Hey, Teach!

Since my first day of kindergarten, I have loved school (minus the past year). Nineteen and a half years of my life were devoted to being a student. I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.

But this semester is something new. This semester, I'm the teacher. Eeek! I'm adjuncting a College Experience (orientation) class for the first time.

It's strange.

As a first-timer, everything I do and every decision I make determines what my reputation as an instructor will be. Am I merciful? Are my classes fun? Are my classes helpful? Are my assignments worthwhile? Am I strict? Am I easy?

The biggest challenge I have is the makeup of my class. Orientation is only required for certain students, and most of those can take it whenever they want as long as it's before application to nursing school or graduation. So I have students ranging from freshmen to juniors and everything in between. One of my students is even an adjunct at a technical school. Seems pretty pointless to take orientation any semester after your first semester. But I won't get up on that soapbox. (Aren't you relieved?)

I want so much for all of my students to benefit in some way from this class, I'm just not sure how to balance it.

The class is just one night a week for eight weeks, so we've had three classes so far. The first night went fairly well, I thought. Not spectacular, but OK. The second night we had a ton of fun. And the third night was pretty dry. I couldn't figure out a way to make it interesting to learn about reading, note taking, studying, and test taking. Even I was bored half-way through. But at least I let them leave early, so maybe that made up for it.

Thankfully I have a friend who is teaching this for the first time this semester, too, and we can bounce ideas off each other. For example, after many of our students didn't turn in assignments on time the second week of class (seriously, my assignments are über-easy!) we talked about the benefits and downfalls of accepting late work...even though our syllabi said we wouldn't accept it (this came from the department's common syllabus). I don't remember what she decided, but I told my class that if they would get it to me by 9:00 that night they could have 1/2 credit. It was my one-time-only mercy offer. I thought it was fair. Interestingly, several still didn't turn it in. I don't get it.

So like I said, this is an interesting experience for me, and a challenge I've never faced before. I do like it for the most part, but like anything else, it's going to take time to become comfortable with it.

I just hope they don't think I'm a complete dork.