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Remembering John LaBeaume

I lost a friend this week.

John and I had known each other loosely since 1997. We got close just after the pandemic. It was a rough time, and I looked forward to seeing him. “Good to see you, man,” he’d say. John was a source of encouragement. He knew how to find the good in people.

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Teaching comparative electoral systems with a U.S. example

Would you like a more engaging way to teach students about electoral systems? The answer might be “yes” if you’ve been doing it with lecture slides. Compensation seats? Here’s a table of results from New Zealand. D’Hondt versus Sainte-Laguë divisors? Here’s the Belgian Parliament with either.

What if the lesson used an example students care about? What if it were interactive?

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How to fix a short paper

If you are a college student, this post is for you.

Is your paper longer than the word limit? Is your thesis statement just a list of points you plan to cover in the body paragraphs (i.e., “listy”)? Do you have a gut sense that the paper’s structure might be “off”?

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How to get better thesis statements from students

Giving feedback on student writing is an opportunity to think about teaching. One issue I see often is a weak thesis statement. This usually takes the form of a list of concepts rather than a straightforward answer to the question in a prompt. Students get here by writing body paragraphs in author-by-author fashion, “wrapping” these in listy thesis statements, then thinking the job is done. In short, students are writing body paragraphs to arrive at their theses — all while worrying about meeting some word count. I want to suggest the idea of a “definitions paragraph” as a way to break these habits. I think it can do so by getting students to think about the readings’ main points in an integrative way.

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