Teaching again

I had realised the previous semester I had probably taken on too much teaching. It wasn't in my contract anymore; I was now doing it for my PGCertHE. Unfortunately, you can't use all of it for that. You have to do an "intervention"; you have to take an aspect of teaching and change it (improve it, ideally, of course) and critically evaluate what you've done. You only do one. I had enough teaching for two.

Another thing is that you need to do observed teaching at least twice. I had plenty, but first I didn't get a tutor (who will be your observer) for many weeks, during which a lot of teaching came and went, and then she wouldn't come with me into the field, although during the induction I had been assured you can do your observations anywhere, not just in a lecture theatre. So then I still needed an observation and had no teaching left. I asked James if he had an hour I could take over from him. He did! In fact, he had six. There we go again. I wasn't keen on taking them all, but then I also figured James would be absent a lot this semester, and struggle to do it himself. I'm doing it again! I suggested I do the first four hours and then we see who does the last two. He may be around for these. But it's far from unlikely I end up doing them all...

The Panama Isthmus features in my lectures; a good excuse to put a pic in of the Panama canal I took in 2001

Of course my tutor was ill during the approaching of the first lectures. I still don't know which lecture will be observed and by whom! It's not going very efficiently. But the good news is: teaching something only once is frustrating. The first time around you spend an awful lot of time on it, and you always think of things you could have done better, The second time around you can improve all these things while only spending a fraction of them time! And indeed; I thought the first lecture went smoother than the last. I look forward to the next!

I was lecturing in Pontio; they purposefully built it so you can approach it from an old arch-shaped building left over from what was there before.

From the arch you walk straight to an entrance. They made sure this paert of the building is translucent, so you can see straight through to the turret of the rather beautiful Main Arts building 

The lecture room has chairs you can shove to the back, so it can be used for multiple purposes. And notice the chap hoovering in the back; they keep it rather clean!