Enthusiasm
Oct. 26th, 2005 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI am, by nature and preference, a quiet person - shy, reserved, bookish. It may be possible to be an effective teacher while still displaying those traits, but I haven't found it so. Over the years, I've taught myself to be more demonstrative when teaching.
Last night, in my abstract algebra class, I was introducing the students to the concepts of ideals and factor rings, giving them examples and ways to think about these ideas. I grew excited, gesticulating, visually representing the act of modding out an ideal... and suddenly the pitch of my voice went off the scale. (I suspect that, had any dogs been nearby, they would have howled in response...)
I stopped, collected myself, and completed the thought in a more normal register. It took a minute or so for order to restore itself.
Enthusiasm is a good thing, right? Right?
Last night, in my abstract algebra class, I was introducing the students to the concepts of ideals and factor rings, giving them examples and ways to think about these ideas. I grew excited, gesticulating, visually representing the act of modding out an ideal... and suddenly the pitch of my voice went off the scale. (I suspect that, had any dogs been nearby, they would have howled in response...)
I stopped, collected myself, and completed the thought in a more normal register. It took a minute or so for order to restore itself.
Enthusiasm is a good thing, right? Right?
