Okay, I am pretty darn excited. I get to teach my very first class ever this summer! Grad students don’t normally teach astronomy classes at the University of Virginia except during the summer semesters. The classes are a little over two hours a day, five days a week! The topic? Life Beyond Earth. *SQUEE!* Professors in our department have typically used material from Life in the Universe by Jeff Bennett and Seth Shostak. I already love Bennett’s intro astronomy book, so I’m sure I’ll do the same. Now the problem will be not spending all of the next few months excitedly preparing lectures, notes, activities, and assignments when I should be doing research.
Need I say… if you are at UVa and need another science class, come on over! It’ll be awesome.
I’m a brand new post-doc in astronomy working as part of the 
3 responses so far ↓
Mike // March 18, 2010 at 07:20 |
Good luck! I’m a little too intimidated to try teaching my own course. Maybe I’ll give it a go next semester when research isn’t looming so large.
James C. Wallace II // March 18, 2010 at 12:49 |
I’ve taught at astronomy at Henderson State University before. One thing I found my students loved was how I began each class.
I would play a song that had something astronomical in the song and my students would write up a paragraph identifying what that astro thing was.
example: Drops of Jupiter by Train, or perhaps Rocky Mountain High by John Denver (I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky…).
It was a good way to do attendance and music opens the mind to learning. Even some of the students would bring in their own music to feature.
Don’t forget about Moon Rocks either. NASA loves getting them out to classrooms. It’s easy to get certified (I did) and video microscopes for the Lunar Petrographic Slides work very well.
Good luck. I loved it myself but now I teach Weather & Climate.
Rachel // March 19, 2010 at 13:34 |
Woohoo! How exciting! That is invaluable experience. And it will help in the job market in a few years.