It might seem impossible for someone with a fear of public speaking to become a successful teacher who enjoys their career. Teachers are constantly required to present information to an audience and facilitate learning for groups of people. How can they do that if they feel anxious when speaking in public? As someone whose heart races every time she needs to present at a conference or in front of colleagues, I have plenty of experience dealing with this problem. I don’t get as anxious when I’m in the classroom, but that doesn’t mean the fear goes away entirely. Here are some approaches I take to deal with public speaking anxiety as a college instructor.
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Category: Teaching Tips (Page 2 of 6)
It’s inevitable that teaching problems will pop up each semester, though some issues are bigger than others. Finding solutions on the fly can be tough, so I thought I’d offer a few solutions to common teaching problems that I definitely encounter pretty often. Going in prepared to deal with these issues makes teaching a lot easier, especially during your first few years teaching. Here are five teaching problems and multiple ways to go about solving them.
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We are more than halfway through the semester, so hopefully you’ve been able to get most of your students speaking up during class discussions. If you’ve done a Midterm Chat, then you also have a good idea of what students consider to be stronger and weaker elements of your teaching style. But, there are probably still some shy students that you are having trouble getting to speak up in class. They sit quietly in their seats and seem to be listening to your lectures and the class discussions, but you have no idea what their voices sound like. In today’s post, I go over three strategies for communicating with shy students, or those who are just too self-conscious to ask questions in class. If you’d rather see a video version of these strategies, that’s an option for you, too.
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October is here and Halloween falls on a school day this year. As the only holiday I’ve used as inspiration in my classroom, I thought this month would be the perfect time to share my ideas on how to create holiday themed class activities that are fun for your students while still being educational. It’s not about “wasting” the day celebrating a holiday. It’s about taking a break from the usual classroom routine and livening up things a bit (while still staying relevant to your course subject). Here are three ways you can bring your favorite holidays into the classroom.
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Recently I’ve been spending most of my time thinking about my dissertation research and my academic job applications. My dissertation focuses heavily on multimodal texts and their new media adaptations. Many of the jobs I’m applying to have a focus on digital texts and composition, which fits well not just with my research, but also my teaching practices in writing and literature courses. I’ve already gone over a literary analysis group project that works well with my literature students. So today, I thought I’d break down a multimodal composition group project that has worked really well in my first year writing courses. If you’re looking for a creative group activity for your composition students that requires a good amount of research and analytical thinking, this post is for you.
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We’re almost a month into the fall semester at this point. It’s likely that you’ve encountered some problematic student behavior that is really frustrating you. Or maybe you’re feeling constantly low-key angry in class, but can’t put your finger on what exactly is bothering you. In either case, today’s post is all about figuring out what student behavior is upsetting you and coming up with solutions that will decrease your negative feelings.
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