If you haven’t figured out how to cut down on the time you spend answering student emails, I may have the answer for you! When I tell other teachers that I have a number of stock email responses ready to go in the Notes app of my iPhone, some of them are relieved to have…
Every teacher knows that sometimes you have a class that’s super motivated, while another class is barely hanging in there. There’s not necessarily a rhyme or reason for it, it just happens. The solution? I won’t attempt to go into that at the moment, but you can do a variety of activities, see how things…
The other day I was sifting through some old ideas in my ‘Notes’ app, and I stumbled on some helpful student success strategies that never quite saw the light of day, so I thought I’d share them here. These are my top 5 super easy and fun ways to engage students in a way that…
I recently finished up my last semester teaching international college students, and subsequently handed the reigns over to some new instructors I’ve trained during the past few months. One instructor who shadowed me during the Fall term, a NASA liaison at our university, is trying teaching on for size during the next year, and she…
I’ve had the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel on my bookshelf for almost 2 years, and I’m just now making a dent in it (I swear I’ll finish it over winter break!). Before I get too far into it, though, I wanted to note a few…
As promised last week, in this post I’ve provided the materials I created to help prepare my students for their TED-style talks (it also doesn’t hurt to have a few copies of Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo on hand- I have 3 copies that I bring to the classroom for student use). I’ve also…
Recently I was asked by a local college to teach a faculty development workshop for part-time instructors. I eagerly agreed, and the entire event was everything I’d hoped it would be. As a group, we all shared our best kept teaching secrets, and many of those ‘secrets’ had to do with time management, so I…
Let’s talk about adding some spice to the college classroom. No, I’m not talking about a tasty fall treat, although I’m sure I’ll hear plenty of holiday-themed speeches this semester (and I’d bet money someone might even give a speech about Pumpkin Spice Lattes). I’m talking about making changes to my Public Speaking course to…
I love it when the faculty development courses I take during the summer not only help me to teach classes more effectively and understand more about technology, but also help me with what my friends have lovingly deemed my “side hustle” (a.k.a. writing, blogging, and working on the Happy Professor brand). It seems everyone has…
As a student, did you ever Christmas tree a test (ie. choose answers at random so your scantron bubbles took the shape of an evergreen) and receive a decent score for not knowing much of anything? Did you ever finish a course at the end of the semester and wipe your brain clean of all…