Just a couple of points: (1) Personally, I usually pay no mind to what Louis says about teaching. He's not a psychologist (though one doesn't have to be a psychologist to say meaningful things about teaching), he's a tenured professor (which shouldn't be held against him but might blind him to the fact that that status grants him rights and privileges not available to junior faculty, adjuncts, or graduate students teaching courses on their own), and typically relies solely on his own experience instead of systematic research on what works and doesn't work (it is remarkable how many people who rely just on their experience fail to appreciate the concept of external validity). Louis fails to appreciate the role of his own biases and the how the specific environment he operates in affects what he thinks as well as what he thinks he knows. When he purports to provide "wisdom" on a subject, like "if you don't feel like it, don't teach because it will be obvious to students", he appears to think that this is a "universal law" applicable to all instructors in all courses while in truth he may be able to get away with it but someone whose contract specifies that a certain number of hours of classroom instruction would be foolish to follow his advice especially if it gets back to whoever their supervisor is.
(2) In general, I recommend that instructors plan for an activity or activities for what I call "My Dog Died Today". That is, one can never tell when some personally catastrophic event will occur but one will not be able to take time off from class. One probably can't be bubbly and effervescent if one's dog died or one's child was admitted to the hospital or one's home burned down or a family member was kidnapped while traveling in a foreign country (which happened to one of my students who apologized for being out of it in class) or fill in your own personal tragedy. In these kinds of situations I think is wise to prepare: (a) to have a some video that is generally relevant to the topic of your class that can be used to fill the period and leave time for reactions and discussion afterward -- this reduces the amount of time one has to spend speaking which in fact might be difficult to do given the circumstance. Using material from various PBS series would be good, especially if one can access the Annenberg website; see: http://www.learner.org/resources/series150.html (b) an activity that would allow the students to form small groups, work on a problem or some goal directed activity which will take some time and then report on their conclusions and moderate subsequent discussion. I'm sure Tipster can provide pointers to soruces for this kind of thing in different areas of psychology. The key thing is to determine what can be done in the class period that would be relevant either to the topic currently being covered or provides insight into some specific aspect of the course's content while reducing the amount of time that the instructor has to speak and physically act. Given the nature of the events I'm referring to, one wants to reduce the likelihood that one might break down in front of students, experience wild mood swings, or present other behaviors reflecting how upset or badly they feel but trying to keep it under control. If students don't know the context, they might react badly to strange behavior on the instructor's part. True, I'm really talking about those days when something really bad happens which really makes one not want to teach but one has to anyway. If its just "I don't feel like teaching today", then maybe Louis' advice makes sense. 1/2 :-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1088 or send a blank email to leave-1088-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
