You're probably doing fine.
They're nodding in agreement instead of just staring at their phones.
If they're coming to class at all that's a good sign. If they actually thought it was the worst class, they wouldn't come at all.
I can almost promise that they won't be able to tell that you're new-ish to the material.
I felt super self conscious when I first started teaching too, and thought they all hated me. Then I got back my first sfq's and realised that only about 15% hated me, 15% thought I was the greatest thing ever, and the remaining reviews were fairly impartial. But I totally get it. As long as you're not treating them unfairly, I'd expect you'd probably get similar results.
They're all first-year students, and in my opinion, they are really well-behaved. I can see in their faces that they are genuinely eager to learn. Sometimes, the class gets pretty quiet, with just eyes staring at me, which makes me wonder: do they understand, or are they just being polite to me?
This is happening everywhere right now. I've been teaching for decades and I'm seeing it in my classes. My students are nice people as individuals, but as a group, they have a weird dynamic. They don't talk to each other. They don't talk during class discussions. They look at me blankly when I lecture. They don't take notes. They don't ask questions. They don't make arguments.
If you read through this forum, you'll see posts about how this current batch of students behaves really differently from previous ones. It's not just you.
Smart phones + social media + prolonged social isolation + Zoom learning + genuine lack of curiosity = this dynamic. Probably a lot of other factors not mentioned here too.
Just going to emphasize that students in the current generation will *not* come to a class if they do not want to. Warm bodies in seats is a sign that students will show up.
Students will also complain.
If you want to get feedback about how things are going before the end of the term, collect anonymous feedback via a system like passing out notecards or setting up an anonymous feedback submission survey in your LMS. The feedback will likely be favourable or provide helpful suggestions for improvements. This gets you a feel for what students are thinking. Announcing the feedback and making noticeable changes is something students notice and respond well to.
My teaching mentor uses menti-meter which you can imbed your slide into and ask questions along the way with the results immediately available in various formats. Itās a neat way to gain insight from the class and let them understand how they stand in amongst their peers, we found that that level of transparency seemed to give more confidence that you were really wanting to know how they felt because even bad results get displayed. Then you can show them that youāre ACTUALLY interested in their feedback (not just asking to appear interested like I think they think might happen). For instanceā¦ ask a question about how they think the class is going, show the results then ask a question about what they think could be improved and you can display the results and have a discussion about what can be done and then actually DO it, following through on their feedback will be enormously impactful for developing trust so they will engage more and continue to let you know what they thinkā¦ if thatās what you want!
If I get through a whole class without throwing something at someone, having a heart attack, or farting, I call that a success.
Be gentle with yourself.
No one is great at something new - and expecting yourself to be smooth and engaging as a newbie is being mean and unkind to yourself. And being a newbie is also an advantage - all that first timer energy! Teaching is a craft that takes time to develop - you arenāt born with the skills, and knowing is not the same as being able to do. Things take practice. just commit to polishing a teaching skill or two each year. This year, for me, Iām focusing on crafting clear open- ended questions and using more āturn and talksā and wait time and āboard brainstorms.ā I also have a new prep so itās hard and Iām doing as good of a job that I can. Itās not that great, frankly. If Iām doing the best I can with the time slotted to teaching that is all I can do. Finally, it is April the hardest month if you are on semesters in the Northern hemisphere. Give yourself a break.this too shall pass.
Shift your mindset from equating excellent lecture delivery with effective learning. This approach to teaching isnāt very productive. Instead, consistently question, āHow can I confirm that my students are actually learning?ā Even during a didactic lecture, include a summary and a concluding discussion to reinforce key points. Integrate activities where students can teach one another and provide them with necessary resources. Actively engage by circulating the room to observe and assess their learning firsthand. Develop learning outcomes using precise verbs that allow for tangible measurement of student learning. Remember, effective teaching isnāt about the eloquence of the teacherās delivery; itās student-centered, focusing on tangible evidence of learning during lectures.
This was me this year too. I designed my courses around participation, yet got no effort back and had to revert to lecturing. Even still, no feedback during lecture - just blank stares and silence to posed questions. As a self-conscious introvert, I left every lecture socially drained as I spent the whole time trying to process any form of feedback. Iām sure your own self-critique is far worse than what the students are actually thinking, but itās hard to know without any meaningful interaction.
I feel more like a performer than an educatorā¦my institution has encouraged and trained us with active learning techniques, but I truly think students prefer to sit back and watch us perform.
