It’s been 1 week. Since what you ask? Since I took my first steps into a different world, a world of providing information rather then acquiring it. I must admit it’s been a humbling experience. I’m referring of course to being a teacher, well a sorta teacher anyway.
Right off the bat, I will admit that being a subject matter expert in more than a few core infrastructure technologies, including Windows Server, does not make one ready to actually instruct others in the same. After receiving all the materials from the previous instructor, and getting myself up to speed with what had been cover thus far, I thought I was ready to go. I mean, Read chapters on stuff I already knew, write up new syllabus with what I expected, and think of something of a funny intro to break the ice. Boy was I dead wrong!
Once I thought I had overcome the initial fear and stage fright, I went through it all again, nervousness, fear, excitement, nervousness, dread. If there is a 5 stages model for dying, then I think this might be the 5 stages of day 1 teaching. So as the time comes for my first class to start, I’m introduced by the previous instructor as he “says good-bye” to his students. If I’m those students at that moment I’m thinking wtf is going on right? I get up there, and start to do the only thing I can think of, introduce myself, and tell the students what gives me the right to be up there in front of them. Then I have them introduce themselves to me, and finally hand out and go over my syllabus. Now I’m out of ideas, all that careful planning, and I’ve now got nothing, and it’s only been 20 minutes, only 20 feakin’ minutes. I ask the only thing that comes to mind, what are you guys confused about? And the response I get is an overwhelming “everything!” The first thing I think is oh crap! Well, then we spend the rest of of the class starting over from the beginning, the first thing I hadn’t planned for, oops my bad. I dig up chapter 1 and we’re off, up to chapter 3 until the end of class time, which actually came pretty fast after those first horrific 20 minutes. Of course here I am up in front rattling off high level concepts and how to manipulate the OSI model to your advantage, and the single glaring question I received was “can you show us where the layers are in the OSI model.” And well no I really couldn’t, the second thing I really hadn’t planned for, oops again.
This is where the humbling part comes into play, like I said being a SME in something doesn’t make you ready to teach it, and I spent the ride home realizing that I’d forgotten more about the OSI model and subnetting then my students knew. Self-reflection is a concept that hadn’t really hit home for me until that moment, and I resolved to do better next class. With that in mind I cracked open my old books on networking fundamentals and re-learned everything from what media and protocol meant to how to CIDR was deigned to make the Internet a better place.
Armed with that knowledge, I went back into class very much more sure of myself, and did well, just marginally better then the firs time, in my opinion.
After 1 week all I can say is being a gateway to expert knowledge on a subject for those who want it is a very interact position to be in, and a position that could cause some serious damage to people if handled incorrectly. But hopefully, by the end of this semester we all will have learned something.
Filed under: teaching | Tagged: teaching, technology, windows server
