Math Talk

Today (September 9) was the first day of lectures for courses at UBC. It's always exciting meeting a class for the first time. This time around there was the added excitement of teaching for the first time on a campus that in many ways is new to me, though I spent many years here as both an undergrad, and then as a graduate student.

There's all kinds of things that seem to require extra attention these first days and weeks - finding my way to new lecture rooms, trying to figure out exactly what facilities are available for A/V, sorting out how to obtain class lists, trying to remember brand new photocopier codes (and how to attend to photocopier needs like staples, toner, and feeding of coloured paper stock).

In addition there is a lot of flux with enrollment - students adding and dropping classes as a result of factors such as the Basic Skills Test, which determines which of the Calculus streams students are eligible for.

It looks like I will end up with up to fifty more students than originally registered, which required a fair amount of very-last-minute re-thinking of teaching strategies and approaches. Well, the more the merrier!

My current short-term objectives are to

1. Get a few more hours of sleep per night than I have been the past couple of days (I preach to my students about the importance of sleep for optimal learning, and should probably model what I profess!)
2. Get Vista course sites set up
3. Get the relatively routine aspects of my courses sorted out, so I can focus creative energy on preparing engaging and effective lessons.
4. Sit in on lectures by some of the award-winning teachers (Joel Feldman, Philip Loewen, Mark MacLean, Greg Martin, Andrew Rechnitzer, and Stephanie van Willigenburg) in our department, to see if I can pick up some teaching tips and wisdom, or at least inspiration!

Well, that is probably already a little over-optimistic, so I'll sign off here and get a start with objective 1.) above.