Reflections on the 2016-2017 academic year:

I was no stranger to teaching or grading or counseling students, or any of the other

myriad of roles an instructor takes on during the course of a class thanks to my tenure as
a graduate teaching assistant during my graduate program at the University of North
Texas. The arrangement at UNT is such that many TAs have the opportunity to “own”
their own laboratory classes: in other words, I had experience writing short lectures,
writing and grading quizzes and exams.

However, I quickly came to realize that despite similarities, being the professor was a
very different ball game than being an assistant. I also realized why my former major
professor never seemed to have time to order the that one chemical I had been
bothering him about for the last week, or two weeks…or month. The amount of time that
organization and implementation of a class requires, especially a new preparation, is
astonishing. I found myself spending nights in my office desperately writing the next
day’s lecture on more than one occasion (I’m still doing that, actually). But, at the same
time, with each day that I stood in front of the classroom, I knew I was learning and
adjusting and improving as a teacher and an educator.

I wasn’t surprised to find myself pouring all my effort into the lecture component of
human A&P and neglecting my role as the laboratory instructor of the companion
laboratory section. I enjoy lecturing as it plays to my strengths and I often find it easier
than guiding students in the lab: especially when I need to trouble-shoot when
experiments or demonstrations do not proceed as expected. When I asked the students
for feedback, I heard similar statements from them: they needed more guidance, for
example, while working on their semester-long vertebrate dissections, than I was
providing. I am very conscious of playing less of a spectator’s role during the laboratory
component of the class when I teach the Human Anatomy & Physiology course again in
the upcoming 2018-2019 year. This insight has been helpful as I am beginning to
prepare for the upcoming spring 2018 semester in which I have another new
lecture/laboratory class prep: comparative animal physiology. The experience I
garnered during my first year is invaluable when I start to plan out experiments and
demonstrations for this class: I know that, I, in particular, need to focus on playing a
larger role assisting the students as they conduct the daily assignments.

Time management seems to be a recurring issue for me: allotting the right amount of
time to lecture writing, grading, personal research…this is still an ongoing process in
which I can greatly improve. I know this aspect of professorship gets easier with time:
after all, I don’t have to create Human A&P lectures again from scratch the next time
around! However, I hope to make great strides in improving this aspect of my educating
during the current and upcoming semesters: not only because it benefits my students,
but because it benefits myself! As I’m always telling the students, “Sleep is good. Try it.”
Perhaps I need to listen to my own advice once in a while!

S.S. 10/5/17