Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Warming up to teaching

Here's what we need to do: once a week all summer long we should go into a room and pace around yammering for an hour without taking a break (audience optional). That way we'll be in shape for teaching when classes start in the fall.

I don't know about anyone else but I got winded in my class today. It was a lecture-and-discussion format in a big room where I like to wander around and wave my arms a lot, and by the end I was ready to lie down. My teaching muscles get flabby in the summer!

And it didn't help that the technology was cranky. The Smartboard worked in Monday's class, but today it was totally unresponsive. Naturally this was the one day of the semester when I planned to use PowerPoint, but I couldn't advance to the next slide without walking all the way to the back of the room and then up front again. Finally a student sitting near the computer console offered to advance the slides for me; otherwise, I might have simply collapsed halfway through the show.

Teaching provides a mental and physical workout and workouts go better with warm-ups. When will we start offering Teachersize classes? Lecture-robics?

No comments: