The teaching sweetspot

I spent most of my day yesterday learning from colleagues about the special challenges and opportunities associated with teaching first-year college students in preparation for teaching a first-year seminar course next Fall titled, “The Anthropology of Food.” I have actually taught this course as a first-year seminar once before, but before Wellesley had a formal first-year program in place for these kinds of courses. It was a fun course the first time around, but for a number of reasons it was somewhat hastily put together and could have been better than it was. Which is part of why I am so excited to teach it a second time this Fall.

Teaching a course for the second time really strikes me as something of a teaching preparation sweetspot. Putting together a new syllabus can be daunting, but as it comes together it can be very fun to imagine the different trajectories the class could take. But without actually having given it a trial run with real live students, it is nearly impossible to hit it just right the first time and while advanced preparation helps a lot, there is also a point of diminishing returns. But teaching a course the second time fills in the student experience gap, while still tapping into the excitement associated with new material.

Which isn’t to say I am not excited about the other three courses I will offer next year, including a new upper-level seminar course that I will be teaching for the first time focused on genomics and society. The remaining two courses, Forensic Anthropology (w/Osteology) and Intro to Physical Anthro, are courses I have done 4+ times each and have a pretty clear expectation about how the course will go. And in honesty, these latter two courses will probably be my “best” courses. I change each course enough each year to keep them from being stale and boring, and the experience of doing them repeatedly certainly makes me better at teaching them. But in terms of my excitement, I think the second time around is where it is at.