Teachers Block

So... I have this Linux class I will be teaching starting in two weeks. I am not really sure why I signed up for this in the first place. I guess since both of my parents are teachers I thought I might as well take a crack at it. I can tell you right now, I don't think I could make a career out of it. No matter how much I might enjoy it. I just cannot imagine getting paid so little to do something. I am not saying I am wealthy or making money hand over fist at my full-time job, but, one week's pay at my full-time job out paces a semesters worth of pay teaching the class. Its just crazy. I have no idea how my parents do it.

I am really unsure how to prepare for the class. There are several reasons for this:

1. I have never taught in an educational environment before.

2. There is no preset curriculum for the class. I have to make my own.

3. I don't really have any demographics or background on the students I will be teaching. (Knowledge level, life experience(age), IT experience, Philosophy around open source, etc.)

4. I was always a pretty bad student in structured classes, so I have no idea how to make a decent one for somebody who needs structure

Issue #1
I have taught IT and Petroleum Engineering topics in the corporate world, but, I imagine that this will be very different. In the corporate world the classes are, at most, a week long. The people in the class are most likely there because they have a very specific reason to learn what I am going to teach. They also come from a similar background from me and have similar life experiences.

The students in the night class may be there for work or they may be there just to gain general knowledge or they may just be taking the class because it is required to graduate.

This should make for a very interesting experience to say the least.

Issue #2
This class was taught previously, but, the guy who taught it is in semi-retirement. He has an old syllabus and he has the book that he used in the class. He really has no quizzes, test or lessons from the class. He also taught the class using a very strange distro of Linux that looked like a cross between Mandrake and Caldera.

I am going to teach the class using Fedora 10 since this will help them be ready to use Red Hat in the corporate world and will give the a decent stable desktop to try out at home.

Issue #3
I have the class roster and I have done as good of a snoop as I can on the names on the list. A few of them have their own websites, so that makes me hopeful that they are at least generally computer literate. One is the main contact for the college's conceal carry on campus group. So, I know he will be a student I can relate to. :-) Two are from the operations group at my place of work. I have never met them, but, some co-workers say they are bright folk that they enjoy working with.

The rest... I have no idea and it should be interesting. It is a night class, so I think it will be an interesting mix.

Issue #4
The best way to sum up how I like to learn is 'Wikipedia.' I like to read about something and then I will find something in the reading that piques my interest and then I am off reading about that, which leads to me finding something else and digging down on that. Eventually, I finish learning about what I came into learn about in the first place, but, it is a very circuitous route. This is why the hyperlinks in Wikipedia are so great for me.

I think the best way to describe how I learn is like a computer program that uses subroutines. I start with the main program (what I came to learn) and then I make these little function calls that may have little function calls in them. I always go back to the original origin, but, I run alot of these subroutines before I am finished.

I am worried that this will not be the way my students will want to learn. I am going to have to focus heavily on giving the class structure. And frankly, I have no idea how I am going to do it without going crazy or making the class horribly stuffy and unimaginative.

Well, I guess that is about it for right now. I am going to go back to making a presentation on the history of Linux. I don't know if writing this out has helped me at all. But, maybe somebody will read this and have some insight or experience to share with me. I know I will have a much clearer picture after the first class. Or maybe I won't....