John Wilson

I'm 50/50 on lesson plans being a must. I think they are fantastic and a must for someone starting a class for the first time. I am at the point now that I have taught the same class roughly 4 or 5 times. I find that I don't need them. I know all the material verbatim and have the stories to interweave with them.

I like to open the first few minutes of the first class as an introduction. I am lucky to have smaller class sizes which facilitates this nicely. I like to gauge the student and their abilities prior to the class starting. I then normally give a quick background of myself. This has proven useful due to my perceived age. I tend to have older students in my class and this lets them know that I actually know the material. I have had issues with older students in the past but this has seemed to work.

I am quickly approaching my 4th year as an instructor and I still have classroom jitters for about the first 5 minutes of a new class. I am an extreme introvert so it takes me that 5 minutes to remind myself that they are here to listen to me regardless what I have to say. After that... I am good to move on. Not sure how many others still experience this.

Instructional style is extremely important at delivery. I try to build rapport with the students through humor. It has worked really well but I am curious how much of it is related to how close in age I am to the majority of my students.