Issue 7, Spring 1994

William A. McEachern, Editor

Odds and Ends

• If, at the outset of the first class of the term, we try to get students' attention by yelling over the din, we are establishing a pattern that will require us to do that every class thereafter. As an alternative, simply stand poised, ready to speak, and wait until students quiet. They may be slow to respond at first, but they will quiet down more quickly each time after that. So wait for the quiet; don't try to force it. Remember, for better or worse, from the outset we train students how to behave.

• Students are always looking for better ways to review for exams. I tell them to spend extra time with the graphs. They can review the graphs and read the accompanying captions. Students should get tot he point where they can draw each graph, label it, and explain what would change the equilibrium values.

• According to the college acceptance rates listed in the U.S. News 1994 College Guide only 102, or 7% of the 1370 accredited colleges surveyed, reject more than half their applicants. Some 120 colleges accept 95% or more, and 45 colleges accept all applicants.

• "Without complete understanding, what is there to teach?"
  
  Thomas Aquinas

  "You can observe a lot by watching."
  

  Yogi Berra

  "It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen."
  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes

  "Excellence is to do common things in an uncommon way."
  

  Booker T. Washington

  "Happiness lies in the job of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."
  

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  In terms of teaching styles, subscribe to Voltaire's dictum: "All styles are good save the tiresome kind."

  "The great difficulty of education is to get experience out of ideas."
  

  George Santayana

  "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
  

  John Wooden

  "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing . . . Never lose a holy curiosity."
  

  Albert Einstein.

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