Teaching demonstrations are artificial—the students aren’t yours, you won’t see them again for follow-up lessons, you might even be “teaching” faculty, etc.—but they are also a critical part of an academic job interview. Candidates for academic positions need to show more than just knowledge of their content area in their teaching demonstration; they need to show that they have pedagogical content knowledge. That is, the ability to select, structure, and deliver complicated content so that students can learn it. Your teaching demonstration must prove not only that you can create and follow a lesson plan, but also that you can engage and interact with students to enhance their learning.
