Teaching Venture

This week was my first week as a college adjunct professor. I am really excited about this new venture because I want to find out if I really enjoy teaching at the community college level.

If I do enjoy teaching, then I know I will apply for teaching positions when I finish with my master's degree next spring.

If I don't enjoy teaching, then I will use this next year to pray for guidance and how best to use my master's degree in a non-teaching related manner.....maybe something back in Bolivia! :)

The class I am teaching this semester is a college success course (GUST 0305) to help students learn success strategies for college and life - it actually has some great info and I am learning a lot about myself through reading this book too. This class is designed for first time in college students who tested into a developmental Reading course or who tested into both developmental English and developmental Math. If they test into one of the areas then they are required to register for GUST 0305.

Which basically means there are a lot of students who are super irritated about having to take this class. Fortunately, all of the students in my class have shown great attitudes and are already seeing the benefits that this course will provide them in life and in college. I just hope we can help them maintain this positive attitude all semester. :)

I am actually lucky enough to be co-teaching this semester with one of the Speech faculty members. I had the option to teach it alone if I wanted to, but that was a bit intimidating right now since I am still working in the advising office and have 2 more grad classes this semester. I feared I would not have the time that I would need to devote to the class if I was teaching alone. So far my co-teacher and I have clicked really well and that is a huge relief!

After one week of teaching, I have to say I feel more relieved than I did going into it. This is the first time the college is offering this course so we are having to design the class and syllabus from scratch. We have a faculty site that has a lot of activities, power points, quizzes, etc for us to use or browse through and it has helped a lot!! If I teach it again in the Spring I think I will a lot more confident going into than I did this semester, naturally.

The main stress point I have right now is trying to figure out how I am going to juggle my schedule for the semester. I will still be advising all day until 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, teaching & prepping on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then somehow trying to squeeze time in to do my grad class projects and papers, along with any at home grading or prepping for the GUST class.

I am hoping my first grad class (Small Group & Interpersonal Comm) isn't too bad - the only stress point there is that the Dept. Chair is teaching it. The second class I have is my research class for my thesis and I have heard from several other students that it royally kicks your butt - plus I need to have my thesis idea somewhat picked out for that class and as of today I have no idea what I am doing for it. If I make it through this semester sane, I swear it is only because of Jesus pulling me through. I am pretty much leaning on Him entirely to get me through this journey. Any and all prayers will be greatly appreciated this semester!! Let's just say I am going to be very relieved when Christmas finally arrives.

Aside from the stressful schedule, I am really excited to have this chance to teach GUST 0305. I am hoping to learn some new teaching techniques and hopefully gain some confidence in myself as a teacher too. On a side note, it is really really weird to hear my students call me Professor Simmons. Even though I understand why they need to refer to me as Professor Simmons, I'd much rather them just call me Carissa or maybe Ms. Simmons. Professor Simmons just doesn't feel natural to me at all. I digress.....

I think most of our freshmen were born in '91 or '92. They are soooo little! We received a fun facts sheet filled with generational background info for this group to help us know more about them. It had things like:

• they have never used a card catalog at the library
  
• the green giant has always been Shrek (not the big guy selling vegetables)
• salsa has always outsold ketchup
  
• the European Union has always existed
  
• the KGB has never officially existed

What's really sad is that many of the new freshmen at our college don't read (by choice), but instead spend their time watching movies, texting, and using facebook. Now don't get me wrong - I absolutely LOVE movies, but I can't fathom living a life where that's all I did and I never read any books. That is soooo weird and sad to me. Books were always a positive thing and highly encouraged when I was growing up. They opened new worlds to me. I remember absolutely loving my Nancy Drew books, Frank Peretti books, Sherlock Holmes, etc. I remember reading 1 or 2 Nancy Drew books a day when I was a kid.

I wonder what changed for these students....why are books not encouraged in these students' lives? Did they simply grow up in families that did not know how to read or in families that did not care about books? Or is it our society as a whole? Based on what I've seen so far, I definitely do not think it is a poverty vs wealth issue. Whatever the case, I hope I can show my students that reading books can be far more rewarding that spending 3-4 hours on facebook or watching movies. That will probably be one serious up-hill battle, but ya never know - maybe at least one of them will discover that reading is actually enjoyable. :)