Jessamyn Neuhaus

The title is a bit misleading... no, not the geeky part, the pedagogy part. This is not a pedagogy book. This is more a broad view of principles and practices that GINs (geeks, introverts, and nerds) should adopt to offset some of the anxiety that comes with the social interaction aspects of teachings, and the hurdles we have all encountered.
The practices are awareness (of self and students), preparation (for the anxiety-inducing aspects of teaching), reflection (on one's practice), and show more support (and getting some whether from peers or from the instructional design / teaching and learning offices at one's college or university). But again, this is not a book of tips and design ideas, but of broad principles.
The message seems to be "it gets better... if you practice these four things", that things are going to be ok, there are no superhuman teachers, that teaching is hard, non-linear, and constantly shifting.
This book seems primarily directed at novices but even I, with about 20 years of teaching under my belt, found things to ponder (further than I have pondered before... see what I did there? Yeah, I'm a GIN).
I have to confess some eyeroll while reading the section on gratitude though. show less

I picked this up because it sounded similar to Laura Shapiro's Something From the Oven. It was, but not quite as fun. Drier, although not stodgy and academic. The gender angle was important but not clearly addressed. Maybe I just haven't read enough on gender. There were few theories on motivations, etc. It's good to be objective, but I was expecting at least food for thought.

The best chapter was a detailed description of a WWII scrapbook from a woman in Louisiana who made a point of show more recording how the war affected people's meals (rationing, etc), pasting in the assorted articles full of advice from the govt and noting which recommendations people did and did not really follow.

Neuhaus mostly looks at cookbooks and related food media, while acknowledging that this doesn't precisely tell you what people actually cooked. (Scads of us bought The French Laundry Cookbook but have yet to actually try a recipe.)

There was a lot of discussion on the advice to sometimes cook your husband's favorite food in order to make him happy. Even if it's not your favorite. I don't really call that oppression. Especially in a context where it's assumed that the couple is only eating one meal a day (and sometimes less) together. And you just have to crack up at the 1939 cookbook author who said "First consideration here is given to the 'men' rather than the 'u.'"

Also didn't understand the regular mention of cookbooks striving to persuade suddenly-servantless middle class women (ie, anyone after about WWI) that cooking can be fun. They were going to do it anyway. They didn't need to be sold on anything. show less