It's raining

I'm beat and ready to go home, but it started raining. I don't feel like walking to my car in the rain, though it's warm enough. I've put in 4 hours here at school and have completed two weeks worth of lesson plans (4 weeks in a normal semester). My classes are 3 hrs and 20 min long M/W, except for Weeks 1 & 2 which only meet on Wednesdays, the first week because it's the first week, and the second week because of the July 4th holiday.

I like teaching the longer classes but I've never done it in 6 weeks before. Usually when I have a longer class it only meets once a week. I'm not giving homework this time. They'd be screaming for mercy if I did. We're doing all the work in class, which I think is actually better because my course is a practical application course anyway, so if we do the practical application together, I'm right there for questions and guidance. I'm more interested in them being able to do the work than giving them a grade for it. What good is it to have them do an exercise on their own and have me take off points for what they did wrong? Let me help them while they're doing it, have them do it right, get an A and have a useful, complete tool in hand for use later. This course is supposed to help them become better students not hurt their grade point average.

For the fall I'm going to continue with this mindset by having them work on things from their other courses while in my class that have to do with whatever topic we're covering. Even though what I teach is relevant to them as students, I want to make it even more relevant and useful to them by giving them exercises that help them in their other courses right away, not when/if they get around to using these things on their own.

I can't do it that way with this summer class, though, because it's a condensed course at the end of the term and many of them won't even be in other classes at the same time.

Well, the rain has stopped, so let me pack up and go.