Teaching Reflections: Week 2

by House Of Sims

This wasn’t my finest teaching week. I planned ahead and wrote everything down. But getting it from my notes to the students wasn’t all that I had hoped.

I sometimes talked faster than I should have. In my fear of not having enough time, I think I left out a couple of things that I didn’t mean to.

I caught myself being sloppy with notation. On more than one occasion, a student would remind me of a negative sign I left off or that I got an inequality wrong. I could be optimistic and say that this meant that they were following along and understanding enough to catch my errors, but I hate it when I don’t pay attention.

One similarity to teaching middle school was that when I reviewed what I had taught in my first class, I was able to correct my errors in my second class. I was able to look at what students didn’t get the first time and modify my examples accordingly for the next class.

I found myself falling into that bad habit of taking the first answer without ensuring that everyone got it. In my haste, I sometimes assumed that a lack of questions meant that they understood. In public school, you put their names on popsicle sticks and call on people randomly. I wonder if that works at the college level.

When I sometimes saw that look of “I wish this class would hurry and end!” I neglected to force that student to answer a question or demonstrate a response.

I know that a lot of this is the result of being out of practice. As the semester goes along, I’ll get a rhythm going. I also have to figure out where the lines are drawn in college. How much help is too much? Is there such a thing?

This part I like!