Preparing for Class

Joanna Grisinger has been blogging this month at Legal History Blog on the subject of teaching legal history. Her helpful advice is broadly applicable to all subject areas. Here is an excerpt:

“As soon as a syllabus is finalized and handed out, I save a copy as ‘future syllabus 3XX’ and add notes to it (moving or removing certain cases that just don’t work with a particular day’s material, noting at the top that I need to spend more time on A, B, or C, etc.) I know I’m not going to remember the details of why something didn’t work a year, or years, later, but it’s easy to go back to my office and simply move an assigned reading from one day to another. It’s also a file where I can paste citations, links, and stray thoughts (like ‘do a better job explaining negligence’ or ‘read this article before teaching Lochner again’) to deal with later.

Further, when I run across something online that I think might be interesting to use in one of my classes someday (an image, a newspaper article, a Legal History Blog reference to a new book or journal article, a digital history project, someone else’s syllabus or reading list, a tweet with a great piece of teaching advice), I immediately save it with Google Keep (which lives in my browser and requires a single click; Evernote also works for this.) Evernote and Google Keep (and probably a dozen more similar programs) store all kinds of materials and allow you to tag your materials as you like. I’ve created tags for each of the different classes I teach or might teach (as well as ones for various research projects I’m working on, restaurant recommendations, travel ideas, etc.). I’ll tag a link as soon as I save it, with whatever fits (the same article might be of use in Legal History since 1850, Gender and the Law, and Constitutional Law). Some of these classes I might not be teaching again for a few years, but when I’m starting to think about ordering materials and revising the syllabus for that class, I have a giant head start. It’s also a great way to keep track of the teaching tips and interesting assignments people tweet about that can be almost impossible to find weeks or months later.”

I take a very similar approach. At the end of each class period, there are often things I want to tweak about how I will cover the same material the next time I teach the course. But I find that if I don’t make a note to myself immediately after class, I can never remember what it was I wanted to change about that particular class by the time the next year rolls around.

I also find blogs to be enormously helpful for staying on top of new developments in the subjects I teach. For example, Rick Hasen’s Election Law Blog is essential reading for anyone who teaches Election Law. It provides a daily summary of all election law-related developments, including the latest court cases, law review articles, FEC rulings, newspaper stories, op-eds, and blog posts. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t read Election Law Blog. And I have found both the Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog and EvidenceProf Blog to be great sources of information as well. I don’t think I would be able to keep my courses fully up-to-date without those blogs. 

Part of the fun of being a law school professor is the fact that the subjects we teach constantly evolve. Even legal history courses must change over time as new scholarship deepens and broadens our understanding of the past. The law’s dynamic nature makes teaching it a new and rewarding challenge every semester.  

For more of Professor Grisinger’s excellent teaching advice, here are links to her posts on developing a legal history survey course, moving from semesters to quarters, choosing reading for legal history courses, and preparing for class.

Comments

[Hedley Lamarr, Car Wreck Counselor At Law, 1-800-BIG CASH NOW]

You guys actually prepare for class? Well, I prepare for court too. I make sure the car is filled the night before, pick up the file, throw it in my back pack and think of things to tell the judge on the way to court. You guys make the law sound sooooooooooooo complicated. It aint't. Just have to be a gentleman to the Judge and prosecutor.