Time Management While Teaching

When one starts to teach one of the basic worries would be if the material he has with him is sufficient for the duration of the class. The question of how content to be delivered would be driven by the two conflicts objectives, one is to have enough to last the duration of the class (the worst situation most beginners would dread would be that you are thru with your content and you still have a good half an hour to go...) and second to see that you are not overloading the class with too much of content....the choice of the "how much" is very important and so is what to emphasize .

I time management is a skill which one develops as he gains experince by teaching more, though as a beginner what one cannot afford to do less is PLAN. I have know teachers who plan their lectures minute by minute, even the jokes which they use would be prepared in advance....Even though that level of planning might lead to a certain amount of monotony in the lecture , but it is a small price to be paid for a beginner...

At the other end most of us who have been teaching would also have experienced situations wherein one would lose track of time, and suddenly you find that half an hour has gone.......

One of my senior colleagues who has many years of teaching experince gave me a very beautiful analogy when he compared teaching to meditation , he said when you are fully involved in any activity and focusing only on it, it is equivalent to meditating , I guess that is what happens when one looses track of time while teaching .....

From a presenter to a teacher

Most of us, who are new to the profession assume that teaching is equivalent to making a good presentation. This is further reinforced by the ppt culture wherein we end up putting everything we want to speak on a ppt. But teaching is much much more than making a good presentation, though it might be a necessary condition but not a sufficient one . Difference are many but some of them which I found to important as a teacher one of the most important skill is that of listening to your students, asking questions to make them think in the classroom and responding to their questions. Developing these qualities take time and normally not very critical in making a presentation but are vital for a good teacher. The transition from a good presenter to being a good teacher is a gradual one which takes time.

A presenter can afford to be very structured and calculative , a teacher has to be more slow , repeating issues and emphasizing concepts, not because students will not be able to absorb in one go, but because repetition reinforces the message. The transition from a presenter to a teacher also need the confidence of the teacher to increase, I mean to be a good teacher one has to be more confident than being a good presenter. And the transition time also takes into account the time to build the requires competence in the area which he is teaching.


One of our senior professors here told me that it takes only two years to tell whether a person can teach or not , maybe i think it is essential to make the transition from a presenter to a teacher early enough, though I believe it is getting hampered by the ppt culture , versus the good old days of blackboard teaching....

Should a teacher ever get angry?

In my opinion that as a teacher one carries more responsibility than most of us realize. The word and conduct of a teacher can and will influence the morale and confidence of students. And as a teacher one has to be very careful when he comments or gives his opinion on anything related to the student could be his work, his abilities, his behavior because the student when he listens to him doesn’t take the comment as being given by an individual (Mr XYZ) in his individual capacity but sees it as a judgment by the teacher on his student.

The problem with getting angry while teaching is that one usually doesn’t think much when he is angry so what is says may not be totally thought through and could have adverse impact on students. He would end up losing the focus of teaching and would take time to refocus. And the major issue I feel is that in the process of getting angry with one student the teacher also makes the remaining students uncomfortable and thus loss of focus on the part of the students as well.

So all in all as teacher one has to avoid getting angry, though this should not leading to a chaotic situation in the class. So he has to be on the thin line of controlling the class and not loosing his temper.....