Leadership

This just may work out....

I have mentioned before that I am team-teaching a course in leadership this semester. It is, needless to say, a real stretch for me. It is very, very different from, say, Calc II. So I've been more than a little scared about how it's going to go. But today we had our first meeting, and I think that it went OK.

The course meets from 1:00 to 4:00 on Tuesday afternoons. So that's already a new experience for me. We don't have many math courses that meet in three hour blocks, once a week. But we broke it up nicely with different activities. We did some talking, we let them do some talking, and we had them do a little writing to loosen up some ideas.

The students seem to be game for anything. Three of the students are educations students, and they all said that they hadn't passed whatever state exam that they need in order to qualify for student teaching, so they just needed some credit to fill out their load while they wait to take it again. That really inspires confidence. That's why you want students to be in your course!

Our leadership team has four people -- me, a member of the education faculty, someone from the office for students with disabilities, and someone from OIT. The latter two have basically no classroom experience, and the person from education had to miss today, because she's got a sick child. So I had to pretty well take the lead. But we made it through, and Julie will be back next week to help me guide the discussion.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how this course develops. After the first day, I'm feeling OK about it.