VI. Analyzing and Improving Your Teaching

Analyzing Teaching and Your Career

College and university administrators want good instruction for their students; if you are entering or continuing in the academic job market, it should benefit you to convince search and promotion committee members of your excellence in teaching as well as in research. Spending some time and energy analyzing your teaching not only enhances your skills but also your self-confidence: you know why you are effective. The narrative statement from your teaching portfolio can tell a compelling story. Web-based portfolios are easy to access. Offering a videotape of a successful class as part of your dossier can make you stand out positively. Your letters of recommendation for the job market should also include details about how you interact and communicate with students in the classroom; if you have done collegial observations, you have a proficient letter-writer handy.
If you are a graduate student who plans a career other than teaching, your classroom experience can still hold you in good stead. Your future employer will be glad to learn that you present yourself well in front of an audience, that you have strong organizational and/or leadership qualities, that you meet deadlines, and so on. While improving your teaching, you are developing skills applicable to many endeavors. A supervisor who knows your successful teaching career at U.Va. can write directly about your abilities.
As an assistant professor, if you consistently spend even a little time considering your teaching with colleagues' assistance, you will assist senior colleagues with promotion and tenure decisions. As noted above, your colleagues should enjoy conversing with you about the intellectual challenges of teaching and research and want to keep you in the department. In addition, colleagues who have seen you teach can speak knowledgeably about your teaching; you will have a stronger dossier than one that comes simply from students' evaluations. A teaching portfolio organizes pertinent evidence for easy understanding.
Finally, never forget the personal satisfaction of teaching well: the excitement of a student who finally understands, the pleasure of constructing a balanced and organized presentation, the thrill of opening new vistas to curious minds. Teaching can counterbalance the loneliness sometimes inherent in scholarly pursuits and offer the scholar an immediate outlet for intellectual energy. If teaching well matters to you, work on it as you would any skill you want to acquire. In the academic world, teaching well matters more all the time.

A teacher affects eternity; he never can tell where his influence stops.

—Henry Adams, The Education
                                                                 of Henry Adams, 1907