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Are You Prepared For Teaching Your First Course Essay

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Are You Prepared for Teaching Your First Course? BY KEVIN L. BENNETT So far, you have done a job. After several years of graduate school, your department has given you an opportunity to teach your very own college level course! Your imagination runs wild as you picture yourself performing mesmerizing oratories on the scientific method or the history of research on cognitive dissonance. There is a delightful synergy between you and your eager students who hang on your every word, applaud your insightful and witty comments, and commend you on exam day for a superbly crafted test that challenged their mastery of the material. As you lie awake in bed with nervous anticipation, you envision a scene from the movie Dead Poets Society …show more content…

One thing I like to do is to provide a glimpse at things to come by selecting a few examples of some of the “juicier” topics and explore them briefly. If you are successful, both you and your students will walk away from the first day feeling very positive about the course and excited for the rest of the semester. If you have never taught before how do you know you’ll love it and the class will too? Well, you don’t. But the singer Neil Diamond once said that even when he didn’t know the songs perfectly he would always perform them with devotion. This is what the audience tuned into. (O.K. Maybe you don’t want to take advice from Neil Diamond, but in this case it is appropriate). You will find that confidence and energy is self-fulfilling and it will lead to positive outcomes in the future. PREPARATION We’ve all experienced good and bad teaching. Set your sights on being a good teacher while you’re still early in your career. The single best piece of advice is to not leave class preparation until the night before. As a graduate student, this might seem impossible, but make it a goal. Depending on class size, course content, and room arrangement, you’ll have a choice between using the writing boards, overhead transparencies, or a projected computer screen. Of course, a minimalist approach wouldn’t use anything at all. I suggest starting out fairly simply, concentrating

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