A Quick 5 Tips: Surviving Intensive Teaching

My colleagues in K-12 are probably rolling about laughing at the thought that teaching 9-5 is considered ‘intensive’, but in my part of higher ed, teaching 16 hours solidly over a weekend is called intensive teaching. It’s very different from what I normally do so here are my five survival tips. The basic problem that I face is that I have a full day and no spare time – and no easy way to make up time if I lose time.

1. Know the work
   Yes, bit of a no-brainer but in intensive mode you have no ‘sneak off and look it up’ time. You have to go into each day’s session with either full knowledge of the 7-8 hours ahead or a well-constructed set of reminders, cheat sheets and mnemonics. I use extensive presenter notes to augment my presentations, as well as some easy to read notes that jog my memory. And I’ve taught this course over 6 times now.
2. Check your presentation gear
   If you are using laptop, projector and slides, make sure that all of them work. Carry your charger, have a spare on USB or the network, know where the bulbs are. Using whiteboard? Have lots of pens, multiple erasers and check the whiteboard quality. Blackboard? Chalk, chalk and more chalk? Flip charts? Spare paper? Spare pens?
   Do you have it? Does it work?
   I run long distances and there’s a saying that you never change your gear for race day. It doesn’t matter if your current shorts are a health and safety violation in four states, don’t put on a brand new untried pair for race day. Chafing that starts at 20 kilometres is a road to agony by 42.
   Your presentation gear and techniques should, for the most part, be your faithful set – your tried and true.
3. Check your environment 
   In Singapore, I check the rooms for good air conditioning, comfortable chairs and enough workspace. (I teach at a good facility so this is always true) Before teaching, I make sure that the air has been flowing for 30 minutes to cool the room BEFORE the lesson starts. I move chairs out from places where I don’t want students sitting. I align tables to form the collab environment that I want. I move my flip charts or whiteboards around. I set light levels.
   These students are going to be sitting in a room, trying to stay awake and listening to me. I have to make their space work the best that it can for both us. I put up a plan so that students know what they’re doing when and where they’re supposed to be. That’s as much a part of my teaching space as the chairs or tables.
4. Allow enough time
   I usually allow 30-60 minutes before and after class to give me enough time to set up and get things running, grab a coffee, and minimise my rush. I should be cool, calm, collected and ready to go by the time the first student appears. If a student, after 7 hours, has finally got the courage up to ask me some questions then I have to be available to give them some time outside of the intensive phase and talk to them.
   That’s why I don’t jump on 8pm flight on a Sunday, because I’d need to leave bang on the dot of 5, cutting off any discussion and saying to the students “Well, that was nice, but I have important things to do now.” My students are working as hard, if not harder, than I am to listen, learn, stay alert, program, contribute, collaborate… allowing a little bit of no-rush time either side makes me more approachable and defuses the innate grind nature of the intensive.
5. Be interesting
   Yeah, sorry, I’m ending with a hard one. I try to involve my class as much as possible in the learning activities. Sometimes this means that I have to be interesting – general information on CS, pertinent stories, anecdotes to engage interest. I try to cheat and bit and get the class to talk to each other, because they have far more in common. Being interesting isn’t about being a showman or a jester, but it does mean being willing to step away from didactic approaches and letting the reins of control slip a little, whether you’re handing over from strict learning to some background colour, or handing over to the class to work together for a while.
   It doesn’t really matter what you do, in many ways, as long as different things happen occasionally and the students know what they’re doing and when.

As I said, my K-12 colleagues do this every day so I’d love to hear from other people how you face these challenges and what you’d suggest to make this task more manageable – or even enjoyable!

Failures of Politeness: Write Down Your Rules!

Being a University-level educator has some major advantages. One of the most significant is the degree to which the educators before me, in the school system, have shouldered the load of disruptive students, violent students – the students who didn’t manage to make it through the educational system and get into Uni. My heartfelt thanks, as always, for the effort and patience that it must take!

This gives me, 99% of the time, a very polite classroom. There’s always the impersonal indifference of late teen-age years (I remember how many other really important things I had to do, as well) but that’s usually fairly easily managed. It all runs like a large-ish dinner party with strangers most of the time. People pass the mustard when asked, generally share the food and no-one does anything diabolical. That’s why it’s surprising when you run across someone who breaks through that fragile and informal social compact. Let’s face it, you snatch the bread at home and someone’s going to have words with you. Steal the host’s fork and he or she will look at you with surprise, grab another one and, depending on what you do next, possibly etch your name into the ‘do not invite again’ column. Now that kind of ‘transgression’ is an obvious one – someone’s being rude, for whatever reason.

But let’s talk about finger bowls. A finger bowl is a bowl full of warm water with a squeeze of lemon in it. It’s used to wash your fingers when eating certain messy courses that must be handled manually. If that shows up on the table and you don’t know what it is, chances are you’re going to think it’s weak soup. There’s an etiquette in using these but any decent host is going to work out (a) if their guests know what these things are and clearly illustrate their use or (b) serve something else. Putting people in a situation where they accidentally break rules in ignorance  doesn’t do anything other than upset people.

Community discussion, such as public forums or debates, can be confusing for some students, especially when they don’t understand the implicit social compact in play. When unwritten rules do get broken, people’s feelings get hurt on both sides and it’s hard to know what to do. If someone stood up and shouted in one of my lectures, I’d eventually call security most likely but the disruption has happened and the damage is done. If you have to forcibly march someone out of a computer lab because they’re causing trouble, the lesson is shot for the next 10-15 minutes, no matter how much everyone present agrees with the action. We deal with most of the ‘extreme’ actions with a well-publicised list of acceptable behaviours, but what about the implicit ones? The subtle ones?

This is why I support writing all of the rules down. When you set up an electronic forum, I think it’s really helpful to have a list of (mostly) DOs and (a few) DON’Ts. (My pet theory is that people remember verbs, not modifiers. Hence PLEASE WALK is better than DON’T RUN because it puts the right action in your head. No doubt someone has proven or disprove this. Comments welcome!) If someone hits one of the rules, you can moderate in a transparent and fair fashion. You don’t set up trip lines for people to stumble into because then people will wonder where they can and can’t step – restricting motion when you want them to be embracing opportunity! Do you have in-class discussions? A simple set of guidelines can be put on a forum, or an A4 sheet, or as part of the moderator’s kit and everyone can be briefed.

Unwritten rules, like the arbitrary finer detail of politeness, can be confusing, divisive and, in an educational setting, are a hindrance rather than a help. You don’t know all of the details of your students’ background and, in an ideal world, everyone would be able to come here. So rather than depending on everyone in the world knowing the unwritten rules, let’s write it all down and avoid these unnecessary failures of politeness.