#PublicPedagogy thread. (I should be grading, but who has the mental charity for it after 2.5 hours of meetings and 3 of teaching.)

This is a thread about the value of other people's teaching to your own teaching, especially if you've been at it for as long a time as I have. 1/

I'm in my 14th year of teaching as the main instructor of university courses; longer if you count my years as a TA. That's a long time! Teaching keeps me alive in many ways. But I'm also at a stage where I sometimes forget more about it than I remember. 2/

Many mornings--tired from insomnia and stressed about getting the fam going--I forget why teaching is exciting. I forget there's a lot that I can teach; many things I take for granted because I've known them for a long time, things students haven't even discovered yet. 3/

I forget about all the teaching techniques that I know and have tried but have shelved far away in my mind and so--inexplicably--I still panic in the hour before many of my classes about not being well enough prepared, not knowing enough, not having things well enough planned. 4/

[In a Tan France accent:] I do like a well-structured class.

I forget about the improvisational possibilities of teaching, and I forget my own ability to improvise, work with the moment, and structure activities on the spot. 5/

Anyway. Due to aforementioned 2.5 hours of different meetings, today I had all of half an hour to get ready for class. Panic!

But one of those meetings was part of a peer review of teaching I'm conducting for one of my new colleagues, himself an experienced instructor. 6/

And it's real magic to listen to and observe someone else's planning and conducting of teaching. New angles! Time to enjoy choices I myself would not have made, give those choices room and see them come alive and connect to students! 7/

Time to follow someone else's instructions and realize that you could take it a bit slower and don't need to overplan and manically rush!

So. My underplanned classes were good. We had time to talk in broad terms. I remembered some tricks. Students and I connected. 8/

#highered