Amanda’s post prompts me to do a bit more reflecting on us, the instructor.
It’s really easy to focus on students as the source of problems, but as Amanda rightly underlines, that’s not the most productive of frames.
As a less-experienced lecturer, one of the most useful lessons I got in my training was that we go through different stages in our understanding of what’s happening in a classroom.
You start out by thinking it’s all about yourself, then you move to thinking it’s all about the students, before finally understanding that it’s actually about the situation you and they are in.
So part of that is recognising that you matter, but you’re not the only thing that matters.
And, frankly, sometimes we’re not at the top of our game.
Either that means we’ve not prepared enough, or we’ve not on the ball enough in the classroom.
I’ve done that – not often, but more than once – and I’m going to guess that you have too.
What’s the problem?
Clearly, there are lots of reasons why this happens and I’m not really so interested as to why, precisely because of that diversity. I know it happens to me when I teach straight after landing from an international flight, but that’s scarcely useful.
The more interesting point is to explore what impact this lack of prep has on your class and what you can do about it.
In the broadest of terms, this is a problem because of the signal it sends to your students. Just as you know full-well when they’re not concentrating in class, so too do they know when you’re not.
Just think back to when you were getting taught and you’ll recall the occasions you were on the receiving end.
If we ask students to be ‘in the room’, then we have do the same. That’s why I always laugh at academic conferences when everyone sits at the back of the room, doing other stuff on their laptops, despite what they say to their students back home.
(It’s also why I don’t say those things to my students)
What’s the solution?
Three steps suggest themselves.
First, acknowledge what you’re falling short on. This doesn’t have to be a big mea culpa, but just a simple recognition that you know what’s (not) happening and not trying to bluff your way out.
If not else, it’s better to get out in front of it and own it, before someone else does that for you.
Second, adapt what you’re doing in class to minimise the impact on student learning. If you could only prep 2/3rds of a lecture, focus on that part rather than winging the last part. If you’re supposed to be providing feedback, try using peer evaluation to replace a block of it.
That’s not always possible: if you forgot the key piece of equipment, then you should sort out getting ASAP. But you need to demonstrate your intention to make the session still work, either in a slightly different way or with a bit of delay. What’s critical is that you don’t just notice you’re not firing on all cylinders, but that you also act on it.
Third, after the session is done, you take action to make up any shortfall in the class and to avoid it happening again. That might mean some jiggling of content for next week’s class, or some additional materials on the online environment.
The longer-term redressing needs you to be reflexive and honest about what went wrong (which you should be doing in any case) and finding ways to deal with it.
So now when I fly I either do it so I can rest afterwards, or I move classes.
For you that might mean changing your schedules, or changing what you do in class, or getting a big orange sign to point to the key piece of equipment, so you don’t forget it.
Taken together, I can’t promise you’ll never have this problem again (especially if you’ve not yet had this problem), but I can tell you that it’ll become much more manageable and much less likely to happen again.