It wasn’t until I described how watching Ian McKellen’s explication of Macbeth helped me recover from a lousy class session that I realized how often I turn to YouTube videos to process the ups and downs of teaching. Here are a few more of my
We all have had that lesson that has not gone the way we anticipated: we set high goals for our students, and whether because of delivery or circumstances out of our control, the lesson failed. We also struggle with failures as we aim to inspire
How will your class be different in 2024?
This article first appeared in the December 2011 issue of The Teaching Professor.
I can’t remember when it happened; I just know that it did. I changed vocations in 2003, becoming a full-time academic after being president of a heat treating company in Ohio.
I have a brown wicker chair on my back porch. It is nestled in a little nook, shaded by the overhang of my roof and the foliage of Douglas firs and oaks. My neighbor’s water features, two little fountains and streams, gently murmur. One
Every January, millions of people around the world resolve to do things differently. Some want to eat better. Some want to keep in better touch with friends. Others want to travel more. Many want to get more physically active. A lot of these resolutions
The animals went in two by two to be saved from the flood. To some students, doing poorly on the first exam is also a calamity of biblical proportions. A bad first grade is often nearly impossible to recover from if no changes to studying
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but when I was just beginning my teaching career, I had one clear goal on the first day of class: scare the living crap out of my students.
I’m exaggerating, but only a little. And while I’m tempted to say,
Like many college faculty, my first teaching experience was in graduate school. I was woefully unprepared to teach but blissfully ignorant of that fact. I had sat through three informal meetings on how to teach given by fellow graduate students who had taught a few
Books and journals on college teaching are chock full of best practices, compelling activities, and successful ideas for the classroom. These resources do help, but also helpful are experiences at the unsuccessful end of the teaching spectrum. I am referring to clinkers – those best
Magna Publications © 2024 All rights reserved