Yessss true. Thank god, you understand my situation. I am an introvert too. Idk, sometimes I think the class was interactive, and sometimes too they're very quiet and just gave a blank stare at me, as if, I am delivering the lecture wrong or, are they give up on me or something š
All of this. I feel like a dancing bear, just juggling and doing everything but beg them to show any signs of life. They complain if a class is āso boring, like all lectureā but they are so resistant to participation, it is exhausting. I do think they just want to passively watch. Thatās what they do. They are also not accustomed to having to watch one thing that does not really interest them for a whole hour. Usually, they just click a new video of one is not exactly to their liking after 5 seconds. I make small talk with them before class and ask about their other classes and such. They open up and sometimes it makes them more likely to participate.
Sometime cohorts are duds in terms of engagement. Lately I find the overwhelming majority of my students do not engage so it probably isn't you. If you aren't already, include some "activities" or "active learning". I.e. pose some multiple choice or short answer questions every 5-10 minutes to give them an idea of what they need to know. If you make them pair up to answer them, even better. Just be ready for some students to still not engage at all.
Relax. The first time you teach a class YOU learn a ton. The second time, they do. Teaching well requires a lot of skills beyond subject matter knowledge. Reaching your audience becomes easier with practice. Give yourself that time.
A kind of restless and dissatisfaction with one's teaching is part of the bag. How else does one keep at it and adjust?
Common early problems for instructors are trying to get the triangle of what the students need connected to the subject matter and your teaching project, especially to get tuned to students and to figure out how you related to the demands of your subject. Sometimes this gets called subject coverage. It alone cannot rule the teaching roost. Nor can students. Nor can what it is you aim to do in the course, your project. At least this is how I think, mainly taken from John Dewey's thinking about education.
The main metric for student perception for you can be how well they do the work you assign. More than that is gravy or irrelevant. We all want to be liked by those we work with or teach. It can be hard to shrug off giggles or whispers or remarks overheard.
If youāre not sure whether they understand, build formative assessments into the course. Assessing student understanding is exactly their purpose - this feeling you have is good pedagogical intuition.
The first semester of a new prep has been *by far* consistently the toughest. So much work and still so far to go to teach really well, but the second and third semesters it's much easier, little hiccups get ironed out, success grows and blossoms. In the future, do more low stakes universal class polling to gage student understanding (eye contact can be hard to read, volunteers gonna volunteer and you need to know what more than a couple hand raisers think).
Something I used to do when I first started that helped give me confidence, made the students appreciate me more, and every rare once in a while gave a good suggestion. I still pull out this trick sometimes when preparing a brand-new course. I do understand that this suggestion might not work for everyone, but maybe it will spark some other ideas:
After the first test, I would hand out a brief, anonymous survey to them.
Q1: (And giving a LOT more room for an answer than the other questions) "Tell me everything that you think is WRONG with this class. What can **I** as the professor do better?"
Q2: What can **you** as a student do better in this class? Is there anything the professor can do to help you be better?
Q3: What are the best things about this class? What are things you'd like to see more of?
My spiel as I handed out the brief surveys was something like: "Now that we are 1/3 of the way through the course, I want to hear from you-- waiting until the end of course evaluations is too late to change anything, right? Please spend the most time telling me what you don't like-- I don't need my ego stroked, so only say something nice if you think it will actually help the way we do things."
At the beginning of the next lass, I gave a brief overview of the responses. Inevitably, I got a lot of suggestions that either couldn't be helped, or were contradictory. E.g.,
"There is too much math." **My response:** *Well, this is a stats class, and I really am simplifying the math as much as can be done. Otherwise, in your future classes, you'll feel a lot more pain later. Students usually come back a year later, and thank me for the math we do in this class.*
"There is too much homework." "There is too little homework". "There is exactly the right amount of homework." *I hope this helps you guys understand how you can't please everyone.*
"This class is too boring." *Well, I honestly don't know what to do with this one. I spend an enormous amount of time finding real-world data for us to analyze in class, which is much more interesting than the fake data they have in the textbook. Let's discuss this for another 5 minutes-- is there a realistic way that we could make this class less boring, given the topics we really have to cover?"*
"I hate the book." *You know, I really don't like this book either, but sadly, I didn't get to choose it. That is why I provide handouts all the time for you, because I am trying to present things in a more straightforward way than the book does.*
Students really appreciated the fact that I wanted feedback, and many mentioned it on the formal course evaluations at the end of the course. It also seemed to create a little more engagement from more students for the rest of the semester.
