finding the time to teach part 3 \u2013 preparing to teach<\/strong> is the third of a series of posts written by cft graduate teaching fellow, lily claiborne. these blog posts are intended to share ideas for prioritizing, planning, working efficiently, and avoiding procrastination – resulting in a more balanced, successful life in academia.<\/em><\/p>\n

in my gradstep<\/a> workshop on finding the time to teach, we focused on the four main steps in managing your time well as an overcommitted graduate student and ta in order to be a successful teacher:<\/p>\n

\n
1. prioritize <\/a><\/li>\n
2. plan<\/a><\/li>\n
3. work efficiently<\/strong><\/li>\n
4. avoid procrastination<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

   the following strategies will help you work more efficiently as a teacher, particularly when preparing for class.<\/p>\n

   <\/a>if you spend two hours to create a good lesson plan, then four hours must be even better, right<\/strong>?\u00a0 not necessarily.\u00a0 robert boice\u2019s book, advice for new faculty members: nihil nimus<\/a><\/em>, should allow us all to breathe a sigh of relief.\u00a0 nihil nimbus \u2013 nothing in excess.\u00a0 in looking at successful new faculty across the country, boice found that those who were moderate in the time they committed to all their academic pursuits had the most success, including as teachers.\u00a0 this should carry over to our careers as graduate students and teachers, as well.<\/p>\n

   \n
   • remember the pareto principle, or “80-20 rule”: 80 percent of the benefit occurs in the first 20 percent of preparation time.<\/strong><\/li>\n
   • excessive preparation can result in too much attention to details and “covering content” at the expense of overall student learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     the following schedule for preparing a class lecture is taken from the article \u201chow much preparation time is enough?<\/a>\u201d from the teaching toolbox column of prism<\/em>, the journal of the american society for engineering education.<\/p>\n

     schedule for preparing a class lecture:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

     after each task, put it aside until at least the next day.<\/p>\n

     10-15 minutes <\/em>create a title and conceptual outline <\/span><\/p>\n

     30-45 minutes <\/em><\/span>reread your outline and revise if needed.\u00a0 jot down brief <\/span>explanations and examples.<\/p>\n

     30 minutes <\/em>finish the details.\u00a0 decide where to put in activities and what <\/span>those will be.<\/p>\n

     15-30 minutes <\/em>you now have lecture notes.\u00a0 if you want to use powerpoint, use <\/span>this draft of notes to quickly create your slides.\u00a0 one last pass\u00a0through your notes will correct major spelling errors, etc.<\/p>\n

     10-15 minutes <\/em>shortly before lecture, review your notes and prepare psychologically. <\/span><\/p>\n

     ~ 2 hours total preparation time<\/p>\n

     coming next: finding the time to teach part 4 – encouraging active students<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

     finding the time to teach part 3 \u2013 preparing to teach is the third of a series of posts written by cft graduate teaching fellow, lily claiborne. these blog posts are intended to share ideas for prioritizing, planning, working efficiently, and avoiding procrastination – resulting in a more balanced, successful life in academia. in my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":4971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[127,126,49],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wp0\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/59\/2018\/07\/09153652\/blog-time3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4970"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}