Thinking Big Just one human brain recording its thoughts.

Being that I take mostly math and science courses, there is not an immense amount of theatrics coming from my stereo typical nerdy professors.  However one of my most engaging teachers –which may come as a surprise– is my calculus professor. He speaks in a straight forward direct voice but  is always smiling.

His entire demeanor contributes to his rhetorical skills as an effective educator. He walks in confidently excited to teach us. The fierce way he scrapes the chalk across the board reveals his passion, which is then contagious for his students. I will admit that calculus was the course I was looking forward to the least this semester but because my professor loves math so much it made me question if I could find a little piece to love.

Also he  has a tendency to do this thing where mid way through writing an equation he will start chuckling to himself. He will turn around and whisper, “I have a story” as if it is a sin to stray from the math. He will start talking about something seemingly off on a  tangent (math pun) that this equation reminds him of  like this time he went ice skating on a pond in  Canada. Everytime he starts explaining one of these stories the entire class perks up.   His random anecdotes make the class engaging breaking up the dense algebra and his students are always anticipating his next story. Also he barely ever ends one of his tales without bringing it back to calculus, which add to his credibility in the course.  He knows calculus so well that he applies it to everything and can make  a seemingly boring problem interesting by finding an application. Overall he takes a rather structured subject and uses various rhetorical methods to make it engaging.