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[atlchemist]

I am ABD in a STEM field and have campus interviews coming up. All of them entail a 30-40 min. teaching demonstration to faculty acting as students. As a graduate student, I have sought out teaching opportunities and have been awarded teaching fellowships, so I have more teaching experience than most grad students in my field.

However, my teaching experience is still pretty thin in the grand scheme of things, and I don't really feel like I've developed a particular teaching style. I typically go with a lecture format with a lot of stories, questions, etc. to engage the students. But I worry that is not enough for a job interview. Each of these positions is primarily for teaching, so the teaching demonstration will be very important. On the one hand, I don't want to do a gimmicky demonstration, but on the other hand, I don't want to "just lecture."

FWIW, the positions are all slightly different: instructor at a state college (they don't do tenure); lecturer at an R2 university; TT at a lower-ranked SLAC.

I am meeting with a lecturer in my department tomorrow to talk through this but was hoping you all might have some pointers to get me started.

[systeme_d_]

1. Click the Search button above.  Use the one after Forum Home and Help.
2. For your search term, use "teaching demo"
3. Click the box that says "Search in topic subjects only"

You will get dozens of threads on this same topic.  I just couldn't be bothered to cut and paste them all for you here.

[lbothwell3]

altchemist: treat each of these as if you are teaching a class of students. When the class starts (or rather, your demo), ask for some volunteers. Say something like" okay, understanding that you are all faculty, I need a few of you to play the role of student for the next 40 minutes. I need someone to be the perpetual hand-raiser; another to be the occasional hand-raiser, half of you to be engaged and have a sense of humor, and the other half to be partially engaged and refuse to raise your hand, even if your name is Hector, and the question asked is "does anyone remember who the two main protagonists were from Homer's Illiad"? In this way I will feel right at home with this teaching demo, and you will get a good feeling for how I teach.