[further apologies for sporadic comment moderation during some busy and logistically challenging days]
In a class that I am teaching this term, I spend a lot of time writing, drawing, and equationing on the board at the front of the classroom. In some classrooms, I can, without too much undignified stretching, cover the entire board with exciting scientific words, letters, and glyphs. In my classroom this fall, however, I can only reach the lower half of the board without standing on a chair.
It's not a large board, so I spend a lot of time erasing. If I had more space, I could keep important information on it longer and have it there to refer to during later parts of a discussion. Life would be better.
Lowering the board would be the most sensible way to solve the problem for me, but my taller colleagues (i.e., everyone else in my department) would then be inconvenienced.
Perhaps in less economically dire times the department would get a new, larger board or would acquire some other means by which I could write and derive and sketch to my heart's content, but that's not going to happen this year (or next).
This is not a complaint, just a random musing about having to deal with some technical challenges when teaching in the classic on-the-board style. It is vitally important that I keep my board-writing as organized as possible, especially when in the midst of a long series of sequential etchings, but I am finding this very difficult owing to space/height limitations.
Today, however, I was quite thrilled by the sight of my (taller) co-instructor kneeling on the floor so that he could reach the bottom of the board. So far this term he has been able to fill the entire board without doing this, but the nature of his scribblings today for some reason required that he not reach down too low to write. Hence, he knelt. Somehow, this cheered me up and reduced my feelings of frustration with only being able to reach part of the board.
In a class that I am teaching this term, I spend a lot of time writing, drawing, and equationing on the board at the front of the classroom. In some classrooms, I can, without too much undignified stretching, cover the entire board with exciting scientific words, letters, and glyphs. In my classroom this fall, however, I can only reach the lower half of the board without standing on a chair.
It's not a large board, so I spend a lot of time erasing. If I had more space, I could keep important information on it longer and have it there to refer to during later parts of a discussion. Life would be better.
Lowering the board would be the most sensible way to solve the problem for me, but my taller colleagues (i.e., everyone else in my department) would then be inconvenienced.
Perhaps in less economically dire times the department would get a new, larger board or would acquire some other means by which I could write and derive and sketch to my heart's content, but that's not going to happen this year (or next).
This is not a complaint, just a random musing about having to deal with some technical challenges when teaching in the classic on-the-board style. It is vitally important that I keep my board-writing as organized as possible, especially when in the midst of a long series of sequential etchings, but I am finding this very difficult owing to space/height limitations.
Today, however, I was quite thrilled by the sight of my (taller) co-instructor kneeling on the floor so that he could reach the bottom of the board. So far this term he has been able to fill the entire board without doing this, but the nature of his scribblings today for some reason required that he not reach down too low to write. Hence, he knelt. Somehow, this cheered me up and reduced my feelings of frustration with only being able to reach part of the board.