How to Teach College

A posthumous book by the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, sharing the strategies and secrets of an award-winning, fifty-year career as a college professor

“Not a few professors teach solely because they have to, to hold a position that lets them do what they really want to do, which is ‘their work’—their research, their writing. … Those professors miss the joys of teaching.”—from the introduction to How to Teach College

Widely known as the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen, who passed away in 2021, was a leading sociologist of race relations and a prizewinning college educator. With a teaching career spanning over half a century at Tougaloo College, Harvard University, University of Vermont, and Catholic University, Loewen taught the way he wrote: with creativity, humor, and a high expectation that students can handle the truth.

How to Teach College is an invaluable resource for professors teaching in increasingly fraught American classrooms. With a special emphasis on teaching students from diverse backgrounds and potentially controversial subjects, this posthumously published book comes to us in Loewen’s vibrant, original, and inimitable voice. In it, he offers advice from the epic (how to convey a love of one’s topic and motivate students to become lifelong learners) to the technical (how to design a syllabus, manage the classroom, testing and grading)—all drawing on firsthand anecdotes from his own courses on sociology and race relations.

Edited by Loewen’s son, Nicholas Loewen, a longtime high school teacher, and sociology professor Michael Dawson, How to Teach College is sure to inspire generations of teachers to come.

“How to Teach College is a 'cookbook' of over one hundred (I counted!) practical lessons, techniques, tricks, and gimmicks that Jim learned in his fifty-year career as a college teacher. It provides a clear road map that will make teaching easier, more effective, and more rewarding for students and professors alike. While it speaks directly to teachers, I hope that educational leaders at every level will read—and absorb—this brilliant, eminently sensible, and highly readable book.”—John Merrow, former PBS Education correspondent

This audiobook contains a supplemental PDF.