Teaching HTML and CSS
As in almost every job, I am now teaching the other employees how to do my job when I am no longer here. Their progress is excellent. I am also teaching one of the EMU faculty, who likes to create websites in off hours, and is very interested and capable.
This semester, all three of my classes are covering the same material I am teaching my co-workers: creating websites in HTML and CSS, and how to put them on the web. I have known how to do this for ten years.
I'm taking the basic classes in my last semester because they filled up too quickly in previous semesters. It's easier to get into more advanced classes, because so many students drop out before reaching them.
I would have liked this to be an opportunity to learn advanced CSS techniques, but my classmates are mostly fresh out of high school, or older people who are uncomfortable with computers. Imagine that driving is second nature to you because you drive every day, but for some reason you have to re-take driver's training with a 16-year-olds. You are not going to learn any advanced driving skills. The assignments I am given are the equivalent of driving 20 miles per hour in a parking lot full of cones.
In two classes (not 's, who is really good at this) it is the equivalent of doing this repetitively for hours. And then writing an essay about it, in which the driver's ed instructor only grades you for spelling.
I am not allowed to test out.
I didn't get student aid with which to buy textbooks until more than a month had passed. So, ultimately I decided not to buy three expensive textbooks, that all cover the same material, which I have known for years. The problem is that two of the teachers (not ) let the textbook do the teaching and just issue assignments as "Do Chapter 4". This means that I don't know what the assignment is unless I borrow a textbook. So I just do that in class, and get as much done as possible before class ends. The time-consuming portion involves typing out entire webpages about Alaskan natural parks, as if it were a typing class.
( invents the assignments himself and tells us what they are, so I am doing well in his class.)
It is ironic to be poorly evaluated on the material I know best, but that's because it bores me. I'd rather pass the other two classes with a D than jump through hoops with training wheels on, and increase my debt with hundreds of dollars worth of textbooks, for no benefit. If the benefit is to impress the sort of employer who is impressed by pointless bureaucratic busy-work in obedience to their authority, then for me it is a failed value proposition. That is a decision for which I accept responsibility. I'm already on the Dean's list with a 4.0; and the difference it will make to my GPA is not that important to my quality of life anyway.
Comments
pstscrpt on Feb. 25, 2011 7:05 PM
Can you ask the teachers for harder assignments?
matt-arnold on Feb. 25, 2011 7:11 PM
The last time I tried that, they said no. I think most of them don't want to teach two classes for the price of one.
atdt1991 on Feb. 25, 2011 9:16 PM
I did not really ask so much in my easier classes that I could not test out of - I just did harder work that I came up with myself. Like in my math class, we were supposed to do some sort of experiential paper about a math subject, like a famous mathematician or some simple system.
I was DYING, looking at their subjects. I was dying FURTHER because the paper was clearly bunk, but this class filled my requirement and the advanced classes were outside my schedule time. So I wrote about chaos theory, which I had always wanted to learn about.
The teacher wrote on my assignment that she didn't know anything about it until I turned in the paper (no big surprise there). I made the class provide me something it wasn't built for, and it worked out.
Take the assignments you get in class and try to find a way to take them one step further, in order to challenge yourself. It's the only way to survive with your sanity intact, I think.
jethidovi on (None)
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