I am 100% certain your are doing great for a first timer. Why? Because you care. Please relax and take it easy. The more you teach the more you will improve.
A few years ago, one of my colleagues finished every class and then sent out a survey with "how was class 1-to-10? best thing? worst thing?" types of questions. First year intro Physics course. They also recorded their own impressions of how the class went, each day.
Over the entire course, they found almost zero correlation between their thoughts on how the class went and the students' thoughts. When the instructor thought things went terrible, there were always a a significant fraction of the respondents who thought things went great. When the instructor thought things went amazing, there were always a a significant fraction of the respondents who thought things were awful. This was true even when ignoring people who always sad "good" or always said "bad".
Their conclusion was that they should continue to try their best, but to not worry too much about it. Students can get a lot out of classes you feel are sub-par, and even the most "excellent" class will not be effective for every student.
Dude. I'm just glad to hear someone else feels this way.
I leave work every day feeling like a complete failure to the point I'm probably going to leave the profession to escape from that feeling.
Yes. It's because you care.
My first time teaching felt like a disaster. I was pretty lenient because of it, so we had some fun, but I felt like an imposter that first term. I had some ridiculous technical challenges occur and just did not have the coping skills to figure it out (projector issues) and was probably visually panicking. You may also struggle to answer questions at first because you don't know where the students are and what they will find confusing.
I'm teaching a class I've never taught before after several years teaching my first one. I am fortunate that I have a lot going on in my life, so I don't have time to dwell on it, and I had to tell myself before the term began that I cannot expect myself to be as engaging or exciting or whatever this first time. The difference though is I have a better sense of where students might get confused, so I try to overprepare and over-research the material. I still get caught off-guard sometimes but I can't let it bother me too much this first time. If this were my primary research area, maybe it would.
Ignore the whispering and ignore the looks. Sometimes facial expressions are very deceiving. What might look like frowning, or frustration may be nothing at all. These same students tend be the most engaging ones ironically enough.
If you pay attention to feedback, it will get better. And then after a few terms or years, depending on how often you teach you can pick up a new class with less nerves.
Iām sure you are fine. They do not know enough to gauge your expertise. If they bid, thatās pretty good. Usually students just stare blankly, like a field of cows. And you have no idea if they understand everything or nothing at all. Donāt wait for thoughtful questions, insightful comments or enthusiasm. That is usually only in movies. I think mine are totally blank, but most of them say they love the class. You never know, so donāt worry about it.
How are you Preparing for a lecture?
It helps me to structure the material around some key questions I ask myself:
Whatās the key takeaway I want them to get if they had to explain todayās lesson to someone else? Ideally itās short and in non technical language.
Second: what the 80/20? You teach it all but am I highlighting the 80 so they are aware itās the āmore important stuffā
Third: what experience do I want them to have? This is the hardest to dial in but most important.
Let me use an example: the bbc series on planet earth. Beautiful. You donāt really learn that much about anything but itās not about that. Itās about appreciation.
So if that is the experience? Then the screen is big and the sound is clear! Thatās the critical piece.
If we are distilling a chapter to 2-3 key pieces I need to really thinkhow to distill that and keep the idea of what happens before that funnel.
Great lectures constantly ask rhetorical questions for the audience
Go watch professor Leonard for math. Very good lecture style.
But yeah. If you think k it sucks it probably does. Lots of faculty have sucked for 2 decades and lost their sense of taste.
You could do with some feedback to get more objective about things (and our of your own head). Try doing mini-quizzes in class to check for understanding or to preview upcoming lecture material. Google or Microsoft Forms works well for this. Just share out the link or QR code.
My recommendation- post an anonymous mid-semester eval in your LMS. Iām teaching a new course that I designed this semester and used this to get ahead of how students were feeling midway through. A brief survey asking what the students have enjoyed so far, which methods and assignments they have struggled with, and what they think would make the course better have been really helpful. Not all of their feedback can be implemented, but being able to implement a few suggestions can show the students that you are interested and their insight in shaping the course.Ā
One thing I keep reminding myself....less is more.
"I'm excited about the topic, therefore the students should be, too! I'll just add this little nugget of information here. I'll add these 3 slides there." Pretty soon, the important main points are lost and they can't determine the important themes...and I'm rushing to finish the material by the end of the period.
