endeavors magazine:

research and creative activity at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors. By Peter Filene. The University of North Carolina Press, 160 pages, $17.95.

Peter Filene says going to class should be less like playing baseball and more like tossing a Frisbee. Instead of swinging a bat and hitting the right answers or striking out miserably, students might catch ideas and pass them on, maybe with a different spin. In The Joy of Teaching, Filene doesn’t give all the answers, but he does offer useful rules. If you’re new to the podium, he writes, make your classroom choices based on your own personality and values. Getting to know yourself as a teacher and understanding your students are the first steps toward building a syllabus, giving lectures, and passing out grades, he says.

Peter Filene is professor of history at Carolina.

©2005 Endeavors magazine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Neither text nor images may be reproduced without written permission.

welcome:

• from the editor.

overview:

• the oldest explosion arrives.
• keeping track of the kids.
• a mightier mammogram.
• fish get frisky quick.
• breathing easier at home.

features:

• honey, I shrunk the lab.
• sizing up an old bone hound.
• the next one could be worse.
• a long-buried war with the moros.
• the lives behind the dots.

in print:

• terror in another language.
• jewish with a drawl.
• life in stormy N.C.
• the joy of teaching.

endview:

• doubly exposed.