When I first began my academic career, I was asked to teach lifespan
development as a favor to a more seasoned professor who had tired
of the course. I was eager to help him and the department so I
happily dove into the task of teaching a survey-level developmental
psychology course. Having no previous teaching experience and a
robust fear of public speaking, I felt sick to my stomach everyday for
the first two weeks of class. I have now taught the course over two
dozen times at Auburn University and, fortunately, my pre-class
nausea has mostly dissipated. My goal in writing this book was to
distil my experiences and the approaches that work best for me into
the very handbook that would have been a valuable resource when I
first taught developmental psychology. Hopefully, some of the techniques
and approaches in this book will be helpful for you, too.