While I cannot say that the first week of classes has set flame to some heretofore unknown desire for developing young minds, I do have to admit that it was not a complete and total bust. Shall we say it was alright?
One of my classes at the college was great, one was painful. One of the my classes and the university was acceptable, the other was . . . well, it was. That's about all I can say about it. Now, do I anticipate it will get better? Yes. Do I expect that they'll all turn out to to be fantastic, blow-you-away, change the course of your life amazing? Nope. Not so much.
I need to figure out how to teach a hour and a half class. Up until this point, all of my experience has been with 50 minute classes or independent studies. So this hour and a half (or hour and 15 minutes, depending on the school) is not working out well for me.
Well, I shouldn't say that. When the students are responsive and into the discussions, so far it's been great. But when they are reticent, withdrawn, disengaged and [most likely] unprepared (by nature of not reading the material) it is really, really painful.
When I was in college, for a long time, I was shy. I didn't like to speak up in class, unless I expected to say something to amaze the whole room. I actually "apologized" to one of my old instructors today for any time that I wasn't very talkative or didn't participate in class. Cuz let me tell you, it's really difficult to be on the other side of the shut-down classroom.
I'm excited about the material, and I had enough material to fill an entire class period. But it's really hard to give something back to students who aren't giving you anything to work with.
I said this semester was going to be my experiment. I told my husband: if I like it, I'm going to get my PhD. If I don't like it, then I need to do a serious re-evaluation of my life choices, finally pick a path, and go after it with gusto. He's all on board. Now I just have to be.
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