Tuesday, May 22, 2012

May 2012: Starting a new session

Just finished my second day of the ten-meeting session.

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday, after the first session.  I came back to the hotel and had to finish work on my Towson classes.  This is an aspect of teaching here that's been especially challenging:  the scheduling.  The end of the semester at Towson overlaps some with the beginning of the session in Panama.  There is no time to do much planning for the Panama class, such as thinking about to present them material a little differently to a new culture and also a group of students whose first language is not English.  Also once I make a decision about what to include there's not a lot of time to post it on Blackboard and get the copies made.  (I have to be very nice to "Dieter" who does most of the copy work here at Quality Leadership University.  I usually email him something at the beginning of the day and ask for it as soon as it can do it.).  So I'm doing a certain amount of kvetching about how much there is to do, in such a short period of time, and all the competing interests (again, finishing my work at Towson).  But the Towson work is more or less over now (a few small issues still to tie up), so the spotlight returns to the task at hand.

As a general opening comment, I've been coming to Panama often enough that I expect a few rough spots in the beginning.  And actually that's not a knock against this culture or QLU, because the first few days of a semester at Towson can have their challenges.  I will give QLU its "props"; when I arrived about 10 minutes before 800am yesterday morning they had my room ready.  I'm in 302, a very nice room on par with anything in Stephens Hall.  The computer was on, the internet worked, and the overhead projector was fired up and ready to go.  Some other things took a little while.  We didn't get copies of the syllabus until about 900-930.  Some students were there that weren't on the roster (this is what I was really expecting).  Name cards were not ready (this is a small surprise, the previous sessions these were ready to go).  Course packets were not printed (no surprise there, I was getting these go between emails between the university and the small publisher I work with on Friday).  But these are small things really and don't stop the task at hand.


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