End of Term

It is finally the end of term. Grades are in and now I have a little time to think and o get ready for the Christmas holidays.

I like Christmas alot. What I enjoy the most is finding time to spend with my parents and my brother and all my friends. I think that it what is all about.

As I have stated in my profile I am an academic. Here at UDM we have a relatively heavy teaching load of three courses a term. At other institutions similar to UDM the teaching load is more.

This term I taught Calculus I and it was a bit of a frustrating experience. On one hand there were very good students and they just needed me to answer questions and to help them guide them along to solve problems. Then there were the students that could not care less about the material or learning. What was frustrating were the number of students that tried hard but were not ready to be in college. If you have read the papers lately you would have found that the Detroit Public School system is one of the worst school systems in the country. The students that manage to survive and manage to get into college come in terribly under prepared. They mean well but they underestimate the effort, the amount of material and the level of performance necessary to succeed and they end up not doing well. I try very hard to help but to no avail. I do not know what are the answers to the education crisis. All I know is that the public school system should be top notch. A school system should be able to find the talents of each student and help them grow. Teachers should be in a sense philosophers and be expected to engage in professional development their entire career. They should publish and participate at conferences and do real research. It is only until that we expect of teachers a high level of expertise that we will begin to attract the best and the brightest.