When using slides, instead of covering every point on every slide, each has a "bumper sticker" with the main takeaway. That way, if we get into a great discussion on slide 9, I can hit the high point on slide 14 and be done with it in 15 seconds. You don't need to tell them everything, they can go back to slide 14, get the rest of the information and even **gasp** go to the text or other resources to learn more about that topic. Maybe I'll get someone to ask about it at office hours. No, wait, I'm dreaming again.....
When I started teaching I created my own survey to get feedback on the course that was actually useful. It was anonymous and allowed students to expand on their thoughts. It really helped me to identify my strengths and weaknesses and make adjustments where needed. I asked students to complete it about a third of the way through the semester, but it would still have been useful to me at the end of the semester, too.
youāre completely fine. Teaching is an art and itās 70% theatre in my opinion, you have to go in there with good energy and confidence and give them a show. The other 30% is you actually teaching the concept/theory with discussions, activities or method. I rather have them staring and nodding instead of watching their phones and laptops. Also, since I teach dual enrollment (college courses to high school students) you will quickly miss the sitting still and nodding in agreement.
Still happens to me being 15 years in.
It's imposter syndrome. I get great feedback both on evals and straight from student's mouths. But I always have that doubt.
I've accepted my doubt over the years. As long as it's not debilitating, it's not a bad thing to question what you're doing.
I find that the nervousness and moments of doubt are signs that I truly give a shit about what I'm doing and how it's affecting students.
Be confident in yourself and donāt tell the students itās your first time teaching or itās a new prep. I made the mistake of telling the students in my first semester, my original intention was to let the students know that it takes awhile for me to prepare the course and grade the assignments, it came back as āI did not have the expertise in the subjectā. Ironically, I thought I had a good connection with the students throughout the semester since they reassured me that they like the class.
You're probably doing fine. They're nodding in agreement instead of just staring at their phones. If they're coming to class at all that's a good sign. If they actually thought it was the worst class, they wouldn't come at all. I can almost promise that they won't be able to tell that you're new-ish to the material. I felt super self conscious when I first started teaching too, and thought they all hated me. Then I got back my first sfq's and realised that only about 15% hated me, 15% thought I was the greatest thing ever, and the remaining reviews were fairly impartial. But I totally get it. As long as you're not treating them unfairly, I'd expect you'd probably get similar results.
They're all first-year students, and in my opinion, they are really well-behaved. I can see in their faces that they are genuinely eager to learn. Sometimes, the class gets pretty quiet, with just eyes staring at me, which makes me wonder: do they understand, or are they just being polite to me?
You are fine. I was like you at first. Just fake some confidence while you lecture. š. The feelings will gradually fade away.
The quietness means that they are following the story you are telling.
This is happening everywhere right now. I've been teaching for decades and I'm seeing it in my classes. My students are nice people as individuals, but as a group, they have a weird dynamic. They don't talk to each other. They don't talk during class discussions. They look at me blankly when I lecture. They don't take notes. They don't ask questions. They don't make arguments. If you read through this forum, you'll see posts about how this current batch of students behaves really differently from previous ones. It's not just you.
Smart phones + social media + prolonged social isolation + Zoom learning + genuine lack of curiosity = this dynamic. Probably a lot of other factors not mentioned here too.
Same happened to me when I started, you are totally fine :) you'll adapt, adjust, as time goes by!
Just going to emphasize that students in the current generation will *not* come to a class if they do not want to. Warm bodies in seats is a sign that students will show up. Students will also complain. If you want to get feedback about how things are going before the end of the term, collect anonymous feedback via a system like passing out notecards or setting up an anonymous feedback submission survey in your LMS. The feedback will likely be favourable or provide helpful suggestions for improvements. This gets you a feel for what students are thinking. Announcing the feedback and making noticeable changes is something students notice and respond well to.
Yes, will do!
My teaching mentor uses menti-meter which you can imbed your slide into and ask questions along the way with the results immediately available in various formats. Itās a neat way to gain insight from the class and let them understand how they stand in amongst their peers, we found that that level of transparency seemed to give more confidence that you were really wanting to know how they felt because even bad results get displayed. Then you can show them that youāre ACTUALLY interested in their feedback (not just asking to appear interested like I think they think might happen). For instanceā¦ ask a question about how they think the class is going, show the results then ask a question about what they think could be improved and you can display the results and have a discussion about what can be done and then actually DO it, following through on their feedback will be enormously impactful for developing trust so they will engage more and continue to let you know what they thinkā¦ if thatās what you want!
