I JUST GOT MY DREAM JOB AS A UNIVERSITY LECTURER - NOW WHAT?

I just got my dream job as a university lecturer - now what?

Tip #2

PACE YOURSELF AND YOUR CLASSES

When I started teaching at my current university I was struggling to fit in.  I was doing my best to recreate my own university experience, but I was in a very different environment.  

My courses are interdisciplinary, and my expertise is in ancient political philosophy, so while philosophy is at the core, I also branch out into literature, film, and various other academic areas.

At first, I scrambled to create my lessons and went overboard in trying to cram too much into a 90 minute lecture.  I had my own schedule that was based on reviewing so many pages of lecture notes a class. Often I was oblivious to the students’ burnout from trying to comprehend too much information in too short a time frame.  I set self-imposed deadlines, for instance, I wanted to finish chapters by a certain day no matter how fast I had to talk. I was stressed and so were my students!! And then, I came across a quotation by Goethe and everything changed:

“A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.”

So tip #2 is SLOW DOWN!  Do small sections of philosophy, literature, poetry, and sometimes allow your students to dictate the pace.  I still have days where I have to get through so much in a day, but often I engage in dialectics and see where the conversation takes us! 

To see a list of my products click here: MY PHILOSOPHY PRODUCTS


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