After some delay it's back to 'The Art of Teaching'

The next lecture in the Great Courses series The Art of Teaching is ‘Starting out right’, where he talks about the importance of the first day of class. He argues that it’s really important to set a strong sense of what’s expected right from the first day. Not for him spending the first day outlining the syllabus and telling people what’s going to happen. It’s much better to get students working from the start. As before he interviews a number of teachers about what they do on the first day including one who sets an assignment that need to be completed for the first class and is then used in that class. One person takes a photograph of each student along with their name on the first day and then puts them up on their office wall. Another makes sure that they have learnt as many of the students name as they can before the class! All of them argue that building a relationship with students is key to good teaching and knowing their names shows that you are prepared to put the effort in to do this. The next element of the first day is to let the students know that you find the material fascinating and why understanding it matters. Following this all of them challenge the students from the off, getting them to work early and setting the expectations for the rest of the course. There are some other somewhat ‘interesting’ parts of the lecture where he talks about being in charge and his right to set the rules. Not quite sure about all that.

The basic tenets of the lecture are to get right into the course on the first day and get to know your students.