Jeffrey Alexander Martin

I recently wrote an introductory letter for a faculty position. Introductory letters are odd because in the end they're a sales piece, selling your own ability to aid the people and organization that you're introducing yourself to, and therefore you need to demonstrate that you can benefit them, and how you do that is a bit of bragging, which is an odd activity. Introductory Letter Concerning a Faculty Position           I’m in my final week teaching Introduction to Humanities for Muskegon Community College in Michigan. It’s been a good experience. Two classes in different towns, four days a week, mostly early college students, with a couple of older students, 35 in total. It’s been a fun experience and a successful experiment. It was an experiment because over the last four years my primary work has been as a local elected official. I’m finishing my term as the Dalton Township Supervisor in a couple of weeks. The township has just under 10,000 residents ...

Statement of teaching philosophy addressing current challenges to teaching history and/or political science to community college students. by Jeffrey Alexander Martin 14 December 2024 for Yavapai College Introduction The challenges of teaching are never small. Even the growing availability of information and advancing technology don’t alleviate the challenges of teaching, it just changes. In this statement I’m going to address four such challenges. Two of them have to do with technology, and two of them have to do with the culture and subject areas of history and political science. These will not be in a particular order of importance, and it’s worthy of note that this statement will be based on personal observations rather than academic research, although there is research occurring across all four of these topics. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Artificial intelligence is changing the lived environment for humans at a significant pace, with the foreseeable future appearing to be not...

I've been to a lot of events over the last 20 years. I've seen a lot of people work a room trying to get alliances for politics, sales for income, financing for business, employees for growth, allies for various kinds of battles, goodwill for their careers, approval to get hired, interest for dates, and connection to feel human. In observing myself, I'm odd in this respect, which comes as no surprise. I'll give an example to illustrate. This happened a couple of years ago at Acton University in Grand Rapids put on by the Acton Institute, which is a great educational think tank. Main speeches and presentations are conducted in a large room. There are also breakout sessions in smaller rooms, like classrooms. Many of these sessions are filmed to be put online. In the main room there's a professional cameraman. Almost no one talks with him. He's just a function, the guy that runs the camera, almost like another piece of apparatus. Many people are trying to do someth...

If you see someone drowning, it's probably not the best idea to yell, "Hey, you should learn how to swim!" Instead, you should jump in and drag them out. Or, throw them a lifeline. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to throw you a lifeline. Then I'm going to offer to teach you how to swim. Life is an emotional thing. Something good happens and you're happy. Something bad happens and you're sad. You don't want to be sad, so you get mad. We're full of emotions. If your emotions are too much right now, you need to grab ahold of something. Not with your hand, but with your head and your heart. There are three types of things you can grab ahold of. One, something you can create. You can build a bird house, write a poem, fix a car. Make something. Two, something you can experience. You can go for a walk, admire a painting, read a book, go out to eat with someone. Do something. Three, you can change how you view the world. Life is meaningless ...