I am trying to digitize some of my written notes. I am too lazy to just type them up and save them, so I am going to put some here at the old blog.
The following is advice distinguished professors gave to TAs at a seminar.
1. Have a stage presence. Teaching is a performance.
2. Be prepared.
3. You syllabus should be a legally binding contract between you and the student. It should be a constitution. It might not be fair, but all students should be equal before the syllabus.
4. Know peoples' names.
5. Details are important.
6. Look nice and professional.
7. Be careful.
8. Always leave your personal problems at the classroom door, and do not take anything a student says or does personally.
9. Talk about what you know every opportunity you get. If you are doing research on a relevant topic, talk to the students about it. Teaching equals research and vice versa.
10. Never say anything important in the last five minutes of class.
11. Define what it takes to get a certain grade.
12. If it is important, say it at least three times.
13. Tear down the wall that separates most professors and students. They have to know you are a real person. Disarm your students unless you want to be fired at. (I know this is a bad analogy given the tragedy.)
14. Work with your best and worst students. The middle students take care of themselves.
15. Talk to colleagues.
16. Do not try to control students. If you do, you will fail.
17. Learn how to manage your time.
18. Many students do not know how to learn. It is part of your job to try and teach them how to learn. You cannot do this unless you know how to learn.
19. Sometimes you just have to survive.
20. The day before a class always have something "solid" in front of you.
21. Make your material relevant.
22. Be helpful.
23. Know yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses.
24. Make people stand.
25. If you have a talkative class, pick a fictitious person in the back to yell at.
26. Be organized.
27. It has to matter to you. Be passionate.
28. Understand your own insignificance. A bad class does not ruin a semester. A bad semester does not ruin a career. Do the best you can and do not worry about the rest.
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1 comment:
That's some really good advice. The thing that I always try to do when I teach is to let the student know that I care. It's important to stress that you're not there as an "obligation" and that they're not taking the class to fulfill a requirement. Find a way to get them to care.
You should care about what you're teaching and care that they're learning. Being a good teacher, I feel, is much more important the rest of the bullshit in academia. If you can get through to one student that's much more important than a publication in some mediocre journal.
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