|
Julie Odell |
|
Lately I’ve been teaching a lot of developmental courses. I find this group of students ceaselessly fascinating- they are so often bright and curious and yet woefully under-prepared for college. Every semester it’s a different experiment-- what will engage them, motivate them, help them prepare for the rigors of college? What worked for one group rarely seems to work as well for another, so I tweak and tweak my courses. I enjoy being “the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage” in terms of how developmental teaching asks us to coach and encourage our students. Often my students are coming straight from high school and see education as a bit of a bore-- I love being the one who gets to turn the lights on. Maybe it’s a new way of seeing a mayoral election or a long-overdue analysis of immigration in America. On a good day I find their energy and occasional outbursts invigorating. On a bad day. . . let’s just say I sometimes need a long bubble bath after work.
I am also interested in helping our department find ways to ensure that students passing from developmental courses to the college level have all the tools and knowledge and inner resources to be successful. I am interested in how teachers in other disciplines can help the developmental process continue after students have finished our courses, for I don’t think it ever really ends. I’d love to see more collaboration among faculty. I’d personally love to team teach sometime. Additionally, my hope is that we as DE faculty explore different means of evaluating and assessing our students’ readiness for the college. We are a mighty creative bunch—I have no doubt we will come up with many interesting ideas.
On a personal note, during the semester I struggle to find an hour here and there to work on my fiction-- currently a second novel (pro-cycling, doping, strip clubs and pathological lying). I chip away it like I did the first one, and eventually a story emerges. I love that there are so many writers in our department and that we can share our frustrations and successes. I think my hardships as a writer sometimes mirror my students’ hardships with college. We all have a hard time finding the quiet and the space and the belief in ourselves to do what we know is so important for us to do.
|
|
Assistant Professor
|
