Great ideas presented clearly in this article/ interview: If students have already been exposed to, and interacted with the lecture material before they enter the classroom it would open up learning possibilities during those precious classroom contact hours.
The path to improved performance in teaching does not lie in excusing one’s shortcomings as beyond influence.
Milton Hildebrand
Now is the time and place to vent your frustration and tell your story. What was the instance of unfairness you had? How did you deal with it?
tell us, we want all the details so that we can aviod it in the future :)
Ideas of fairness are philosophically complex at times. If you are so inclined, please share your philosophy of fairness.
What is the most memorable small group activtity that you had in your educational career? What about it made it meanigful and memorable? Did it help with understanding the course, or was it an icebreaker activity? Please share it so that creative teacher's ideas can have a greater impact.
"The key to good teaching is to keep your ears open to new ideas"
~Kidneuro
An introduction is a wonderful opportunity to establish a personal connection, even if not through direct identification with the audience. Through providing selected information about ourselves, we create a vivid description of our personality. However, this information should be well-chosen for the context; thus, professor’s ‘mastery of six foreign languages’ can sometimes only intimidate me, while mentioning ‘cheese making’ as a hobby at best makes me smile and at worst makes me wonder if I’d be capable of learning anything from this person.
Even though sense of humor is highly appreciated by student audiences, jokes should be always appropriate. A striking example of how things can go wrong: in a small discussion group, the instructor once started a class by telling a following joke “I meet this person and he is genuinely upset after breaking up with his girlfriend. Why did you break up? – I asked, – She did not like me breathing on glass and writing ‘I love you’ over and over again…, – Why? it seems romantic, – I was doing it to her eye-glasses”. After telling the joke, the guy was highly amused with himself (with one other student laughing out laud) only to realize the angry scrutiny of the remaining eight students in the class – all girls in glasses!
A Surprising number of common jokes can personally affect someone in the audience, and one upset person will suffice to ruin the desired effect, is it worth the risk (?), even apart from showing disrespect to student diversity. If anything, the safest object of a joke is you. One of the most hilarious moments of my college life was a somewhat older and old school professor, who had a compulsory habit of repeating phrases for better recording by students and who told the following story once: “when I was little, a gramophone (a kind of phonograph) fell on my head, without any negative effects … without negative effects… without negative effects...”.
Another (often overlooked) resource is the introduction or even possibly, self-introduction of TAs for the class. It serves a purpose of putting a face to a name and gives the TA(s) an opportunity to voice their readiness to help and to establish a beginning of personal contact with students. Even more importantly, in my opinion, personal/professional interactions of the professor and TAs in front of students demonstrate an example and a possibility of teamwork, a valuable social and learning skill surpassing instance of a specific class.
~AS
