Last week's Instructional Skills Workshop, put on by UBC's Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth was awesome. If you're a grad student at UBC sign up--it will definitely be worth your while. Our facilitators guided us through teaching with the BOPPPS model, which seemed to be very effective. BOPPPS stands for Bridge (hook your students' interest from the beginning to get them into the lesson), Objective (as in learning objective--let the students know what you're going to teach them), Pre-Test (find out what they already know so you can tailor your lesson), Participatory Learning (essentially, get them to teach themselves--this is a peer-based learning model), Post-Test (find out how well they did), and Summary (wrap it up). Through it all we had many discussions, participatory learning activities (they showed us their method in action), and the opportunity to teach three lessons to each other. The hardest part of the whole experience was watching the videotape of my lessons afterwards. Everyone said I was engaging and entertaining, and I was happy to hear that, but to be honest, I'd rather be speaking in front of a huge lecture hall full of people than watch myself from the privacy of my living room.