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By Jessie McDowell
Day one of my teaching career, I thought I was ready, prepared, and had realistic expectations. I was wrong.
Day one of year two, I thought I was fully adjusted to student needs and classroom realities. I was mostly wrong.
Each academic year is different. New students. Sometimes new curricula or new policies. And even when everything else stays the same, you, the instructor, are different—more experienced, more tired, more confident, or occasionally all three at once.
What finally clicked for me was this: good teaching isn’t about perfectly scripted lessons. It’s about planning for reality.
Below are practical strategies—learned the hard way—that transformed my class sessions from chaotic to confident, from “just get through it” to polished and intentional.
Identical lessons taught to different sections rarely take the same amount of time. We all know student participation matters—but what surprised me most was how much my own energy, comfort, and enthusiasm influenced pacing.
Some groups energized me. I ad-libbed more. I told stories. Suddenly I was sprinting through the last five slides like an auctioneer.
Other groups? We crawled.
That’s when I realized: lesson plans need stretchy pants.
I started planning 5-minute and 15-minute backup options for every class. It sounds ambitious, but it’s not. These were simple, low-lift ideas:
Sometimes these ideas lived in Word docs. Sometimes on my phone. Sometimes on a frantic Post-it written the night before. The format didn’t matter—the fallback plan did.
Nothing undermines credibility faster than standing in front of a class with 25 minutes left saying, “Well… uh… I guess…”
On the flip side, if time ran short, I never panicked. I made sure my slides and materials were always available online (Canvas LMS) so students could finish outside of class, if needed. I communicated expectations clearly, folded today’s discussions into the next class, or embedded key questions we skipped into upcoming assignments.
Ultimately, I wanted to share my expertise, not rehash the exact same text from the online platform. This allowed me to control pacing without the worry of missing some information and leaving the lesson unfinished.
On a unit-long or semester-long timeline, I’d mentally reserve one day towards the end for connecting large ideas, catching students up, reviews and synthesis of various lessons. This allowed me to feel like I had wiggle room without losing the pacing of the entire course.
Don’t trust the clock. Trust your backup plans.
Many instructors meticulously plan the middle of class—and improvise the start.
Students notice.
Those first three minutes set tone, expectations, and momentum. They quietly communicate: this class is intentional. Students quickly learn that arriving late means missing something worthwhile.
One of the best professors I ever had always began with a personal story that ended with us rolling with laughter! Sometimes it tied to the lesson. Sometimes it didn’t. What it did build was connection—and urgency. We didn’t want to miss out!
Another professor randomly selected students to share a current event at the start of class. You had to be ready the moment class began. If you were tardy and he’s chosen your name at random that day, you missed out on those points. Rather than a punishment for tardiness, it was a missed opportunity and an unmet expectation. Strict? Maybe. As a student, I loved it. Class started on time, every time. No fifteen minutes of awkward laptop-clicking silence while the instructor “got ready.”
One of my own classes always started with a word puzzle. Students settled into this routine so well and so consistently that if I had a day without a puzzle prepped and displayed at walk-in, they felt off kilter and begged for the puzzle!
Instructors who are head-down, typing emails or building the lesson five minutes before class always look unprepared.
First impressions matter—every single day.
If you’ve worked with me, you know I value creativity and humor. Attention resets are where both shine.
Recently, I delivered a two-hour military lecture—dense topics, unavoidable slides, to an auditorium of highly trained war fighters, experienced pros with long briefings. Even they still fight gravity and caffeine withdrawal when there aren’t mental resets throughout the lecture.
Here are a few reset strategies I used with my adult learners:
Reset #1: Progress slides. “Three down, five to go.” Progress bars that fill in across the top of the slides as you go. Instant engagement. Adults are typically time-conscious and love knowing where they are in the timeline. Infuse some humor when applicable, like a GIF slide singing “ohhhh halfway thereee!” rather than simply saying 50% complete.
Reset #2: Acknowledging the struggle. An hour into the briefing, I said: “If caffeine is your primary personality right now, raise it proudly!” Energy drinks and coffee cups rose across the room with a wave of laughter. Shared humanity beats pretending everyone is fine.
Reset #3 (My favorite): The surprise reset. I challenged a room full of military Airmen, Colonels and Chiefs to perform the biggest, loudest yawn-stretch combo imaginable. Two seconds after the surprise worse off, chaos followed. Laughter erupted. Shoulders relaxed. Oxygen returned to brains.
Sometimes bonding over a scream-yawn is a pedagogical move to get the group back on track.
