Teaching gifts from you, for you

As we move into the holiday season, we are often thinking about what gifts we want to give or receive. There are many items I’d love to get for myself, and one I have been thinking a lot about is what I can do to connect to the parts of my teaching that I enjoy the most. For me, that includes digging into students’ ideas, trying to make sense of their understandings and misunderstandings and finding new and innovative ways to convey big ideas and try new things in my classrooms. To make space for this, I have given myself two tools that are helpful to get some things in place for future courses prior to the start of the course. 

Pre-populate announcements

Before the course starts, I create announcements for each week that highlight the big ideas, identify any assignments and deadlines, and if necessary for a particular week, I block out additional office hours (in person or virtual) and list those as well. Having all this set up in advance allows me time each week to add specific content and comments that connect to the students. I might add examples of key ideas from class conversations, I might share student ideas that were particularly relevant, or I might pull comments from a discussion board to highlight important concepts – all of this personalizes the announcement to the class and helps me connect with students. I try to format all my announcements similarly each week, so students know where to look and what to expect.  

Using my calendar to protect my teaching time

I find that time is fleeting during the quarter, so I try to use my calendar as a tool to protect my time and schedule the things I know I want to do weekly. I schedule weekly grading time for each class and mark it as busy on my calendar. I use that time to grade and to check in, via email, with any students who are missing work or who missed class.  I schedule weekly announcement time – since I have created the announcements ahead of time, I use this time to make it more personal for the specific class I am teaching.  I schedule all my office hours, including the weeks I know I’ll need additional hours before (and sometimes after) big assignments. For live classes, I schedule 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after class so that I can prepare, I can leave time to talk to students and I can decompress after class. 

Overall, I have found this to be tremendously helpful in reminding me that the work of teaching is not only fit in between the other responsibilities of being a faculty member, but also requires specifically carved out time to do it in the way that brings me joy.