Hey You
So, I may not have brought everyone up to date. I am indeed teaching this fall. Yippee!! The class I have been assigned to teach focuses on the one area of astronomy that I know the very least about. (What's the opposite declaration of "Yippee"?) Waves of panic have been rippling through my world ever since I accepted the job.
The most recent panic has been over selecting a textbook for this class. We have already established that if I had to choose the one topic I am least comfortable with in astrophysics it would be the topic of this class. (Cosmology, if you must know). But I am teaching this class, by gosh, even if it kills me. Which it might. But I digress. While graduate students are often encouraged/required to attend seminars on effective teaching practices (don't say "um", use PowerPoint instead of the chalkboard), learning styles (learning by listening, writing, actively doing, and/or osmosis), and innovative interactive techniques for the classroom (dear god, please strike down the person who invented clickers!), these "teaching the teachers" classes often fail to give any insight into how to do the more mundane (yet extremely important) things like choosing a good textbook. I have had way too many horrible textbooks in classes to not take this responsibility very seriously. (I should someday link my friend Jeff's comments on Amazon regarding our Classical Mechanics book. Classic.) I found out on Tuesday that I was two weeks overdue in letting the university bookstore know which book(s) to order for my class. The class that starts in August, mind you. So I am frantically "reading" every cosmology book recommended by the last 6 instructors for this course to determine which one will be most effective in helping to illustrate the salient points of the course. Gracious. I am in way over my head right now.
And here's another quandry. What do I have my students call me? I won't have my PhD yet, so clearly Dr. and Prof. are right out. It seems like a bad idea to have them call me Meredith, as there are 75 of them and I need to establish some sense of the instructor-student boundaries off the bat. I cannot bring myself to tell them to call me Miss D., and Ms. D. sounds ridiculous. What am I left with--"Hey You"? "Bitter Graduate Student"? "Queen of Under-her-breath Sarcasm?" "Short, Brunette Person at the Front of the Room?"
These are the things I worry about in the evenings, rather than working.
The most recent panic has been over selecting a textbook for this class. We have already established that if I had to choose the one topic I am least comfortable with in astrophysics it would be the topic of this class. (Cosmology, if you must know). But I am teaching this class, by gosh, even if it kills me. Which it might. But I digress. While graduate students are often encouraged/required to attend seminars on effective teaching practices (don't say "um", use PowerPoint instead of the chalkboard), learning styles (learning by listening, writing, actively doing, and/or osmosis), and innovative interactive techniques for the classroom (dear god, please strike down the person who invented clickers!), these "teaching the teachers" classes often fail to give any insight into how to do the more mundane (yet extremely important) things like choosing a good textbook. I have had way too many horrible textbooks in classes to not take this responsibility very seriously. (I should someday link my friend Jeff's comments on Amazon regarding our Classical Mechanics book. Classic.) I found out on Tuesday that I was two weeks overdue in letting the university bookstore know which book(s) to order for my class. The class that starts in August, mind you. So I am frantically "reading" every cosmology book recommended by the last 6 instructors for this course to determine which one will be most effective in helping to illustrate the salient points of the course. Gracious. I am in way over my head right now.
And here's another quandry. What do I have my students call me? I won't have my PhD yet, so clearly Dr. and Prof. are right out. It seems like a bad idea to have them call me Meredith, as there are 75 of them and I need to establish some sense of the instructor-student boundaries off the bat. I cannot bring myself to tell them to call me Miss D., and Ms. D. sounds ridiculous. What am I left with--"Hey You"? "Bitter Graduate Student"? "Queen of Under-her-breath Sarcasm?" "Short, Brunette Person at the Front of the Room?"
These are the things I worry about in the evenings, rather than working.
posted by Meredith | 10:01 PM
6 Comments:
When I taught in grad school they called me Stephanie. But I don't think there's anything wrong with having them call you Ms. and your last name.
75 people at your school are going to take an undergraduate cosmology course?!?? this just amazes me. sorry the textbook thing is so hard to get through--at least this isn't a mathy class so you don't have to do a million problems as well as all that reading. good luck! and i think that your students are WAY more likely to take you out for beer at the end of the semester if you let them call you meredith. :D
I think there are ~30,000 undergrads here. The class is capped at 75-ish, though, I don't know if it will fill up.
And I think a math-less cosmology course (with no pre-requisites!) is almost scarier than a math-ful one.
Clicker? Tell me they're not asking you to teach a class as if you were training a dog.
(As for how to introduce yourself, I've always been of the opinion that you can never go wrong with "Fernando." Of course, my T.A. evaluations were less than stellar...)
How about Master? That degree you do have already. Master Meredith, perhaps. Or Geraldine. Everyone would be a bit intimidated of Geraldine. Maybe you give them no guidelines whatsoever as to what they should call you. I never knew what to call my instructors who weren't PhD's. We only had a couple.
Hi Meredith,
My wife just received a textbook in the mail that might serve you and your class well. The book is a math-less cosmology book entitled,
"An Introduction to Galaxies and Cosmology" by Mark H. Jones and Robert J. A. Lambourne, published by Cambridge University Press in 2004.
It's a relatively new text, discussing galaxies in the first 4 chapters and cosmology in the last 4 chapters. Another big plus is that it is features a supporting web site, hosting further teaching material.
If you want other suggestions, I can look around further.
I would LOVE a chance to teach cosmology, with or without math (although preferrably the former). I hope you have loads of fun and learn a lot in the process!
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