Teaching College Students as a Profession – Part 1
Hello everyone,
When I was thinking about teaching college students as a profession, I thought I would spend the majority of my time actually in the classroom. What I have come to learn is that teaching involves a lot more than standing in front of a classroom lecturing about a subject I love. Good teaching requires a significant amount of time outside the classroom. Richard LeBlanc (no relation), winner of a national teaching excellence award, identified the top ten things required for good teaching. I agree with everything he says in this article but I thought it might be useful to explain what the things he identifies look like in practice, in my life, which I think is pretty typical of a teaching faculty member.
Most faculty at Plymouth State University, where I work, spend about 12 hours per week in the classroom. This is most often the equivalent of teaching 4 classes. But teaching a class requires significant outside-of-class work, especially the first time the class is taught or whenever significant changes to the class are made. For example, I need to figure out the desired learning outcomes of the class and then design activities for the students so that they can achieve those desired outcomes. I also need to choose the materials that I want students to read and/or watch—a task that may require me to do much more reading/watching than I end up assigning to the students. Once the class is designed and I begin to teach it, I will have to grade whatever materials the students hand in. For example, if I assign a paper to a class of 30 students (which is a fairly typical size for an individual class at PSU but don’t forget that we typically have four classes), spending only 10 minutes grading each paper (which is most often not enough time) means that I will spend a minimum 5 hours grading that set of papers. In addition, I must be available to students in my classes outside of class time in case they have questions or want to discuss ideas for projects and papers. Just before due dates and exams, the time spent on this task can be significant. Once I have finished teaching a class, I reflect on how it went (based on my own observations, student evaluations, and student achievement) so that I can determine what I should change in the next offering of the class.
In our next blog, I’ll talk about how teaching faculty members also create and maintain relationships with students.
Cathie
When I was thinking about teaching college students as a profession, I thought I would spend the majority of my time actually in the classroom. What I have come to learn is that teaching involves a lot more than standing in front of a classroom lecturing about a subject I love. Good teaching requires a significant amount of time outside the classroom. Richard LeBlanc (no relation), winner of a national teaching excellence award, identified the top ten things required for good teaching. I agree with everything he says in this article but I thought it might be useful to explain what the things he identifies look like in practice, in my life, which I think is pretty typical of a teaching faculty member.
Most faculty at Plymouth State University, where I work, spend about 12 hours per week in the classroom. This is most often the equivalent of teaching 4 classes. But teaching a class requires significant outside-of-class work, especially the first time the class is taught or whenever significant changes to the class are made. For example, I need to figure out the desired learning outcomes of the class and then design activities for the students so that they can achieve those desired outcomes. I also need to choose the materials that I want students to read and/or watch—a task that may require me to do much more reading/watching than I end up assigning to the students. Once the class is designed and I begin to teach it, I will have to grade whatever materials the students hand in. For example, if I assign a paper to a class of 30 students (which is a fairly typical size for an individual class at PSU but don’t forget that we typically have four classes), spending only 10 minutes grading each paper (which is most often not enough time) means that I will spend a minimum 5 hours grading that set of papers. In addition, I must be available to students in my classes outside of class time in case they have questions or want to discuss ideas for projects and papers. Just before due dates and exams, the time spent on this task can be significant. Once I have finished teaching a class, I reflect on how it went (based on my own observations, student evaluations, and student achievement) so that I can determine what I should change in the next offering of the class.
In our next blog, I’ll talk about how teaching faculty members also create and maintain relationships with students.
Cathie
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