This entry is part 1 of 35 in the series Teaching TransparentlyThe purpose of education, in particular higher education, is to teach creative, intelligent, thoughtful, capable people the skills needed to go into the world and do amazing things. The purpose of a college level Spanish Conversation class, it follows, is to give students the(…)
This entry is part 2 of 35 in the series Teaching TransparentlyOne of the reasons I love to teach is that I get to learn. Be it from my students or the people who come to our class… every semester I acquire new knowledge, ideas, and perspectives thanks to what happens in the classroom. As(…)
This entry is part 5 of 35 in the series Teaching Transparently This semester I am teaching the second semester, second year language class for Spanish. You know the class… the one that has all of the gnarly bits of grammar that were left over from the first semester of the second year sequence. The(…)
This entry is part 7 of 35 in the series Teaching TransparentlyBefore the semester comes to a crashing halt, and we all go off to hibernate for a while, I wanted to get out at least one more post here on LLU to thank the people whose incredible work with technology has made my job(…)
This entry is part 8 of 35 in the series Teaching Transparently We are at the 1/2 way spot in our semester. It’s midterm grading time (here the grades at midterm are pretty simple: Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, Really Unsatisfactory and Never Seen This Person). It is also a perfect time to ask the students to evaluate(…)
This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Teaching what you thought you knewOne of my not-so-secret guilty pleasures is baseball. Growing up in a family of baseball enthusiasts and long-suffering Red Sox fans, listening to baseball games was something that put me to sleep, and going to games was something to pass(…)
This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Teaching what you thought you knew Foto of a sign in a buseta in Bogotá used with permission from Andreuchis I have to admit it. Prior to this past semester, when I thought of Colombian Music the only things that sprang to mind was the(…)
This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Teaching what you thought you knewHISP 205 is a conversation class. As the teacher, my goal for the inclass portion was that whatever I brought for my students to see, hear, witness… that those things needed to be catalysts, springboards, starting points for comments, conversation,(…)
This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Teaching what you thought you knewA thousand years ago, I studied at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. I went during college and then back again for a year after I graduated. Those were important years in my life and in my growth(…)
This entry is part 11 of 35 in the series Teaching TransparentlyA few people have asked to have a peek at the blogging tool that I use for my Spanish conversation class. Knowing that, I had great plans to make a photochop images with arrows and numbers and what nots….and then gave up and just(…)
This entry is part 13 of 35 in the series Teaching TransparentlyLast Thursday I had the pleasure of being the speaker for the “Third Thursday Series” at Kendal, a local community for seniors. The topic was social networking; the coordinator for the speaker series alerted me that the average age of the participants would be(…)
This entry is part 14 of 35 in the series Teaching TransparentlyIt has been a busy spring, what with our infamous birds and a remarkably rough and tumble college admission process for my eldest son. My energies, needless to say, have been diverted away from this space. There has been a lot of chatter recently(…)