAL RESEARCH AND PROVIDING ACCESS To ELECTRONIC RESOURCES 71, 74 (Gary L. Hill et al. eds., 2001); Mary Bernard Ray, How Individual Dif- ferences Affect Organization & How Teachers Can Respond to These Differences, 5 J. LEG. WRITING INST. 125, 130 n. 18 (1999) (noting that students must be able to relate newly acquired knowledge to their existing structure of knowledge); Anne Enquist, Critiquing Law Students' Writing: What the Students Say Is Effective, 2 J. LEG. WRITING INST. 145, 160-64 (1996) (noting that legal writing students demand explanations and examples in comments on their papers). 499

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