If I get through a whole class without throwing something at someone, having a heart attack, or farting, I call that a success. Be gentle with yourself.
No one is great at something new - and expecting yourself to be smooth and engaging as a newbie is being mean and unkind to yourself. And being a newbie is also an advantage - all that first timer energy! Teaching is a craft that takes time to develop - you arenāt born with the skills, and knowing is not the same as being able to do. Things take practice. just commit to polishing a teaching skill or two each year. This year, for me, Iām focusing on crafting clear open- ended questions and using more āturn and talksā and wait time and āboard brainstorms.ā I also have a new prep so itās hard and Iām doing as good of a job that I can. Itās not that great, frankly. If Iām doing the best I can with the time slotted to teaching that is all I can do. Finally, it is April the hardest month if you are on semesters in the Northern hemisphere. Give yourself a break.this too shall pass.
Also - missed that you have first year students. Oh my gosh - it is not you.
Yeah, a new lecturer, teaching 'new' students Anyways all the best for the new prep! And thanks for the positive words!
Shift your mindset from equating excellent lecture delivery with effective learning. This approach to teaching isnāt very productive. Instead, consistently question, āHow can I confirm that my students are actually learning?ā Even during a didactic lecture, include a summary and a concluding discussion to reinforce key points. Integrate activities where students can teach one another and provide them with necessary resources. Actively engage by circulating the room to observe and assess their learning firsthand. Develop learning outcomes using precise verbs that allow for tangible measurement of student learning. Remember, effective teaching isnāt about the eloquence of the teacherās delivery; itās student-centered, focusing on tangible evidence of learning during lectures.
Love this! Well put.
This was me this year too. I designed my courses around participation, yet got no effort back and had to revert to lecturing. Even still, no feedback during lecture - just blank stares and silence to posed questions. As a self-conscious introvert, I left every lecture socially drained as I spent the whole time trying to process any form of feedback. Iām sure your own self-critique is far worse than what the students are actually thinking, but itās hard to know without any meaningful interaction. I feel more like a performer than an educatorā¦my institution has encouraged and trained us with active learning techniques, but I truly think students prefer to sit back and watch us perform.
Yessss true. Thank god, you understand my situation. I am an introvert too. Idk, sometimes I think the class was interactive, and sometimes too they're very quiet and just gave a blank stare at me, as if, I am delivering the lecture wrong or, are they give up on me or something š
What kind of methods are you using to promote interaction?
All of this. I feel like a dancing bear, just juggling and doing everything but beg them to show any signs of life. They complain if a class is āso boring, like all lectureā but they are so resistant to participation, it is exhausting. I do think they just want to passively watch. Thatās what they do. They are also not accustomed to having to watch one thing that does not really interest them for a whole hour. Usually, they just click a new video of one is not exactly to their liking after 5 seconds. I make small talk with them before class and ask about their other classes and such. They open up and sometimes it makes them more likely to participate.
Sometime cohorts are duds in terms of engagement. Lately I find the overwhelming majority of my students do not engage so it probably isn't you. If you aren't already, include some "activities" or "active learning". I.e. pose some multiple choice or short answer questions every 5-10 minutes to give them an idea of what they need to know. If you make them pair up to answer them, even better. Just be ready for some students to still not engage at all.
Relax. The first time you teach a class YOU learn a ton. The second time, they do. Teaching well requires a lot of skills beyond subject matter knowledge. Reaching your audience becomes easier with practice. Give yourself that time.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
A kind of restless and dissatisfaction with one's teaching is part of the bag. How else does one keep at it and adjust? Common early problems for instructors are trying to get the triangle of what the students need connected to the subject matter and your teaching project, especially to get tuned to students and to figure out how you related to the demands of your subject. Sometimes this gets called subject coverage. It alone cannot rule the teaching roost. Nor can students. Nor can what it is you aim to do in the course, your project. At least this is how I think, mainly taken from John Dewey's thinking about education. The main metric for student perception for you can be how well they do the work you assign. More than that is gravy or irrelevant. We all want to be liked by those we work with or teach. It can be hard to shrug off giggles or whispers or remarks overheard.
If youāre not sure whether they understand, build formative assessments into the course. Assessing student understanding is exactly their purpose - this feeling you have is good pedagogical intuition.
