I'm teaching two classes this term. I've taught these classes a number of times before, over the past several years.
I use essentially the same syllabi, and I have a complete set of notes, which are slightly reworked from term to term.
And yet, I still aside a massive amount of time to prep for each course. When I've gotten in a pinch, I've simply printed out each lecture shortly before class, looked over it for fifteen minutes or so, or even less than that, and the lectures went very well.
How do you break out of this "I need to prep a full day for each lecture so things will be absolutely perfect' mentality?
At the risk of being thought silly or irreverent, I broke out of it by spending far too much time on these fora. Between reading the posts, and following the links, and getting hooked on some web sites I first found through the fora, I sometimes find I haven't prepped much at all for a class that meets in... Oh, dear, only fifteen minutes, and I don't even know what section I'm supposed to be covering! Eeek!
Please forgive me, I don't mean to hijack, and this is tangenital although, perhaps, related... So far I'm seeing anywhere from 1/2 hr. (and saying that's an anomaly) to 4 hrs. of prep time per hour of class taught spent--by the professors teaching it. Do any of you think to mention that to your students when explaining the expectation might be 2 hrs. of study time per hour in class to actually learn the material for the first time?
Yep. All the time, and especially when they say it takes them 3-4 hours to read and take notes on a chapter. I tell them that's about what it takes me to do exactly the same thing when the material is new.
They don't like hearing that, though. Many of them want the faster way, which doesn't exist.
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"There is no royal road to Geometry." — Menaechmus.
I usually prep for about 30-45 minutes for a class that I've taught before, more for one that I haven't. Strangely, I often teach better when I prep less, as it seems that I need be more dynamic in class to make up for the lack of preparation. Still, knowing this doesn't allow me to prep less. It would be too stressful and chaotic to do all the time.
I try to get that much prep in. Sometimes I do the prep entirely mentally. In math, an unprepared example (or vaguely-prepared) can be catastrophic, or it can be very educational, in showing students how you attack a problem that you haven't seen before, and modeling the "facing a new problem" behavior for them.
Mulling over this thread, it occurs to me am I a major slacker?
At most I take 10 minutes to prep before class, otherwise, I just get to class a little early so I have a minute to flick through the PowerPoint slides to remind me what is coming up. Is this really bad? Do keep in mind that it's an introductory course that I have taught at least 100 times previously. And whenever I switch texts or go to a new addition, I revamp my presentations. But in a typical semester, I seem to be on auto-pilot.
I know many profs who use PowerPoint, including some who use the ones that the publisher prepares. I don't do this (for reasons I've discussed elsewhere) but some intro courses that I've taught many times before don't require much prep for me either. At least some lectures — Our Friend The Quadratic Equation, or How Many Ways Can We Write The Equation of a Straight Line — I could do with no preparation at all, because I've got all the examples and tricks down pat. I wouldn't dream of doing a lecture on Richardson interpolation cold, however, or cubic splines. I have enough trouble with those when I prep 'em.
There is a range; some courses or topics do indeed seem to go smoothly (more spontaneous, or something) with less prep to a point, and below that point they become turgid, unclear, and error-ridden.
