Have you ever thought about your teaching from a student’s point of view?
Now that I am a senior at Kennesaw State University, I have experienced a plethora of time in the classroom. What makes a class period more enjoyable? How do we, as students, get involved EVERY time we enter the room? As many of you have probably noticed, there are effective ways that teachers teach…and not so effective ways. Lets be honest, when the teacher isn’t engaged in the topic he or she is monotonously speaking about, then why should the rest of the class be? What a waste of time for everyone. And let me share a secret: learning takes time.
How many have been frustrated with a teacher that doesn’t teach well, or worse, doesn’t teach at all??? Responsible students are, then, forced to be both the teacher and the student. And we’re not even the ones getting paid! Math that. Or how about this scenario: learning something wrongly and then having to go through the painstaking process of breaking that bad habit by UNLEARNING that something, only to have to go through even MORE practice to set the new good habit in its place. Whew! That’s an awful lot of work that could have been avoided simply by effective teaching.
Please enjoy the following experience from a fellow student, me:
I loved going into my Real Analysis course because my professor would get so enthusiastic about his subject that he spat everywhere when he went off on a tangent. (Ha, math jokes.) Sitting in front of his laptop, he would write his lesson right before our eyes. “Mathematics should come from the heart,” he would nearly whisper as he was deciding on which way to prove something. He emphasized that great mathematical writing comes from good grammar: “Mathematics is hard enough when written correctly. Proper grammar makes the math easier.” His tips on proof-writing bleed into all areas of my life because quite frankly I have little skill in the matter. But I digress.
Some days I just wanted to listen to a good story after a long day of rigorous studying, and his class was just the relaxing break I needed. As it always should be with learning: first, soak in new material; then, play around with it in one’s personal time. “The learning happens outside of the classroom, when you DO the mathematics” as my professor would say. For this reason he records all of his lectures with a video & audio software. Actually, he requires that NO ONE take notes.
How many have tried to fiercely write all of what the teacher said or wrote on the board? So much room for error: what with constantly looking up and down and up and down, or comments meshing into each other, or not hearing everything because you were too worried about writing down the previous thing… Whew. My hand hurts just thinking about it. However, with a recording you have the notes you need, VERBATIM. A recording also sets the standard for the teachers to be professional and not slack off, because no one wants to look bad on camera 
~Now teachers here is a question for you: Would you want to be a student in your own class? ReadRebecca’s blog for more on this topic.