Saturday, June 04, 2005
Long time
The more time that passes between posts, the more trepidation I have about attempts to bridge that gap...that's what you call an undesirable positive relationship I guess.
Overall, life in Southern Mississippi has been treating me well. I survived the spring semester and wasn't even loath to leave the comforts of Minnesota when my return flight rolled around. I am presently enrolled in two classes for the summer semester, "Theories of Learning" and "Psychometric Theory." In addition, I am teaching a section of "Abnormal Psychology" to upper level psychology and education majors here at USM. I quite enjoy the subject matter and no one has fallen asleep in class just yet (mind you, there are only 30 students in the class and we've had just two classes together.)
The act or art of teaching is really much different than I had anticipated. I have given several presentations on a great number of subjects since arriving last fall and was anticipating that my teaching experience would be very similar. As it has turned out, I see as many similarities as differences. The most notable difference being that none of the audience members took notes in any of the earlier presentations I gave. Naturally, the students in my class are concerned with taking notes and as a result, they pay little attention to the quality of the presentation...in other words, they care little about the delivery. If I so desired, I could read my supplementary notes verbatim and I highly doubt more than 3 would notice. In fact, I'm afraid they hear little of what I am saying until they've written everything from the slides in their notebooks. In hopes of encouraging them to listen as they write, I have assured them that I won't be flipping through slides before they had finished writing.
In all honesty, what I would like to do is provide all of the students with copies of the notes before lecture. In the ideal world, this would free them up to listen, ask questions, and supplement the "canned" notes as they saw fit. Unfortunately, USM doesn't have the kind of money to allow me to make copies for everyone and if I were to post their notes online for the students to print themselves, well, then the only time I'd have a full classroom is on exam day!
So there you have it. The trials and tribulations of teacherdom.
Overall, life in Southern Mississippi has been treating me well. I survived the spring semester and wasn't even loath to leave the comforts of Minnesota when my return flight rolled around. I am presently enrolled in two classes for the summer semester, "Theories of Learning" and "Psychometric Theory." In addition, I am teaching a section of "Abnormal Psychology" to upper level psychology and education majors here at USM. I quite enjoy the subject matter and no one has fallen asleep in class just yet (mind you, there are only 30 students in the class and we've had just two classes together.)
The act or art of teaching is really much different than I had anticipated. I have given several presentations on a great number of subjects since arriving last fall and was anticipating that my teaching experience would be very similar. As it has turned out, I see as many similarities as differences. The most notable difference being that none of the audience members took notes in any of the earlier presentations I gave. Naturally, the students in my class are concerned with taking notes and as a result, they pay little attention to the quality of the presentation...in other words, they care little about the delivery. If I so desired, I could read my supplementary notes verbatim and I highly doubt more than 3 would notice. In fact, I'm afraid they hear little of what I am saying until they've written everything from the slides in their notebooks. In hopes of encouraging them to listen as they write, I have assured them that I won't be flipping through slides before they had finished writing.
In all honesty, what I would like to do is provide all of the students with copies of the notes before lecture. In the ideal world, this would free them up to listen, ask questions, and supplement the "canned" notes as they saw fit. Unfortunately, USM doesn't have the kind of money to allow me to make copies for everyone and if I were to post their notes online for the students to print themselves, well, then the only time I'd have a full classroom is on exam day!
So there you have it. The trials and tribulations of teacherdom.
# posted by Jude : 1:29 PM
Comments:
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What you gotta do, is what I do in my english classes, I give students an incomplete outline of a sentence, and then make them fill in the appropriate words. "The symptoms of neurosis are _____ and _____ and _____" That'll get em.
Of course, unless your students are actually brainless they'll find it demeaning. Fortunately for me, most of mine are (brainless, that is).
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Of course, unless your students are actually brainless they'll find it demeaning. Fortunately for me, most of mine are (brainless, that is).
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