The Evil Monkey has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from a southeastern university. After a postdoctoral nightmare of Inquisitorial proportions, he is currently working in a laboratory and teaching at a local community college. He is still not sure why he wrote this paragraph in the third person, and for that reason is beginning to doubt his sanity. How many freakin' people can fit into his head, anyway? No wait, my head. Oh crap.
Scicurious is a graduate student wrestling with a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology at a southern institution. She is a nerd, a geek, and also a dork, which takes up a lot of her free time. She sees nothing wrong with talking about herself in the third person, and wonders why Evil Monkey is so freaked out about it.
I signed up to teach 3 courses at the community college this fall; Human Biology and 2 sections of a Basic Concepts in Biology course. The latter is "remedial" biology, designed to catch up people with little or no biology experience so that when they take Intro biology, they're all on the same level. We give them a basic smattering of cell biology, molecular and genetics. Apparently the program has had decent luck with this course, and the students who take it often do well compared to those that don't. I think it is a fabulous opportunity to teach motivated but basically naive individuals. The experience will be even more challenging for me because at least 4 or 5 of my 25 students in one section have learning disorders or need special accomodations, so I've really got to figure out how teach well.
By contrast, my Human Bio section is full of nonmajors who spaced out in the first 5 minutes. Seriuosly, none of them gave a fuck because they're all there for a Gen Ed. Blah. Of course that would happen with the material I'm more qualified to cover.
And since I'm such a dumbass, I drove from where I work full time in one town to teach my afternoon sections in another, but I left my teaching materials at work. Great job, genius. At least I was able to gank a powerpoint from a similar course and wing it. What fun! Teaching really is easier after the first time around....
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Comments
you shoulda shown the chimp video.
Posted by: DM | August 23, 2008 12:14 AM
I'm sure you can pull off these teaching assignments. I'd love to be a fly on the wall just to see your teaching style.
Please keep blogging about your adventure. Of course, I (and probably others) are morbidly curious about whether you will have to deal with any creationists in your classes.
Best of Luck.
P.S. Your Blog profile is now out-of-date!
Posted by: Dick Lessard | August 25, 2008 7:22 PM
Oh you poor teacher you! Having to teach to the academically challenged must be real difficult for you. I don't know what that would be like since I do not have a full brain any more after a partial lobectomy in 2002. So glad I know decorticated rat brains can still learn. Now if we can only get corticated brains to learn about us brain disabled students with great GPAs maybe our classrooms will be more user friendly inclusive.
Posted by: lori santos | September 7, 2008 3:26 PM
Yes, in the future I will make every attempt to be insensitive to students with learning disabilities or special needs. Give me a break. You criticize somebody who is looking forward to helping out students?
News flash-- not all students with learning disabilities have high GPAs like you allegedly do (hey, it's the internet. I'm not going to ask you to prove it). In fact mine don't. One would think that instead of tossing out sarcasm, you might instead toss out ideas as to how I can do a better job. You know, some strategies? Tactics for in-class?
You do have some ideas, right? You're not just being an ass, right?
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