It’s funny how anxiety-provoking it is, making teaching videos. I can walk into a class and talk to anyone. I can be on panels and talk to a thousand people. Being on TV is scary, but that’s understandable — it’s a potentially huge audience. But it keeps surprising me, how unnerving it is making a teaching video.
I’m keeping my expectations super-low, which helps — I don’t write a script beforehand, or edit afterwards. This is basically the same as me walking in and teaching my class, though it doesn’t have the bits where I pause and ask them questions, or ask if they have questions. I know how to do this.
But all my little verbal missteps — it’s hard not to be embarrassed by those. Not so much for the students, but for anyone else who might stumble across the video, without the class context. And imposter syndrome is shouting, “What if you get something WRONG???”
Oh well. It’s undoubtedly good for me. And if I do get something wrong, the students get to see that professors make mistakes too, which is good for them.
If anyone would like to see me doing a little close reading of the first paragraph of “A Passage to India,” here you go. About 15 minutes. It’s not terrible. 