PreparedFaculty materials, 2026 courses
How I support faculty
I give faculty their cues. My day-of run of show is a cue-to-cue more than anything, a theater cue-to-cue, but instead of telling the lighting board when the light cues go, it tells my faculty when they have to be prepared to be on.
The problem
The people who teach these courses are busy professionals with demanding full-time jobs. One of my favorite parts of the role was making the process as easy as possible for them. I wanted to lighten their load, and I wanted them to want to come back and teach again. If they're having fun, the audience is having fun and learning.
What I built
- A run of show written as cues. I tell faculty what to be aware of just before they have to go up.
- Three ways to work with me on a deck, offered in one April 2026 email.
- A curated packet of prior-year and comparable materials.
- Three possible pre-read excerpts, three to four pages each, from a 46-page article by Dr. Maura R. Grossman and Judge Paul W. Grimm, with the authors' wording and footnotes kept and the cuts marked. I sent all three to Dr. Grossman, and she told me to choose.
- A polling plan and a faculty companion for the AI and digital evidence course, every prompt keyed to a section of the reference guide.
After the first planning meeting for Comings and Goings, I made its faculty a map of what the session before theirs already covered.
“No, but I love this, though. Is this already in the material[…]? Can we reuse this?”
The three options, from my April 2026 email to the faculty
“Three options, whichever is easiest: send me an outline and I'll build the deck, build it yourself and send me the finished version, or work inside the placeholder deck I'll share with housekeeping slides already set.”
From my forwarded copy of the email.“I'm pulling the materials deadline earlier than originally discussed so nobody is scrambling in June. Draft materials to me by the week of June 1. That gives me a full month to format, package, and produce the print binder and digital materials before the dry run.”
The production window“If you plan to reference a Maryland case, statute, or opinion during your segment, send me the citation and I'll pull the passage into the binder so you can tell judges to flip to page 72 and read along.”
Connecting the presentation to the binderThe pre-read
The full article by Dr. Grossman and Judge Grimm was intended for the binder; the excerpts were for the pre-read, and I sent the three cuts with a note. I also sorted eleven of another faculty member's articles into four groups, with a short note on how each connected to the course.
“Pick one, send me your own cut, or tell me to do it differently. Whatever you want is the right answer.”
My note in the pre-read samplerMy role
I managed structure and production. Faculty held the law, the science and the teaching decisions inside their blocks.
The cues and the polling plan
The faculty companion
The reference guide · Fourteen courses, one status report · The design rules