It is nice that the shop has good equipment. You & your students should learn a lot. Happy things are working well for you.
:cornut: Me too Minidave! I've been a Physician Assistant for 31yrs world wide in multiple specialties. The clinic that I was at closed and at 60yo(next month) physicians only want to hire a PA that can stay for 20yrs. Going back to my PA school to teach is not possible as PA schools now graduate their students with a masters degree(I only have an AA and BS) and that school is in downtown Dallas(yuk). Sooooooooooooo............... Texas has a law called the Hazelwood Act which pays tuition and fees(150 semester hours) at UT system schools for Veterans whose benefits have run out. I have applied to UNT(University of North Texas in small town Denton,Tx) Toulouse Graduate School for an MS in Biology such that I may teach at a Junior College in Rural/Suburban Texas. When I was in Army SF, I taught many many students who couldn't speak English so this shouldn't be too hard. I'll be able to teach Anatomy&Physiology, Microbiology, Biology, and Marine Biology(Good Lord willing and the creeks don't rise). I've been accepted by UNT and preliminarily accepted by Toulouse Grad School but the Dean has to sign off first and then I'm FINALLY fully accepted. On the application they wanted to know what I could do for the UNT community(yep, blatant huh?). So I said that since UNT has a Health Science Center School which trains Physicians and Physician Assistants; I would be very qualified to determine which of my students should be referred on to UNT Health Science Center and who would not make a good candidate( I almost wrote: well if you don't want me in your Masters Program then I'll refer all the students to UT Southwestern Med Center where I went to PA School but fortunately cooler heads[my wife] prevailed and I left this part out)........................... Well 2 old duffers get another crack at life. My prayers are with you Minidave and Good Luck! Jason
:biggrin5::biggrin5: I made it in, provisionally but in:drool. Got email today from grad school saying come register and take your 1st semester. An old (60yoSep) broken down soldier/ PA health care provider and they're going to give me a chance to get a post grad degree such that I may teach. Wunderbar! Jason
Well done Dixon. I was a trainer in the military and I've taught at both undergrad and graduate college levels and I especially like these ^ points. It's hard to do when your time is limited and you need to spend as much of it as possible on the actual teaching, but do the best you can to figure out what individuals want to know, why they think they're there, and how much they think they know before you start. Let each class know what they're in for and what you expect and don't get too chummy. I love to teach, it can be surprisingly challenging but also extremely rewarding. Good luck Dave.
Well, after 1 week of classes I can honestly say.......so far so good. No one has died or been injured, I consider that a good sign! :biggrin5: I do 1 hour of lecture and 3 hours of lab each day, but only 2 days a week. We did mostly demonstrations of the equipment up till now, but next week we'll bust out the wrenches and start doing some fixin! They're also going to get their first test..... In talking with them and doing the demos, I've found out that some of these guys already know what they're doing and are not afraid to jump in with both feet and go to work, others are complete neophytes. They're supposed to have taken an intro class before they can take mine, but I have 3 or 4 guys who are taking the intro class concurrently. I have done a good job of preparing before class, and a few of the guys have started being more relaxed and forthcoming. I start each lecture class with some You Tube vids of something fun, a drag race or Russian dash cams or something very visual, it helps wake them up and gets them talking (I do this before actual class time). One thing I'm still having trouble with is remembering their names, but that will get better with time and experience.
Last week we got to work on some "customer" cars - customers in this case are either students, faculty, employees or their friends and family - that's a lot of potential work! Since classes are officially all running now, the requests are starting to roll in, but before we worked on anyone else's car, I had many of my students put their own car on the rack and we did a lot of looking, wiggling and checking for loose parts, we also did a whole passle of alignments - and all of them checked out or were able to be brought into spec. It hasn't been without casualties tho, fortunately none of them from my student's work. One class went to change the front struts on a Kia Sedona and when tightening the top nut with an impact gun, managed to strip the threads. They put the old strut back in so that the car could be moved off the rack and it sat till the new one came in. They also had a Ford 500 in for rear shocks, and at the end of the first 2 1/2 hours still hadn't gotten one out....that car also got put back together till the next class, when - after looking up the instructions - they were able to get both changed out in one 4 hour class (yes it ran overtime) but at one point there were 8 guys and the instructor working on it. One of my students was working on his car in brakes class, and someone didn't tighten the lug nuts on one of his wheels and he lost the wheel on the way to school the next day - THAT was a learning experience! Fortunately all it damaged was the wheel. This week I have a Chrysler mini-van coming in for a new steering rack, tie rod ends and alignment - that will be the first one of those we've done so it should be interesting, and I also have a Protege coming in for a front end rebuild, shocks, ball joints , tie rods, alignment etc. Another teacher is bringing in a Corolla for 4 new tires - I'm thinking there may also be a couple of new wheels and an alignment in store for this car based on the owner's description, age and general driving history......one of the other instructors said she drives by "feel".....:biggrin5: There's definitely been an uptick in attention span, I've only had one student drop the class, so over all I think it's going OK. We'll see what excitement this week brings....
Time for another update I guess..... I gave them their first real written test last Friday and frankly I'm a bit disappointed in their scores, the best was a 76.....several were well below 50% So, we spent some time talking about how to take tests, especially multiple choice tests and some time talking about what is required of them, tomorrow I'll find out how many listened as their first written report (ie: home work) is due, one student has turned his in so far - one. We've had some interesting work in the shop, lots of struts, shocks, ball joints, tie rod ends and so on, and all but one job has turned out well. We changed the upper and lower ball joints on a 2000 Dodge Ram pickup and the owner complained that his steering wheel isn't straight and it pulls a little after we aligned it, but he's going to give us another shot at it in tomorrow's lab. In tomorrow's lecture I'm going to have to spend some time talking about bolt size and thread ptich, and why you cant just pick a die out of the tap and die set to fix mooshed threads based on it "looking about right", and how you actually need to know whether it's metric or SAE and what pitch the threads are.....you know, complicated, advanced stuff like that.......<sighs>
:cornut: Passed my first test in human neural cell differentiation. Next week is first test in Oceanography/Vertebrate Marine Biology. All okay so far. I am the oldest person in all of my classes including the professors, it's great. Jason
It's possible this may be a one shot deal for me, I found out today that they don't teach this class every semester, and it's not on the calendar for the next one. Of the classes they are offering, there's not much that I feel competent to walk in and teach, and since the full time profs get first choice there may not be a spot for me. I'll know a lot more next month. In the meantime, we had a bit of a "come to jesus" meeting today in my class, and I noticed a marked improvement in both willingness to cooperate and attentiveness to their work once we got to lab. I also got a lot more class participation this morning. Just needed to let them know who was running the show I guess......