Chris's Life

Session 8 was interesting. The students are getting quite comfortable to me, which has brought up an issue that I hadn't expected, though I should have: with high school students, there is the condition of losing control of the class.

It's not an issue with college students, even with freshmen. It's odd that so little separation of time can make a big difference, but college students just seem to have a greater sense of purpose which means that they're much less likely to try to direct the class off topic and keep it there. It's a curious thing to deal with.

It's also a fine line to walk because one does want to be friendly — a good report with ones students can be a valuable teaching aid, and moreover it's just the nice thing to do. However, being friendly does walk dangerously close to letting the students get out of control and not accomplishing what needs to be done. Kaplan courses are on a tight time schedule, making it all the more important to stay on topic. It's an interesting dynamic, and I'm sure I'll get better as it as I get more experience with it (I'm going to start teaching a tuesday/thursday course next week). As it is I'm not doing badly, though at times it felt a little perilous.

Well, it's been a while since i last wrote here. Life has been going OK, though Kaplan stuff has been somewhat stressful. Proctoring the exams on saturday especially so because it seemed like everything was going wrong. Fortunately, that was only the first half hour (more or less), then things calmed down.

My good friend Michael is going to be moving in with me and becoming my roommate soon. His search for a job in the area is going well, and in fact he was offered the supervisor position in a small house (3 residents), which means better money and hours than he had been expecting.

I still don't have curtains for the main window, but at least I now know what I want (I've picked out the hardware in Home Depot, they've got some nice warm oak stuff at reasonable prices).

I rearranged the kitchen a little bit to make the microwave more accessible (Michael uses it frequently to make coffee), and it turned out to be a generally good idea. While moving things around used up the right side of the kitchen, it freed up some space on the left side providing a larger working area which will be far more convenient. I'll try to take pictures soon.