Trying Some Teaching Again

A friend has encouraged me to offer a course in a local program offerings for senior citizens.  This is a volunteer operation: the instructors offer their services, the local university offers some classrooms, the students pay a minimal fee for the mechanics of the instruction without testing or papers or final certification.  And hugely popular.  I have enrolled in several in the last four years, and dropped all but one, since I miss the more rigid form of instruction with which I am familiar from my days on the lecture platform.  Yesterday I met with two administrators to discuss how I might fashion the description of a projected course in ancient Greek tragedy. As they say, it was a learning experience for me.  One of the objections that I have had in the courses I attended was the freedom with which the students offered their opinions on the announced subject matter of the course.  It was clear to me that most frequently their questions and their observations were completely ill informed so that the instructor had gently to engage in either a quiet refutation or a lengthy clarification out of the student's obfuscation.  I found this so frustrating and time consuming and ultimately unproductive that I always dropped the course.  And I determined if I were to take on a course, I would guard against this manner of pedagogy.  I was coming from a model where in introductory lecture courses students were engaged in the acquisition of knowledge, and they would through testing and paper writing demonstrate their success in that acquisition. Student participation came only later in senior seminars or tutorials.  I had not realized that this is of course not the model nor the goal of these senior learning courses.  There is nothing to work for in that sense, no certification, no grade.  The persons interviewing me were saying "so, then, what you want us to indicate in the course book is that this is a lecture course, no class participation.  Would you be willing to entertain questions at the last five or ten minutes?"  Suddenly it sounded so cold, so factory model efficient.  Somehow I wanted to have my long polished lecture style, witty and engaged, and yet keep the students at some distance so that the participation could be controlled.  But I was all wrong, I suddenly realized.  These courses had nothing to do with an undergraduate course.  These were mature, accomplished people who were in their seventies and eighties, who felt they were bringing as much to the room as the instructor, even if it were not specialized knowledge of the subject advertised.  I would somehow have to give them participation and correction without taking up too much classroom time nor make them feel excluded.  Aha!  3X5 cards handed out at each meeting where questions could be written down, collected by me, reviewed and the more thoughtful, productive addressed in subsequent classes, as well as a ten minute Q & A session at the end of every class meeting.  I hope this will work!