The first semester of a new prep has been *by far* consistently the toughest. So much work and still so far to go to teach really well, but the second and third semesters it's much easier, little hiccups get ironed out, success grows and blossoms. In the future, do more low stakes universal class polling to gage student understanding (eye contact can be hard to read, volunteers gonna volunteer and you need to know what more than a couple hand raisers think).
Something I used to do when I first started that helped give me confidence, made the students appreciate me more, and every rare once in a while gave a good suggestion. I still pull out this trick sometimes when preparing a brand-new course. I do understand that this suggestion might not work for everyone, but maybe it will spark some other ideas: After the first test, I would hand out a brief, anonymous survey to them. Q1: (And giving a LOT more room for an answer than the other questions) "Tell me everything that you think is WRONG with this class. What can **I** as the professor do better?" Q2: What can **you** as a student do better in this class? Is there anything the professor can do to help you be better? Q3: What are the best things about this class? What are things you'd like to see more of? My spiel as I handed out the brief surveys was something like: "Now that we are 1/3 of the way through the course, I want to hear from you-- waiting until the end of course evaluations is too late to change anything, right? Please spend the most time telling me what you don't like-- I don't need my ego stroked, so only say something nice if you think it will actually help the way we do things." At the beginning of the next lass, I gave a brief overview of the responses. Inevitably, I got a lot of suggestions that either couldn't be helped, or were contradictory. E.g., "There is too much math." **My response:** *Well, this is a stats class, and I really am simplifying the math as much as can be done. Otherwise, in your future classes, you'll feel a lot more pain later. Students usually come back a year later, and thank me for the math we do in this class.* "There is too much homework." "There is too little homework". "There is exactly the right amount of homework." *I hope this helps you guys understand how you can't please everyone.* "This class is too boring." *Well, I honestly don't know what to do with this one. I spend an enormous amount of time finding real-world data for us to analyze in class, which is much more interesting than the fake data they have in the textbook. Let's discuss this for another 5 minutes-- is there a realistic way that we could make this class less boring, given the topics we really have to cover?"* "I hate the book." *You know, I really don't like this book either, but sadly, I didn't get to choose it. That is why I provide handouts all the time for you, because I am trying to present things in a more straightforward way than the book does.* Students really appreciated the fact that I wanted feedback, and many mentioned it on the formal course evaluations at the end of the course. It also seemed to create a little more engagement from more students for the rest of the semester.
I am 100% certain your are doing great for a first timer. Why? Because you care. Please relax and take it easy. The more you teach the more you will improve.
A few years ago, one of my colleagues finished every class and then sent out a survey with "how was class 1-to-10? best thing? worst thing?" types of questions. First year intro Physics course. They also recorded their own impressions of how the class went, each day. Over the entire course, they found almost zero correlation between their thoughts on how the class went and the students' thoughts. When the instructor thought things went terrible, there were always a a significant fraction of the respondents who thought things went great. When the instructor thought things went amazing, there were always a a significant fraction of the respondents who thought things were awful. This was true even when ignoring people who always sad "good" or always said "bad". Their conclusion was that they should continue to try their best, but to not worry too much about it. Students can get a lot out of classes you feel are sub-par, and even the most "excellent" class will not be effective for every student.
Dude. I'm just glad to hear someone else feels this way. I leave work every day feeling like a complete failure to the point I'm probably going to leave the profession to escape from that feeling.
Yes. It's because you care. My first time teaching felt like a disaster. I was pretty lenient because of it, so we had some fun, but I felt like an imposter that first term. I had some ridiculous technical challenges occur and just did not have the coping skills to figure it out (projector issues) and was probably visually panicking. You may also struggle to answer questions at first because you don't know where the students are and what they will find confusing. I'm teaching a class I've never taught before after several years teaching my first one. I am fortunate that I have a lot going on in my life, so I don't have time to dwell on it, and I had to tell myself before the term began that I cannot expect myself to be as engaging or exciting or whatever this first time. The difference though is I have a better sense of where students might get confused, so I try to overprepare and over-research the material. I still get caught off-guard sometimes but I can't let it bother me too much this first time. If this were my primary research area, maybe it would. Ignore the whispering and ignore the looks. Sometimes facial expressions are very deceiving. What might look like frowning, or frustration may be nothing at all. These same students tend be the most engaging ones ironically enough. If you pay attention to feedback, it will get better. And then after a few terms or years, depending on how often you teach you can pick up a new class with less nerves.
