1. Advice for New Faculty Members
Robert Boice. (2000)

2. Eight Rules for Working at Teaching with Moderation

3. Rule no. 1: Wait Pause before Writing or Talking to Reflect.
Use pauses playfully and planfully.
Put some of what you think into writing.
Active waiting is an alternative to impatience

4. Rule 2: Begin Before Feeling Ready
No one feels ready especially: procrastinators, perfectionists, elitists, blockers, and oppositionals.

5. Rule #3: Prepare & Present in Brief, Regular, Sessions
Avoid binges of over-preparation
working under pressure & excitement leads to hypomania, sadness, disinterest and inefficiencies.
Begin before feeling fully ready

6. Rule #4: Stop! Stop in a timely manner.
This reduces impatience and intolerance.
Rushed teaching is poor pedagogy.
Leave time at the end of class for all sorts of loose ends.

7. Rule #5: Moderate over attachment to content & overreaction to criticism
Rely on brief notes for lecture and discussion. Make them into overheads
make only a few main points in class & convey them patiently, with carefully chosen examples and discussions.
Remember that good teaching, like research, is provisional.
Practice early evaluation.

8. Rule #6: Moderate Negative Thinking
Myths about genius, artistry, great inventors and brilliant teachers make us feel pedestrian and inadequate.
Remember that the other side of teaching is learning.

9. Rule #8: Let others do some of the work.
Let go of some control and credit.
Use of peers & mentors to talk & share.
Collaborate in classroom teaching.
observe and critique colleagues’ classes.
Invite them to do the same for you.

10. Rule #9: Moderate Classroom Incivilities
Causes:
too much material at too fast a pace at too difficult a level for student involvement.
Content remains abstract, irrelevant.
Professor can’t relate to average student.
We care more for teaching than learning.

11. Incivilities: prevention
Teach with compassion, openness, and patience.
Communicate with immediacy & comprehension and pacing.
Remember your role as a reinforcer of high standards - of respect for learning and for others.

12. Conclusion
“Physics is experience, arranged in economical order” (Ernst Mach)
So is teaching.
Best wishes
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