I like this story. In my view, even if I see women are more emotional, which is again a stereotyping, I know that not all women are the same. However, I see it impolite to use this sentence, it is a pure prejudice against women. If this professor had a bad experience arguing with a woman, he should not use this example as a fact against all women. If it were women arguing and one said “That’s tough you are like a man”, it would again be prejudice as not all men are like this.
For the classroom, I think if we are inevitably facing stereotyping in our life, let’s make the classroom free of any stereotyping. Let’s make students feel comfortable and safe to just learn and focus only on the class. It’s every teacher’s responsibility to create this type of environment in his classroom.

Thanks for sharing the warm fuzzy tale. It is really interesting to describe both feelings as an actual thing that we can give to others. I like your sentence “feel guilty over sharing our warm fuzzies, and feel distrustful if someone is trying to give us a warm fuzzy”, I think it is true to a great extent in today’s life. I think teachers can easily convert their classrooms to a place where warm fuzzies are given. teachers are the leaders in their classrooms, they put rules for their students. If they want the classroom to be a good place for students to feel welcome and safe, it will be. So, do not worry about your classrooms, it will be as you feel and believe.

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I think one problem of this attitude is that, while professors do research and can promote from assistants to full professors, we can see that instructors will not have the same chance. The universities’ system should change and dedicate tenure positions to these instructors that give them the chance to promote.

Yes, it is a debate and as you mentioned, every university will have its own path. In my opinion, I think it is better to train researchers to better communicate with their students. By this, we ensure that students get what is in the last research in their fields through professors who are in contact with research.

Exactly, the qualities of good teachers are very different from the qualities of good researchers. I think some researchers need only training and learning some efficient teaching methodologies to be good teachers. It is hard to separate the two jobs as universities need both and researchers are more credited for their research. Instructors, who are not professors, miss the opportunity to improve themselves as they are not in contact with the recent research in their fields.

One of the big problems I had in classes is that some instructors usually give less time to the basics. In their opinion, it is easy and so they just mention it without checking that students already got what they said. I think that as you said, instructors should make sure that their students can following them.

Yes, that’s true. We always assume that an expertise person in some area is the best one to teach it. This could be true only if this person has the teaching skill OR he dedicated enough time to learn good ways to communicate with the audience. I think rehearsing in front of different people is very valuable in that someone finds his weak points and be able to better deliver the information.

You raised many good points in this comment. I think in the academic career, professors are much evaluated by their research activity rather than teaching. I think this not going to change as, you know, research is what brings funds to faculties / students. I feel that some people may be talented in teaching, however others can still be good teachers by learning and practicing.

Of course, balancing is very important. You should at end keep in the topic boundaries. What I meant here is that professors try to rehearse and practice a lot so that they are able to answer even surprising questions. If they really understand what they teach, they will be able to find “correct “answers to whatever they were asked. Of course, some other questions still need more search, but professors will be able to answer the majority of questions through improvisation.

Let me say something about performance, do you feel performing is only a talent? I do not think so. You can find a good actor who can be unconvincing in one of his roles, you also can find an unknown actor who is performing very well in one role. I think it depends on how you perform like how you teach. My idea is if you believe in something, you’ll perform it very well. Again, in teaching if you believe in your role of illustrating something, you will prepare well for this.
I faced similar situations before as the one in your Fluid mechanics class when I was working in my TA position for some years. I found out that sometimes it was simply that students feel that they got everything in the lecture and do not want a follow-up.