Teaching Tips We Wish They’d Told Us Before We Started
Introduction
By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn. – Latin Proverb
Once again, things that could’ve been brought to my attention YESTERDAY! – Adam Sandler as Robbie Hart in “The Wedding Singer”
When we started teaching, our more seasoned colleagues were probably ready with pearls of wisdom to share with us. They no doubt pointed us to several of the excellent resources on teaching as a new faculty member. As an instructor, there were so many hats to wear: lecturer, teaching staff mentor, exam / project / lab author, grader and leader of office hours. It was a lot to take in, and even with all that counsel, it was probably still quite daunting!
Years later, what have we had to learn on our own? What egregious mistakes could have been avoided had we just known a single fact? What advice has stood the test of time? How can we share these with each other?
The purpose of this wiki is to share our favorite teaching tips. We’ve come up with some initial tags or categories for teaching tips. These aren’t complete, you’re welcome to add new tags/categories and strongly encouraged to add your tips to the collection.
