Memories for the Day 5 comments

19 Nov 2004 @ 05:17, by John Ashbaugh Thoughts for the Day, Summary of Events, Catalog of Occurances, Synopsis of the Syllogism, Ruminations on the Ridiculous, Awe at the Awesome, Fascination with the Fabulous, Point of the Motion. Thursday evening, November 18th into the 19th. Memories for the day. Morning Economics class for the final quiz and the final project presentations. All of my five classes have two or three presentations per student this quarter. That’s fourteen presentation rounds between the sixth and the eleventh week of a quarter. Nine plus seventeen plus sixteen plus twelve plus eleven students which figures to one hundred eighty six presentations in that five-week period. Generally speaking, peak is at sixth and eleventh week, with the remaining third during the eight and ninth weeks. It is very much about developing presentation skills, the sense of authentic self standing before and facing a group of people whose sole purpose for being there is to listen to your voice. All of the spaces between the words ring as clearly as every vocalization. There is a general education course that serves as a context, and the students have to do research and presentation projects on subjects about which they have only the most perfunctory knowledge in the first place. Speak clearly, whatever you say, and keep connected with the audience. It’s a piece of work these students are putting into this place, most of them working full time, many with some kind of family situation, getting this technical degree so they can get a decent professional job, so they can live a little better than they have been, pursuing knowledge for its own sake because they love their subject, and here they get thrown in with all of these writing and speaking courses, to include the reading of various essays and articles geared towards the multiple objectives of developing social consciousness and critical thinking skills, and the personal development of good written and oral communication skills. I’ve had a rather agreeable quarter with one course in Business and Globalization, two in Argumentation, both written and oral, and two in Basic Macro and Micro Economics. Interesting thing about this school, as small as it is with its 450 students and fifty-odd faculty/staff walking up and down the one and a half hallways, through open lounge area and the library with its 22 computer workstations and assorted desks; there’s a lot of familiarity that develops between faculty and students during the course of for two to four years, mostly in their own departments, be it computer science, electronics, or computer aided drafting. Here I be, the senior general ed teacher, and I get to see ‘em all at one time or another in one class or another. There are other gen ed teachers and I don’t see every student who goes through this school, but I’d guess I see most of ‘em. And then they graduate, and you don’t see them anymore, and there are some others that are coming along, passing by for the first time, and I will get to know their learning styles, and try to communicate something of value to them. So this morning’s Economics class made their presentations. This is the third course I’ve had with this group, so we’ve had some time to get used to each other. Won’t be seeing ‘em next quarter, and after that, I don’t know.

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