Long Weekend

Exams are over and graded and the new semester will soon begin. After teaching 27 years, I still try to figure out what needs to be changed, what needs to be continued, and what can I do to make the material more useful to the students. I guess it would be so easy to sit back and just continue with things done the same way as forever. But I guess I enjoy change (whether or not I actually want to admit it) for the sake of freshness in the classroom. Yes, some things end up being the same over and over again, but I am always open to new things. Maybe that is why I ended up with a video production class years ago with no training, and then 10 years ago became a publications adviser. Of course, I have learned and studied as hard or harder than the students but I thoroughly have enjoyed the journey. I hope that it continues.

End of the Semester

There is always a mixture of feelings at the end of each semester...sadness when you are losing students who have made you, as a teacher, enjoy the profession that you have chosen and gladness when you are gaining new faces that you have never seen or talked with in hopes that they will teach you while you are teaching them. The real negative side of changing semesters is the "paperwork" that has to be completed in a matter of a couple of days in order to start the new classes. It gets done but at the time when you are in the middle of the process you wonder if you will have enough time to get everything changed over. Then first half of the school year has flown by and I imagine that the second half will go equally as fast. Having a child who is also a student also makes the year go by even faster. Where does the time go?

First Day of Class

Excitement at realizing the things that can be done in the educational community on top of the classroom was almost overwhelming. Because of the nature of the computer lab, the educators also came to realize that just about all labs run into the same problems that we run into in elementary and secondary settings. On one hand this is a little comforting...on the other a little disconcerting. Because each student in the class was at different points in the instruction, some time thae material came at a fast pace and I am not sure that it all sunk in. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed, follow the instructions as I understood them, and pray that what I didn't get just right will not hinder my process.