Rewards of Teaching

Today, as I do nearly every semester, I held a final exam review session for my students (or any student who wants to attend). The first year I did it, I had about 5 students attend. The second semester, I had about 80 students attend. Last semester I had to cancel due to a combined lack of classroom availability and inlaw presence. This semester, I had reserved the largest classroom in 'my' building (the one where I take classes and do research), which sufficed before. It hold about 65 people officially, and can accommodate about 80 people if they bring in chairs from the atrium.

The session was scheduled to begin at 9 am. When I walked in at 8:50 am, they had run out of normal chairs, atrium chairs, and room on the floor. I had to step over people to get to the front of the room. And they kept coming, at a rate of about 5 people a minute.



Two bright students pointed out that the two buildings on either side of us have very large lecture halls, and were sent out as scouts to see if any of them were open. One was, in the very nice new building. I was told it seats about 200.

So we marched over there, at least a hundred students and myself by now, picking up more students as we went. To my delight, I discovered that, while it had all the latest in 'smart classroom' technology, it also had olds school sliding chalkboards, the kind that go up and down and let you preserve 3 chalkboards' worth of work while still teaching.

I gave my usual overview/crash course of the semester, pointing out what kind of questions were likely to show up on the final exam for each topic we had covered. This took about 2 hours, and I think we topped out at nearly 150 people. Just as I had finished, a professor walked in to give his own review session, so I moved next door with about 30 dedicated students and continued answering specific questions for another 2 hours until I had to go meet with my advisor.

I am always amazed by the response of students who want to learn and will take any opportunity offered to them in good faith. It makes teaching, especially small extra efforts like review sessions, immeasurably rewarding.

~PhysicsGal