If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I tend to tweet about two things: early modern books (#biblionerd) and spinning (#quadzilla). While I try to keep my twitter feed mostly about research, pedagogy, and other professional matters, every now and then I tweet about a challenging early morning bike class or a no-holds-barred instructor.
While the silence and stillness of the freezing cold library reading room and the pounding bass and motion of the dark sweaty spinning studio have little in common, believe me when I say they have both been sites of personal—and professional—growth for me over the last academic year. Yes, you read that correctly: I count group exercise classes as a kind of professional development—but maybe not for the reasons you think. To be sure, spinning helps me structure my day; it results in a burst of endorphins that beats any cup of coffee; and it tests my limits in a way that helps me to put other challenges in perspective. But the spinning studio is also a classroom that has reminded me (and taught me afresh) of what it means to teach well.
As a less-than-graceful student in desperate need of guidance, practice, and reinforcement, I have come to appreciate certain approaches to instruction over others. (Let me assure you that there are a lot of ways to teach a spinning class, and those that work for me may not work for others.) All that said, this post is not actually about spinning, per se, or about how exercise is essential to staying sane and handling the pressures of academia (even though it is that, too). Rather, it’s about accounting for some of the ways that being a student again has made—and will make—me a better teacher.
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