Chronic Murmuring

Hey, don't be so hard on yourself. I recently had a TA consultant comeinto my class and interview my students, and while many of them had really positive things to say, others reamed me on my lack of structure. To others, that was the only reason they liked the class. Differsnt people think and process information in different ways, and you can't possibly appeal to all of your students. You owe them some semblance of organization, but to a spatial thinker like myself, a professor could be incredibly interesting to listen to, but the same speaker might drive a linear thinker crazy (John Stone comes to mind--I just cannot understand the criticisms of his preaching). Wait until you get your evals, or ask them to provide you with some constructive criticism by having an informal eval session led by a colleague or consultant. That way the students have an incentive to provide constructive feedback in enough time for it to actually make a difference to them.

Yeah, I was thinking that too. Part of my style up there is to be somewhat fluit. My goal is to prepare, prepare, prepare, but then get up there, and essentially move through the material in a natural way, rather than in a strictly linear way.

But, part of the problem is that, given that I have never actually taken this class myself, I'm essentially learning the material usually the day - and sometimes the night - before. So, it's partly a function of the fact that really, you cannot do the "au naturale" style of teaching economics when, in fact, your own understanding of the material is rather weak. I think I could do the micro sequence better, since I know that material better, but oh well. It's part of the maturing process for me as a teacher. There's a lot of things I'm learning about teaching - things which I honestly, in my naivetee, didn't really think I would be learning about.

I just had a meeting with someone from Aplia to talk about using their software next semester, and after the torture I've put myself through this semester with problem sets and assignments, I'm definitely going to switch to Aplia. This, I think, will make my life a ton better. For one, I won't have to compromise on my philosophy that teaching economics needs a lot of problem sets. The problem is, cost-benefit principle kicks in big time for me as the instructor because, the amount of assignments I need to give is really not cost-effective for me as a graduate student. I assign six problem sets now, and really, grading them is taking a major toll on my sanity. So, I think that moving to Aplia will partially alleviate some of this. Plus, as I prepare the class again next semester, I think I'll have a better baseline knowledge of the material, so that as I design the class itself, maybe I can exploit some of the advantages from my own style of communication a bit more. We'll see.

Hang in there, man. Nearly no one reaches the point of greatness without getting beat up along the way to it. And even when you do reach some semblance of it there's still always someone out there to beat you up when you least expect it.

And, yes, I expect you to tell me the same thing when I start getting the similar comments from my students... :^)