I've wrapped up my Spring term teaching and received my teaching evals. Now that I've (finally) had a chance to teach the same class a few times, I am starting to believe in what I call Zeno's Paradox of Teaching: every time I teach a class, my improvement in teaching quality is half the distance between quality of the last time I taught it and my maximum ability to teach that material.
If I'm right about this, then I think it means that it's important to think long-term when approaching teaching:
- New faculty (like me) should start by teaching primarily core courses, ones that are offered every year, have good support materials, and provide a consistent opportunity for improvement. Specialized seminars can be fun to teach, but if they're not going to be offered every year, then improvement will be slow.
- Don't drive yourself (myself) crazy trying to teach the "perfect" class on your (my) first time teaching. Try to do a good job and next time try to improve on it as much as possible.
- Zeno's paradox means that I'll never teach quite as well as I think I could teach. The positive message there is that one should continue trying to come up with creative ways to improve a course. The warning there is that perfection is not an appropriate standard and not to be too hard on oneself for failing to reach it.
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