Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Sunday, August 24, 2008

For two days now we've been dealing with the remnants and effects of Tropical Storm Fay. While areas of Florida have experienced rains of over two inches and places less far to our south are coping with 6 or more inches of rain, we've been laboring under gusty winds, frequent rain showers and an occasional thunderstorm or two. I think our rainfall totals may end up being in the neighborhood of two inches once tomorrow morning comes and, if the meteorologists are correct, we'll spend the next two or so days dealing with muggy/thundery conditions. While a bit of nuisance, the weather has done little more than force me inside on my rollers and trainer.

School's off to a seemingly slower start. I'm not doing Senate this year and I'm into the first year of our new course reduction schedule which means I only teach three classes and fifteen contact hours this semester (instead of four classes and 21 contact hours). Things just seem a lot more humane at this point. I have time to think and plan my classes. I can make adjustments to my curriculum that I've been wanting to make for the last two or three years. I may even have a chance of truly assessing whether or not they work. THe biggest change is going to be teaching the new Physical Science of Elementary Education. Part of me is really stressing out over the curriculum but another part of me feels like I'm finally making a real difference. All of the students in this class are studying to be K-5 educators and I get a chance to talk not only about content but how to teach it. I can't tell you how excited that makes me. For the first time, I actually have a community in the classroom that shares my desire to help people learn. I don't know if that will translate into learning for them but it makes the conversation so much more interesting. Don't get me wrong, I still love my engineers and I still want to help them grow into students we can be proud to send to Georgia Tech but this is a different thing.

I'm not an engineer by calling. I can understand them because of a shared love to understand how things work. I'm an educator by calling. I knew that in grad school when I realized that I enjoyed teaching those who wanted to learn more than I enjoyed modeling galaxies in a computer. What I didn't know at the time was how complicated a thing it was to teach someone something you already knew. I appreciate that a little better now and I know that I can teach that to others.

So next week is week two and I'll have a better sense of who my classes are by the end of it. I'll have my first assessments in and I'll know a bit more about them through their writing and their performance on their quizzes. Then I'll know where we'll go and how much work it'll take to get there.

Thanks for Reading

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