Whatever happened last Wednesday to make me forget about blogging, I’ve no idea! For all of you who await these blogs with great anticipation – mea culpa! I hate making excuses, but I think I might have been distracted because last week I started teaching a new course. The first half is taught by a young, brilliant, PH.D. in anthropology candidate, and I was VERY nervous about taking over the class…for a number of reasons. Well, first of all, for the obvious reason that I am NOT a very young, brilliant, Ph.D. anthropology candidate. I’m a “woman of a certain age” (insert “old” between those last two words) and I have a masters degree in education. This amazing young woman has three VERY young children, travels periodically to Samoa to conduct reserach, and also teaches part time at Temple U. She DOES do it all! So her half of the course was all about anthropological research concerning family structure in different cultures. My segment is the practical side of the course – getting the students (all of them plan to become elementary teachers) to understand how important it is to get parents involved in their children’s education – regardless of how much or how little the parents have, what language they speak, how busy they are, etc., etc. Teachers have finally discovered that it truly does take a village to educate a child.
My other concern was that this class of 27 students is taught in one of those awful science lecture hall/amphitheater type classrooms that seat a hundred kids and the professor stands at the bottom on this bowl-like room. I AM not a teacher who teaches well in a “lecture hall.” I want to reach out and touch my students.
Well, the class is filled with really neat kids who seemed quite happy to see me. I moved them all down to the first three rows, and we’re doing just fine. (“This is really intimate,” said one young man when he realized that I honestly could reach out and touch him.)
So, there you have it. My elaborate excuse and far more information than you needed.
I am celebrating the fact that our show has been picked up, and we’ll be aired again on Wed., May 16. Hooray! (My semester ends two weeks before that!!!! Double “hooray!”)