Teaching Day!

Today I was a guest lecturer in one of the history classes here at SLU Madrid! It was so much fun and I'm very glad I had the opportunity to teach while I was here at the Madrid campus. It was a blast and a very new teaching experience for me. I've given one lecture, my first year as a TA for Dr. Hitchcock, but that was a 50 minute lecture several years ago. This was an hour and fifteen minute lecture - which I was surprised to learn is like a whole different beast! I'm hoping to teach as an adjunct professor at the SLU home campus sometime in the coming year, so this was nice practice in handling my own lesson. I've spent three years as a TA supplementing professors' lectures with discussions and readings and mini lessons of my own, so it was nice to do get a chance to teach on a larger scale.

On the SLU Madrid campus - ready to teach!

A bright beautiful day to talk about the middle ages!

The professor let me choose a week's topic off the syllabus so I chose the dark ages lecture - a discussion of the period between the fall of Rome and the Carolingian empire. I have a special spot in my heart for the low middle ages. We talked about the establishment of the Barbarian (for lack of a better word) kingdoms and the shift in European culture after the collapse of the Roman government. Basically, I was explaining this mess right here:

Look at all those loosely organized barbarian kingdoms - god I love the "dark ages"

I'd been putting together the general ideas for the lecture for awhile - figuring out what issues I wanted to cover and how to frame the period, but it wasn't until yesterday that I really sat down to write out my notes for the thing and create a PowerPoint. In keeping with the professor's structure, I mostly just used the PPT for maps and pictures and to put up key words that might be hard to spell. I think when you put up a solid, wordy outline of all your points on the PPT, students are just worried about copying it all down, and aren't actually listening to your explanations. So I just used it as a visual aid, which I think worked well. 

For the content, I started with my own ideas of what I wanted to cover (one good side effect of PhD exams is that they've left me feeling pretty confident in my ability to outline and present the period myself), and I consulted a number of sources to fill in the meat of the lecture: 

- The Making of the West - the students' textbook, 

- Bennet and Hollister's Medieval Europe - one of my favorite medieval textbooks for undergrads (every time I open this book I am reminded of how much fun I found medieval history to be in college. I can't wait to assign it myself someday), and 

- Class notes I'd taken in an introductory course on the low middle ages in college (Oh Professor Miller, I steal so many of your jokes). 

These sources gave me a solid idea about how to present this information to undergrads in a way that would be both educational and entertaining. I really reject the idea that history means just political history, so I really tried to incorporate aspects of social, cultural, linguistic, religious, and even a bit of gender history into the lecture to give a well-rounded approach to the period.

And the lecture went so great today! I was a bit worried about my timing - I've never given an hour and fifteen minute lecture, and I hadn't been able to practice it as many times as I would have liked, but I just relied on my instincts for judgement, and the lecture came in right at an hour and ten minutes exactly, which was perfect because the professor asked me to end a few minutes early so he'd have time to pass back the midterms. I had little timing signposts in my notes (halfway point! etc.) so with that was helpful. Very proud that my teaching pacing instincts didn't let me down! The professor suggested I give them a two minute break in the middle cause the class is long, which was a good idea - gave me a chance to hydrate and them a chance to chat and relax. 

Quick selfie during the students' break - behind me is the classroom and my PPT. 

I'm trying not to be obvious about smiling a little while checking my phone ;-)

I think the students had fun too! It was a pretty full class - not many absences. I was glad to have a big group. The professor wasn't there - he trusted I'd do fine and used the time to grade instead. I'm not nervous about being observed while teaching - I've done that plenty of times as a TA, but it was kind of nice to have it be just me and the students. I could loosen up, be a little more conversational in my lecturing style, make a few more jokes, etc. And I made them laugh! Repeatedly! I realize history is not a comedy show, but one of my main goals is to get students to actually enjoy learning about history, so getting them to chuckle is always a success in my book. They laughed quite a bit during a discussion of Germanic law and the wergeld, which is always a good time. 

"How much do I owe for the dismembered limbs?"

But what I really want to say in this post was how much FUN this was. I LOVE TEACHING. I find it completely satisfying and thrilling to share my love of history with students. I love making historical change make sense to them, explaining why and how cultures differ from one another, showing them the origins of the bits of history are preserved in our modern world, and mostly sharing hilarious/awesome/badass/cool stories that need telling. I think they had a good time. I got interrupted with several questions, all of which were very good questions that I had answers for. Nice to see they're paying attention enough to be curious about stuff. At the end of class there was a bit of applause, which was unexpected and entirely unnecessary  but very polite, and the professor said he loves having a guest lecturer because he always learns something new. I appreciated that, because he really only saw the last 15 minutes or so of my talk. 

Anyway, teaching was a blast again today, as it always is for me, and it renewed my energy for pursuing my degree. The last year of exams and not teaching has really worn on me, and it was nice to be reminded so vividly of why I'm doing this and how much fun this career truly is.