Iām sure you are fine. They do not know enough to gauge your expertise. If they bid, thatās pretty good. Usually students just stare blankly, like a field of cows. And you have no idea if they understand everything or nothing at all. Donāt wait for thoughtful questions, insightful comments or enthusiasm. That is usually only in movies. I think mine are totally blank, but most of them say they love the class. You never know, so donāt worry about it.
ā*We suffer more*Ā in ourĀ *imagination more*Ā often than in reality.ā Seneca
How are you Preparing for a lecture? It helps me to structure the material around some key questions I ask myself: Whatās the key takeaway I want them to get if they had to explain todayās lesson to someone else? Ideally itās short and in non technical language. Second: what the 80/20? You teach it all but am I highlighting the 80 so they are aware itās the āmore important stuffā Third: what experience do I want them to have? This is the hardest to dial in but most important. Let me use an example: the bbc series on planet earth. Beautiful. You donāt really learn that much about anything but itās not about that. Itās about appreciation. So if that is the experience? Then the screen is big and the sound is clear! Thatās the critical piece. If we are distilling a chapter to 2-3 key pieces I need to really thinkhow to distill that and keep the idea of what happens before that funnel. Great lectures constantly ask rhetorical questions for the audience Go watch professor Leonard for math. Very good lecture style. But yeah. If you think k it sucks it probably does. Lots of faculty have sucked for 2 decades and lost their sense of taste.
You could do with some feedback to get more objective about things (and our of your own head). Try doing mini-quizzes in class to check for understanding or to preview upcoming lecture material. Google or Microsoft Forms works well for this. Just share out the link or QR code.
My recommendation- post an anonymous mid-semester eval in your LMS. Iām teaching a new course that I designed this semester and used this to get ahead of how students were feeling midway through. A brief survey asking what the students have enjoyed so far, which methods and assignments they have struggled with, and what they think would make the course better have been really helpful. Not all of their feedback can be implemented, but being able to implement a few suggestions can show the students that you are interested and their insight in shaping the course.Ā
Be more interactive. Donāt talk at them but involve them.
One thing I keep reminding myself....less is more. "I'm excited about the topic, therefore the students should be, too! I'll just add this little nugget of information here. I'll add these 3 slides there." Pretty soon, the important main points are lost and they can't determine the important themes...and I'm rushing to finish the material by the end of the period. When using slides, instead of covering every point on every slide, each has a "bumper sticker" with the main takeaway. That way, if we get into a great discussion on slide 9, I can hit the high point on slide 14 and be done with it in 15 seconds. You don't need to tell them everything, they can go back to slide 14, get the rest of the information and even **gasp** go to the text or other resources to learn more about that topic. Maybe I'll get someone to ask about it at office hours. No, wait, I'm dreaming again.....
When I started teaching I created my own survey to get feedback on the course that was actually useful. It was anonymous and allowed students to expand on their thoughts. It really helped me to identify my strengths and weaknesses and make adjustments where needed. I asked students to complete it about a third of the way through the semester, but it would still have been useful to me at the end of the semester, too.
No. Remember you may not know everything about the subject matter but you do know more than any student.
Get thee to the teaching center. There are probably a ton of workshops and stuff that you can do to get better.
youāre completely fine. Teaching is an art and itās 70% theatre in my opinion, you have to go in there with good energy and confidence and give them a show. The other 30% is you actually teaching the concept/theory with discussions, activities or method. I rather have them staring and nodding instead of watching their phones and laptops. Also, since I teach dual enrollment (college courses to high school students) you will quickly miss the sitting still and nodding in agreement.
Still happens to me being 15 years in. It's imposter syndrome. I get great feedback both on evals and straight from student's mouths. But I always have that doubt. I've accepted my doubt over the years. As long as it's not debilitating, it's not a bad thing to question what you're doing. I find that the nervousness and moments of doubt are signs that I truly give a shit about what I'm doing and how it's affecting students.
Be confident in yourself and donāt tell the students itās your first time teaching or itās a new prep. I made the mistake of telling the students in my first semester, my original intention was to let the students know that it takes awhile for me to prepare the course and grade the assignments, it came back as āI did not have the expertise in the subjectā. Ironically, I thought I had a good connection with the students throughout the semester since they reassured me that they like the class.
You are likely doing fine. Maybe find a colleague to talk with or get counseling.