Well, all that changed rather quickly!
After working on what I thought was a perfect outline for my first semester, I printed and stapled my pages and copied them six times for my first class. I prepared a list of supplemental readings and ordered the best text book I could find. I wore a collared shirt and shoes rather than my every day sneakers and heavy metal tee shirt, and headed out to teach my first class with brief case tight in hand.
That was the beginning of a phenomenal journey that continues to this day. It has been a lesson in listening, sharing and hearing. What are my students saying, and what are they really trying to tell me? Rather than my speaking at them, I am now involved in a give and take process, which is something that challenges me tremendously. I am learning new methods, sharing new ideas, realizing that these 20 somethings actually know a heck of a lot more about many things than I do. (That was painful to acknowledge at first, but I have grown to relish it.) My class is two hours and twenty minutes twice weekly. I have set aside the final 15 minutes of each class for a segment we now call “Teach the Teacher’. (They wanted to call it something a bit coarser by we settled for “Teach the Teacher”.)