Reset #4: Letting the audience choose. I used a Jeopardy-style board on my first slide so participants picked the next topic. Occasionally I acknowledged their choice—then selected a different square just to keep things playful. These squares could organize subtopics or theories. They could also house mini case studies, lecture pieces, a video, a discussion question and more. Now students are actively guiding the class with you and unknowingly sharing their current energy and focus level with you. I even included one square with movie or holiday-related trivia for a quick morale boost.
You don’t always need theatrics. You need intentional pauses.
Silence after a question feels like failure—unless you planned for it. Even Hollywood capitalizes on silence intentionally, to impact the audience.
I learned to treat teaching like a performance. Silence didn’t control the experience—I did. I could work with the expected silence, or use strategies to avoid it.
Strategies that worked:
My favorite approach? Don’t make it feel like a question.
Instead of asking hypotheticals, I told stories and projected future scenarios. Curiosity did the rest. Students asked me questions—and discussion followed naturally.
Power outages. Internet failures. Pandemic teaching without devices.
It happens.
Always have low-tech alternatives. Keep slides on your phone. Practice explaining concepts without visuals. Embrace whiteboards, test your drawing skills, and prep verbal instruction.
Sometimes shifts in instructional plans are unavoidable when technology issues strike. In that case, clear communication with students on an updated timeline or expectations is key. Will this chapter be delayed until next week, or are they expected to learn on their own with the online materials? Maybe you’ll upload a recorded lecture in lieu of classroom time.
During the pandemic, I had to figure out how to teach custom Adobe animation to students without reliable computer or internet access. It was a massive challenge, but I adapted while communicating changes to my classes.
Prepared instructors adapt. Unprepared ones freeze like 50 tabs open on an internet browser.
I was the student who raised my hand to answer questions in class. Being told, “Someone besides Jessie…” didn’t feel inclusive—it felt dismissive. I knew the professor was wanting more group participation, but it still didn’t feel great.
Instead of excluding voices, lower the barrier to participation:
Design participation so more students can engage—not so fewer students feel pushed out.
Every day in my classes, students walked in to see an agenda slide: today’s tasks, tech needs, reminders, sometimes trivia for fun. It reduced confusion instantly and created a calm, reliable routine. Without my yelling over the chaos, students immediately pulled out laptops, previous assignments, or organized themselves into groups. The transition from the walk to class into an academic-focused mind is an important transition to remember.
Transitions are professional polish. They signal that time matters. Sometimes these are between activities, or simply between topics within a lesson. Planning these periods allows you to adjust student expectations as needed and minimize lost time.
- I used recap slides at the end of a group of slides, before moving on to the next subtopic
- I provided clear instructions before movement, which meant as soon as students got into their groups or accessed technology, they could immediately get to work. They didn’t have to wait for their peers to refocus before getting the next set of instructions.
- I used visible countdown timers rather than calling out time. Timers eliminated verbal nagging while students are trying to focus and cut through classroom noise better than my voice ever could. Timers are reliable, provide timeline context that supports class pacing, and limit general chit-chat during activities.
No more time wasted, no more confusion between tasks. You’re providing clarity and expectations in a way that doesn’t feel patronizing. You’re simply giving context that allows students to take action and anticipate what’s coming next.
Most students have about 20–30 minutes of sustained cognitive energy. Plan accordingly.
Heavy thinking early. Lighter engagement later. Adjust for time of day, semester stress, and proximity to holidays.
Once, during midterms, my normally jubilant class dragged in the door and slumped into their chairs mutely. Clearly midterm season had them drained. I scrapped the plan entirely and offered a ten‑minute rest before diving back into our lesson for the day. No rules. No talking. Just pause. With a 10-minute timer on the screen, some students were forehead-to-desk and passed out within seconds. Other students used the time to finish an assignment from another class. Others simply stared into the abyss and soaked in the quiet moments to reset their days' worth of overstimulation.
When the timer went off and we resumed the lesson, the energy shift was undeniable. I got more discussion, interaction and focus than I had all semester.
Not all levels of education or classrooms could allow for a 10-minute pause, but you could create alternatives. Humans learn better when treated like humans. That could be done through a pause, some mini team building, grace on a specific deadline, or simply a pep talk to acknowledge how hard they work and the stress of college life.
Polished classes aren’t rigid—they’re responsive. Small, intentional planning choices create smoother sessions, stronger engagement, and better learning outcomes.
You don’t need perfection.
You need stretchy pants, backup batteries, and a plan that respects reality.
