Teaching the day after tomorrow

Oh, my first teaching job is coming on this Thursday! The first year module I'm going to support as a TA is called 'Making History', a compulsory module for all history first year students; it consists of a series of lectures that cover a range of topics from the fall of the Roman Empire from the Great Depression of the 1920s. So the aim is not really to gain specialist knowledge about a particular historical topic.

The overall aim of the module is rather generic and has two aspects. On the one hand, it is to introduce critically how historians use different sources available to them, including archaeological evidence, numerical data, legal or governmental documents, private manuscripts, visual materials, &c to arrive at often very different interpretations of the past.

It is, on the other hand, also to improve their study skills necessary for the degree level, including writing critical summaries of article, writing literature reviews, writing an essay with scholarly apparatus like footnotes and a bibliography.

Hummm, it sounds like I have a lot to learn from such a course as well!!

Oh, for this time, I would stop here; I should start looking at reading materials for the first session. Hope I can manage within 90 mins or so...