The Joys of Teaching

There are those who think I have a little too much fun while I’m teaching. These complaints typically come from students who think that college-level teaching has to be the ivory-tower-residing professor standing at the front of the classroom authoritatively spouting facts that the students are to dutifully write down and memorize for exams. College instructors are not to laugh or use colloquialisms. Professors must not be human.

Well, for that one percent of students: I’m sorry. You won’t like my class.

For the rest of you, let me preview your experience if you decide to take one of my classes.

I definitely do the standard spouting of information, as professorial-types are supposed to. I enjoy spouting information and drawing simultaneously. I was particularly proud of my artwork the day I described surface and deep currents in the ocean:

Sometimes I get a little silly, like when I used the table-top as a chalk-board and used a bunch of my son’s toys to illustrate the relationships of the major dinosaur groups:

I think one of my teaching coups was when I devised the hypothetical continent of ‘Cupcakeia’ to help students understand the motions of tectonic plates and the importance of apparent polar wander. (You’ll need to take my class or do a little research to find out what that is.) It got better when I added the sub-continent of ‘Frosteringia,’ that collides with Cupcakeia to make a nice mountain range. So proud of that. Even prouder when my students use Cupcakeia as an example on their exams. (**See, they know it’s fake. It has to be. But they have a chuckle and they REMEMBER! Gasp! They learn! Woot!**) I wish I had a photo or drawing of Cupcakeia and Frosteringia. Maybe next year.

There are definitely the days when I’m as grumpy as the students are about being in class so freaking early. Those are the days when we really have fun. The other day I was trying to make the simple point that when ice floats in water, part of it (the root, if you will) is under water. I could have done that professorially in less than a minute. I think I spent at least five minutes drawing a picture that included a humpback whale, the Titanic (which upset the students), a lost polar bear, and a very large manatee, about which I wrote “Oh! The huge manatee!”

Yeah. I lost the class for a while that day. But hey, in the end, no one regretted coming to class. So yay! Success.

My most recent lecture involved the invention of new terms: Oosh and Schlorque. Ooshing was a term invented by one student as an alternative to “ridge push.” I like ooshing much better. Schlorque was invented by another student as an alternative to “slab pull.” My students dutifully photographed this and posted it on Twitter so that I wouldn’t forget.

Like I said, there are those who might think I goof off a little too much in my classes. But, you know, I have a good rapport with my students, and I typically have 30-35 students (of a class of 43) who actually show up for lecture every day. Any attendance greater than 50% for an introductory course is really darn good.

I think they like the class. I sure like teaching it.