I've been working on the trial run of my "Student Skills Seminars" for Fall semester. I'm teaching an extended set of the seminars for our community ed department this month to get a sense of how the classes will be received, to iron out the kinks and to figure out pacing for the hopefully bigger crowds out of the residence halls in the Fall. A couple of notes have occured to me:
(1) My first session was basically made up of white females; about half of which cam eof their own accord and the other half being coerced by their parents in some fashion. The group that needs these the most, at least according to our internal statistics, are the black males. I'm hoping the Note Taking session has a more diverse population but we'll see.
(2) Most high school students really don't understand anything about the college model of education. The looks on the faces of the students when I laid out the ratrionale for the 3 to 1 rule was really interesting. The Algebra II/College Algebra illustration I used really opened their eyes. As did my comments about college assessment and the fact that teachers generally don't suffer serious consequences when a student in their class fails. You could see that the mental calculus of how to succeed really had to be refigured.
(3) All of this stuff seems so obvious to me now, but looking back on my freshman experience I wish someone had told me all about this stuff before I got to school. The biggest thing is to move from a passive learning, "I'm not really all that responsible" mind-set to an active learning, "I'm responsible for doing well" paradigm.
(4) I wish I had a residential week type of experience for his. There's so much info to get to them in a ten hour format. The Geek hooked me up with some really interesting college success materials and I'm only going to touch on about a third of that material; almost all of it focused on techniques and habits for success and almost none of it on personal exploration and understanding. I could easily do ten hours on that alone. Hopefully, I can expand this next year through our community ed division and do some sort of week-long experience involving the residence halls and community building exercises. There's just so much to teach that can help students to be successful. What I wonder is whether the people taking advantage of it are students that most likely would have been successful anyways and all I'm doing is smoothing the transition for them. That's not a bad thing, but I'd hoped to have a bigger impact.
In other news; at the Tour the predicted break happened though I did get the wrong names. Voigt got his stage win and Pereiro is in Yellow as Landis decided to let the jersey go for now. In all likelihood, Pereiro is going to pay for his efforts out front tomorrow and may lose some time on the run into Gap. There are two catagory 2 climbs in the last half of the race and I think Pereiro's legs will be toast b the second one and he'll go off the back. In the past, I wouldn't have said that because I think the in race recovery "techniques" (i.e.-use of testosterone patches, human growth hormone and tiny amounts of EPO) would have allowed him to maintain his form on a medium hard stage. I think the biggest effect of the Feuntes bust in Operation Puerto is that the supplier for the Spanish part of the peleton is gone and the networks to set up those sorts of programs aren't rebuilt overnight. If he loses a minute-thirty Landis is back in Yellow assuming a break doesn't overtake the mark.
It was interesting the Discovery didn't put a man in the break but Hincapie and Popo were likely fried from their efforts yesterday and Azevedo is now their GC guy (if they actually have one). I still think Ruberia's sick as well so they took it easy today. I think tomorrow's going to have another break and it won't be allowed to run as far because the stage is too tough for many of the guys that are a long ways behind and the one's who aren't might be a little too dangerous. Normally I would say that this is a good stage for a guy like Flecha but he may be riding for Menchov now so thye may want to keep him fresh for the stages in the Alps. I could see this being a stage for a good all-arounder like Hincapie, Egoi Martinez, Moncoutie, Astarloza, O'Grady, Vandevelde or Casar. There are others that this stage would be perfect for but they're riding for their team leaders with GC hopes. I think if any of the sprinters get into a break, it'll get chased down pretty quickly at this point as McEwen seems to be nervous about his lead in the Green Jersey race. Simoni, Cunego and the like will likely wait for the higher mountain stages to try to get a win but this stage might work well for a decent climber who can sprint and who doesn't threaten De La Feunte in the KoM competition. I like Hincapie and Cunego for this stage but we'll see if they get into the right break.
For me for the rest of today: the rollers and a long nap.
