creative obstinacy

...might be one way of describing my persistence this evening in crafting a truly fabulous class plan for tomorrow. Even though I know that a lot of my students won't be there. As we get to the end of the term, I've learned that I have to lecture more explicitly, since they're doing less of the reading, and attendance gets more sporadic. Although my pedagogical philosophy and my teaching style are very much discussion based, I suspect that I'd also be pretty good at doing large lectures. It would take a heck of a lot of work, though. Every time I revamp one of my mini-lectures (since I never lecture for a whole class period -- maybe 30 mins at a time, tops) I have new respect for my colleagues in history who lecture every class day. Anyway, those few students who show up tomorrow get a cool presentation with some new slides that I'm pleased with.

I know, it's sort of silly at this point in the term to be putting this much effort in. But I hate the way the literature at the end of the term always gets short shrift. Maybe it's time to teach the course backwards.