I am teaching two sections of Calculus 2 this fall. It’s my first time teaching calc 2. I am trying to incorporate some suggestions in my teaching given to me by various colleagues, including Joel Hamkins and Bill Kalies. These suggestions include staying standing up as much as possible, marking participation points for every time that students participate in class, and encouraging more student participation in working out the examples, even at the cost of being able to go over fewer examples per class session. Bill Kalies is the official Master Teacher in the FAU math department, so I have been working with him to develop my teaching, and I invited him to sit in on my class a month or so into the semester.

The classrooms that I’m teaching in are very nice; they are in the business school building, which received funding from Office Depot. They feature whiteboards and opaque projectors (i.e. a digital video camera hooked up to a projector). Although I have a personal aesthetic preference for chalkboards, the whiteboards are nice, because they allow me to use different colors more easily — colored chalk is hard to erase. It’s also my first time teaching with whiteboards. Maybe by the end of the semester, I’ll prefer them over chalkboards. The opaque projectors are helpful, but they take a while to warm up, so I’m not sure how much I’ll use them.

The sections are about 35 students each, the same size as the sections that I taught at City College.

There are four total sections of Calc 2 at the main FAU campus this semester, and the other two sections are being taught by another Visiting Assistant Professor. He and I are planning to meet up irregularly to discuss teaching-related issues.