Advice for New Faculty Members

1. Advice for New Faculty Members Robert Boice. (2000)

2. Eight Rules for Working at Teaching with Moderation

3. Rule no. 1: Wait • Pause before Writing or Talking to Reflect. • Use pauses playfully and planfully. • Put some of what you think into writing. • Active waiting is an alternative to impatience

4. Rule 2: Begin Before Feeling Ready • No one feels ready especially: procrastinators, perfectionists, elitists, blockers, and oppositionals.

5. Rule #3: Prepare & Present in Brief, Regular, Sessions • Avoid binges of over-preparation • working under pressure & excitement leads to hypomania, sadness, disinterest and inefficiencies. • Begin before feeling fully ready

6. Rule #4: Stop! • Stop in a timely manner. • This reduces impatience and intolerance. • Rushed teaching is poor pedagogy. • Leave time at the end of class for all sorts of loose ends.

7. Rule #5: Moderate over attachment to content & overreaction to criticism • Rely on brief notes for lecture and discussion. Make them into overheads • make only a few main points in class & convey them patiently, with carefully chosen examples and discussions. • Remember that good teaching, like research, is provisional. • Practice early evaluation.

8. Rule #6: Moderate Negative Thinking • Myths about genius, artistry, great inventors and brilliant teachers make us feel pedestrian and inadequate. • Remember that the other side of teaching is learning.

9. Rule #8: Let others do some of the work. • Let go of some control and credit. • Use of peers & mentors to talk & share. • Collaborate in classroom teaching. • observe and critique colleagues’ classes. • Invite them to do the same for you.

10. Rule #9: Moderate Classroom Incivilities • Causes: • too much material at too fast a pace at too difficult a level for student involvement. • Content remains abstract, irrelevant. • Professor can’t relate to average student. • We care more for teaching than learning.

11. Incivilities: prevention • Teach with compassion, openness, and patience. • Communicate with immediacy & comprehension and pacing. • Remember your role as a reinforcer of high standards - of respect for learning and for others.

12. Conclusion • “Physics is experience, arranged in economical order” (Ernst Mach) • So is teaching. • Best wishes • contact me at tdc@uregina.ca or 585-5284.