Hello VIPEr-land. I wanted to post my experience with returning to the classroom after a 4-year hiatus. It was a little nerve-wracking at first (ok, a lot) but I quickly realized two things. First, experience pays off, and second, VIPEr is a great resource for teaching materials and generating new ideas!

Spring 2011 was the last time I taught inorganic before this year. I was on sabbatical in 2011-2012, and my department hired a 2nd inorganic chemist (VIPEr user Katherine Van Heuvelen) during that year. She taught “my” course for 3 years, with the associated laboratory. I hadn’t realized how possessive I was of the course until I heard me call it “my” course in front of her, and at that moment, I took a big step back. Of course, it is “our” course, the college’s course, and I wanted to step backwards to allow her to develop her own style. So, really, I sat in on a few of her lectures here and there, but for the most part, did not think about the teaching of inorganic chemistry at Harvey Mudd College for 3 years.

Fast forward to Fall 2015. On schedule, 6 weeks out, I begin to panic about my spring semester courses. This is normal for me, but there was a deeper sense of urgency this time. Could I still teach inorganic? I wasn’t really worried, but yes, even full professors can suffer from imposter syndrome. I was perhaps more concerned about the course than normal, because I made a clear and conscious decision to NOT use my old, fraying, lecture notes in the classroom again. While I am very conscious of what material I have put into my course in the past, this time around, I wanted to be more organic… dare I say, more INorganic, in the development of my course.

So, while I use the old notes as background preparation, I am carefully perusing the text, my notes, my handouts, my powerpoints, my in-class problems, and I am re-staging it all to make, hopefully, a more cohesive and coherent whole. And if, during class, I all of a sudden decide that NOW is the time to introduce dn counts, VEC and X/L notation, then I do it, even if it means pushing aside nomenclature for yet another day. I don’t normally focus very much on nomenclature, but in early February I ended up spending most of a week on it, for at least part of each class, because I kept getting distracted with questions, or other material I decided was more important at that moment. For example, when naming a cobalt complex I went off on a long tangent on inert/labile. And maybe the nomenclature unit is better because of the extra time I spent on the tangential things.

I’m finding a real freedom in rejecting what I did before. I use the old material as backup, but I can bring in new material. I have used several LOs from VIPEr so far (the TOC first day activity, the symmetry scavenger hunt is always a hit, of course I used my own LGO practice problems, I used 5-slides about magnetism as source material for my own unit {look for a new in-class activity on magnetism soon!}, and the students enjoyed Werner from beyond the grave).  I am finding that those worksheets and lit discussion ideas help me frame the field for the students. I’m even about to write a literature discussion on a paper by a visiting scientist that is happening next week. With my more relaxed attitude towards “covering the material,” I am finding that together we are “uncovering the material” to a greater depth than I’ve done before.

We haven’t had a midterm yet. I am not collecting and grading homework, though I am doing regular pop quizzes, so I don’t have an excellent sense of how my students are taking this all in. But I am spending 5-10 minutes after each class debriefing with my new colleague, and we discuss teaching methods, what worked and didn’t, and it has been really great to have someone literally next door against whom I can bounce ideas. And she has encouraged me to do some new things as well; I’m going to be doing my mid-course evaluations next class, and I’ll finally get a chance to hear some feedback from the students.

The adventure continues. It has been exciting for me to re-do my course. Each day brings new challenges and excitement as I bring this fascinating field to life for my students.