I'm going to be teaching a class...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Wow. What have I gotten myself into?

I’m going to be teaching a Novell class. Two nights a week, four hours a night, for 6 weeks. I have been getting pressured to do this for a month now, and I have finally caved. The course will start on October 3.

They had first requested that I teach Novell 5, which I considered, then declined. I am certified in Novell 5, but I don’t use it every day. That means a lot more preparation required, and having to look up answers to a lot more of the class questions. I haven’t taught since University, in '93, so I’m rusty at teaching itself - let alone teaching something I am not 100% familiar with.

After I declined, they appealed to me several times over a few weeks to reconsider. I cited many reasons for declining, including time constraints, my on-call status during one of the weeks, and the above mentioned version 5 not being my specialty.

They’ve pulled some strings, and are now offering the course as version 4.11, the one that I do work with every single day and know quite well. It will be 5 nights of 4.11, with the 6th dedicated to the differences between 4.11 and 5.

Dammit. They got me.

If you’ve read this far without being too bored :D, you may be wondering why I would bother to do something I’m so uncertain about. Yeah, me too.

It’s my husband’s company, and they are pressuring the hell out of him about it. At the same time as he is saying “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he is saying “Mr. Boss Guy is really going crazy about this Novell class, he doesn’t think they can find anyone else to teach it.”

Grumble grumble grumble.

So I think I am going to be a teacher for 3 weeks.

<This has been KimKatt’s Mundane, Pointless Ramble of the Day. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Board.>

2

Not Novell, but other computer products. Verdict? Scary for 5 minutes, fun for the rest. Enjoy!
Zette

3

Zette, did you have a clear class outline, or did you have to come up with your own lesson plans? That’s the part that’s really freaking me - figuring out how to coherently fill four hours.

4

Four hours? Good lord. There are days I can barely drag my lessons out for fifty minutes.

If you don’t mind me sticking my 2¢ in, I’d advise a flexible lesson plan. List the points you want to cover, and make sure you get those in, but allow for question-answering breaks every now and then. If you find yourself with extra time, ask your students if there’s anything they’d like you to discuss.

Good luck, KimKatt, but most of all, have fun!

5

Thanks, Audrey. That is what I am aiming for - we want to cover this, this and this today. LOTS of question and answer periods, and most of it will be hands on, which helps a great deal.

One big break for me, and one of the the reasons I considered doing this in the first place - these students are not Newbies. They have all taken a couple of basic networking classes, and two Microsoft classes. So they’re got the terminology down, which hopefully means I can skip the boring parts :slight_smile:

6

Ha …that aint nothing.

“there you go Damhna , thats the MCP manual for Exchange 5.5.I know youve never used it but would you mind taking a class of 5 of our admins for a full week would you? they want to take the exam at the end yeah?”

“emm…sure…OK… when?”

“well its Friday today so can you take them Monday? Great thanks…enjoy your weekend”

You have to remember a few things during your course.

1 You know this stuff.Yes you really know this stuff.

2 Youre good at this, oh yes by golly, they wouldnt ask just anyone.

3 Prepare. Prepare like you have never prepared before.

7

Exchange 5.5?

Ouch. That really wasn’t very nice of them.

Hope you got through it without too many scars.

8

I was expecting the rest of the title to read:
“…called self-pleasure for couples and flirtatious women.”

Sorry, my mind is still swimming a bit.

9

:smiley:

I don’t think the classroom has sufficient facilities for that subject matter.

Besides, that would be far better suited to one-on-one tutelage, don’t you think?

10

Whats that one-on-one tutelage gonna run me? Do I need a physical first? Will my insurance cover it?

11

Senior year I taught the polysci/international relations/something else teacher at my high school basicaly how to use virtually every prog his PC had. Also installed a boatload of progs . . . this guy did not know how to write anything on his machine. Was loads of fun . . . he was very patient, despite the fact that he claimed not to be. Paid 10 bucks an hour . . . not bad:)

12

The absolutely worst thing that could happen is that when you ask “Do you have any question about anything we’ve covered so far?”, you get nothing but dead silence. My Monday classes (not surprisingly) are like that. That’s not too bad though; I just turn the silence around on them and start asking them questions on the material. :slight_smile:

13

Kim,
I had a set lesson plan and followed a specific courseware, so my examples were all done for me. I usually tailored the class toward the specific industry that I was teaching, though. I really enjoyed it a lot. Good luck!

Zette

14

Just finished my first “Unix fundamentals” class for our operators.

Ow.

I found it difficult to strip the technical details down far enough to communicate with pure novices (in anything without talking paperlips, at least.) I wish you the best of luck, Kim. It sounds at least like your students have a little background in the subject before they come to you. That should definitely help.

15

Rates are based on the experience of the student. The more experienced you are, the less training you need, right?

Better check that insurance policy, baby. You may need it when I’m through with you :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:
Ahem, anyhow…

The wonderfully reliable folks at my hubby’s company have done it again. After begging all this time, now they think they might have someone to teach it. But if this guy does teach it, he’ll need to borrow MY Novell books, because he doesn’t know Novell well enough to teach it now. He figures he can learn it enough to teach it over the next two weeks.

Honestly, I do not understand how these people stay in business.

Thanks for all of the encouragement, friends. I do think I will end up teaching it, and will have to let you know how it goes :slight_smile: