Teaching evaluations

I just got my teaching evaluations back from last spring, and I'm relieved to say that they were very positive. Phew! I've given some pretty nasty evaluations myself in the past, which I now feel ashamed of. If I get negative reviews in the future, I hope to be able to take them in stride, like the professors in the video below. Perhaps you've seen the Jimmy Kimmel segments of celebrities reading meaning tweets about themselves? Here is (Canadian) "Professors Read Mean Reviews About Themselves":

Jokes aside, the teaching evaluations helped me understand better what students do care about. They like it when their professor seems organized, responds to emails or is willing to make appointments outside of official office hours. They like it when the professor is willing to entertain their (sometimes ridiculous) ideas and at least appears to be enthused about the subject matter.

These things seem separate to me from what I used to think was most important: mastery of content. My greatest fear used to be that students would ask me questions and I would give the wrong answer, or have no idea what to say. I've learned more about my field, so I feel more confident, and I've also learned that students don't mind when I say, "Here's my first response, but I may revise it upon further thought and better research."

I wish someone had told me earlier that so much of successful college teaching is not necessarily about the information. It's about writing a well-paced syllabus that you'll be able to keep up with, posting things online when you say you will, setting clear expectations for exams and papers and then grading them promptly, responding to students, and being glad to be in the classroom. One of the most obvious ways for me to improve my teaching after this semester is to end class on time. I never thought it was a big deal to run 2-3 minutes over, since many students would linger to talk to me after class every day. But looking at the evaluations, there must have been multiple students who were running to their next class, probably in a different part of campus, and my running over made things difficult for them every day. It hadn't even occurred to me! This means that I'll have to improve the way I structure my lectures (not leave the most important point to the very end), pace myself better (I tend to relax at 40 minutes in, instead of keeping up the pace), and most importantly, remember that mine isn't the only class in the world.