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.
