I had an epiphany the other day, and it’s really quite a shame that it’s taken me so long for this to really hit home. Every day is a constant battle between how to present a whole bunch of information that, to be honest, I don’t have a total grasp on myself. For example, today I taught three different classes the same lesson about Enlightened Absolutism. It’s been a real long time since I looked at this material, and so had to brush up a whole bunch. While I do know a little bit about this topic, it was quite difficult for me to get a proper hold on the details that I wanted to get across (most of my personal background being in African History). So while worrying about the fact that I didn’t exactly know what I was teaching, I was also worried about how I was teaching. For the most part, I lectured to the class, trying to incorporate some of the big ideas from previous classes.
Now, going through my head all day were a few main thoughts:
- “Holy crap! I don’t know what I’m talking about!”
- “Oh man, right as I am saying these words, the kids are totally bored. All I’m doing is talking, and getting like three kids interested. UTeach would be MAAAD.”
- “How can I assign them to work in groups if I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
- “I know I’m not supposed to lecture, but I’m all out of ‘constructivist’ ideas.”
- “Is there another way for these kids to get this info?”
- “Seriously, why do the only ideas I have somehow incorporate giant sticky notes and markers?… wait… I know why.”
On top of all this, I am setting up a student blog site on airset.com , and have become totally engrossed in the minutiae. Yesterday I spent three hours trying to work out all the details, and as a result I wasn’t really able to study up on the aforementioned material of Enlightened Absolutism. So I’m discovering now that being creative and coming up with new ideas really needs to follow having a strong grasp of content. Revolutionary right? Not really. It just never seemed so real until now.
Moving on…
I worry about a couple of my students who consistently don’t show up to class. These kids basically have a 50% attendance rate, if that. One girl seems like all she cares about is dropping out, and today she told me that is going to A-Plus, the credit recovery center because, “I just don’t do any work in here.” Obviously she knows what she’s doing, and the CT says that she really is just biding her time before she drops out completely.
Alright… enough for now. Fortunately tomorrow we are talking about the American Revolution: something I know quite a bit about 
