[OnyxCougar]

My favorite professors were the one that applied what they were teaching to real life. It's fine to teach me something, but show me how I'm going to apply it.

Also, they were honest. If they didn't know one specific aspect of the subject, instead of coming with something to try to save face, they said, "well, I don't know." and that made me trust him more, because I knew that if he was telling me something, it's because he knew about it. If he didn't know he'd tell me.

Also, my favorite Spanish teacher in highschool did the old "you can only speak Spanish in this room" thing, which was a pain when we had to figure out how to go to the bathroom. BUT, he also brought in empty food boxes and cans, calling them their Spanish names and pronounciations, so that we understood the difference with (again) real life application. I aced that class until I moved to a different state, and the Spanish teacher taught out of the book. I failed that part.

Don't read your material to your students. Give them reading assignments from the book, then discuss the material, don't just re-read the book to them. Make the subject come alive, and they'll remember it (and you).

Now, accounting, well, I'm not sure what you'll be able to do to make that "come alive" as it were, but then, I remember in highschool accounting, the course included a "packet" of work that was to be completed throught the semester. It was for a fictitional business, and had reciepts and checks and a bunch of stuff, and you had to put all the entries in the right place, apply depreciation, write the reports, attach the tapes to everything and hand the whole thing in. (This was not the computer accounting course...) I really enjoyed that approach, because it applied what I was learning in the book to this business, and I had to compare everything along the way to make sure it was right. What could have been a dry, interminable leap into boredom turned out to be a really fun class. Maybe something like that would be effective for college level.

And as far as the name thing, Professor (whatever) is fine, they'll prolly just address you as "Professor" anyway, unless you have a really difficult last name, in which case, they may want call you "professor (first initial of last name)".