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Teaching continues to be a great source of inspiration for me. I am constantly exploring new ways to suss out a concept, or encourage understanding (despite resistance to the contrary). And it is one of those gifts that keeps giving: to encounter, again and again, each new mind where I have been able to influence some increased comprehension and even cognition, clearing away ignorance and confusion, really motivates me and energizes me to keep going.
In recent years, I would recall each semester as simultaneously the best and worst I'd ever experienced. There would be an ever-widening chasm between the good students and the terrible ones, with no signs of such trends letting up.
For the first time in a long while, and I'm not sure what really brought it on, I've actually started feeling a general sense of the semesters being far more productive than detrimental.
To be sure, the terrible students are still challenging my perceptions of basic requirements of college eligibility and even human sentience, but somehow their embrace of mediocrity and ignorance isn't impacting me as acutely as it has in semester's past.
Describing the terrible students is, once again, predominantly NOT behavioral, but chronic and acute deficiencies in aptitude, discipline, and overall cognition. Last year I lamented on their shaky foundations when it comes to basic writing skills, computer literacy, file management, mathematical reasoning, reading comprehension, and time management. Those same issues persist, and I've got some new ones to add onto the list:
Like reading, writing, and basic numerical reasoning, many of these deficiencies are skills that require time to develop fluency, and students have historically had prior exposure to many of these concepts. That no longer seems to be the case. I now have to be the one introducing them to basic file concepts, giving them a primer on english vocabulary, AND giving them their first exposure to abstraction. And still build on top of them to proceed with the course at hand. I am certainly game for a challenge, but I feel sorry for these students, deprived of so many basic aspects of modern basic education, and it impacts their abilities, and of even expressing their humanity.
Still, I maintain hope and inspiration in seeing what the good students are capable of achieving:
Some course-specific points related to instruction:
Objective | Anticipated Completion |
---|---|
instantiate N-ary factor pair explorations into CSCS1320 project sequence | possibly summer 2017, aiming for fall 2017 |
instantiate N-ary factor pair explorations into CSCS2330 project sequence | possibly summer 2017, aiming for fall 2017 |
instantiate abundant/perfect/deficient number explorations into CSCS2330 project sequence | possibly summer 2017, aiming for fall 2017 |
continue my efforts to revive CSCS1460/CSCS2460, and retiring CSCS1320 | slow-going, but I'm increasingly seeing support in pursue this |
general enhancements/evolutions/progressions of my data/content management efforts | always on-going |
in CSCS2320 or CSCS2330, explore the implementation of a graph and/or hash table project(s) | assuming we get that far, fall 2017 |
Objective | Anticipated Completion |
---|---|
keep doing what I'm doing; I seem to be plenty accessible to students for advising efforts (both my own and those who are not my official advisees) | on-going |
Objective | Anticipated Completion |
---|---|
continue my French relearning endeavors | the true aspiration of knowing a language is to never stop using it; ideally I'd love to create content, but in general, on-going insights from being multi-lingual (it really is the gift that keeps giving) |
explore agriculture and carpentry, both as a developed skill but as a theme for concept presentation | some students come from agricultural and carpentry backgrounds; it may be helpful to have deeper insight into these areas for encapsulating concepts in examples |
explore Calculus from a philosophical point-of-view | this keeps popping up on my radar; I've just not had the opportunity to delve into it. With an increasing number of students being plug-n-chug calculator centric, I feel I need to expose them to the conceptual underpinnings of calculus, especially to aid in algorithm development |
explore the haskell programming language | Haskell is a functional programming language, and my endeavors have yet to really dig into this paradigm. Like French, it could offer up increasing insights and approaches to solutions |
rebuild Lab46 | an activity I perform every few years to keep software up-to-date; depending on software release schedule |
update infrastructure to Debian 9 or similarly modern system | whenever I get to it - not critical, but long term useful as current software ages |
general content management system enhancements | on-going, functionality generally implemented as needed |