It's a New Year, a New Decade...Same Old Problems

It must be 7 years now, mucking about with the same courses, trying to make them more relevant, more intuitive, more...useful?  It is never-ending.  And not just because I'm not at least somewhat talented, it's just that what wasn't so obvious before in terms of the failings in each course, but now, it is...and only a year later!

I've witnessed trends, even utilized a few when I thought that they had legs...most don't funnily enough.  Seems to vary with the generation of students I guess, plus I'm not sure sure that we're not being played sometimes.  These new ideas that simply don't play out because they're somehow not as relevant as we were all led to believe (students are great multitaskers...ever heard that one?) or they simply don't resonate with the people we're all trying to teach.  Soup du jour if you get my drift...

I've decided...actually, it all started last year, to take back my teaching.  I suspect that I'm just frustrated by having to jump through so many hoops just to give 'knowledge' and 'learning' to those who pay for it, yet whom don't especially want it.  I think that educators are frequently castigated for failing to be good enough at their jobs when not enough attention is focused on the student and what they should be bringing to the table.  Quoting policy and student obligations also doesn't seem to cut it either.  We fail, at least some of the time, because our students simply don't want what we have to offer.  It's not just that we aren't engaging, it's just that we aren't talking about what 'they' perceive as being valuable or useful, you know, because they know.  Of course, this is all tripe...nonsense.  How can someone with so little exposure to the trade, or immersion within that trade, really know better?  They don't of course, so we end up with a situation that benefits no-one particularly well, but at least it gets people somewhere I suppose.  Wish I knew where that was.

I believe what I'm saying is that good intents' partnered with the best wisdom one can muster will continue to have to do.  I hold no miracle solutions, except what I do know can be writ in stone.  Learning takes work, it takes discipline and it takes some kind of evaluation to make sure that a student has it tucked in there somewhere.  Flaccid, super-woke and trend driven notions on what works best just ain't me.  And they don't work for the majority either.  I am taking back my teaching.  Trust me on this one.