Academic

A Reading Suggestion For New Law Profs

By Tim Zinnecker

This week I read Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching:  A Primer for New (and Not So New) Professors, co-authored by Howard Katz and Kevin O'Neill and published by Aspen Publishers in 2009.  Here's a description from the publisher's website:

Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching is intended to help you, as a new law teacher, prepare for your first semesters in the classroom.  It begins at the preliminary stages of planning a new course and takes you all the way to writing and grading your final exam.  Authors Katz and O'Neill offer experience and insight to the tasks of coming up with teaching objectives, choosing your book, crafting your syllabus, and creating a classroom atmosphere that is conducive to learning.  The day-to-day teaching techniques in this primer for new (and not so new) professors will prepare you to successfully field students' questions, teach legal analysis to first-year students, and make the most of today's pedagogy and technology to support your teaching.

There's something in this book for everyone, regardless of experience.  But I highly recommend it to anyone who will soon be starting (or just started) a law school teaching career.  Contact the publisher, or ask your academic dean to send you a copy.  I'm glad I read the book.  You'll enjoy it, too!

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).