Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Warping Young Minds Since 1993....

I've been teaching, in some capacity or other, since shortly after I graduated from college. Substitute high school teaching (resulting in the Great Math Test Debacle of 1994, and the Underpants Incident of 2003.) TAing for World History 101 (in which a booming Jesuit father informed the class that "An OCEAN is a BODY of WATER...surrounded by CONTINENTS!" If you didn't know what an ocean was, kids, maybe college wasn't such a great idea for you) and Art History 101-102, the highlight of which was test review with silly prizes from Archie McPhee for anyone who answered a question correctly. But today marks the first time I have had a class of my own--my syllabus, my grading standards, my ability to mold young minds. Though, this being IUPUI, a considerable # of the minds in the room are actually older than I am. I can live with that. They're mostly elementary education majors, which means I might well be warping two generations of learners for the price of one. It went ok today, I just went over the syllabus and then talked about "What is art?" for a few minutes before letting them go. Next Monday's topic is "Good Art, Bad Art, Not Art," and I have some choice pictures from the Museum of Bad Art for the powerpoint...

In a full circle sort of a thing, I got my diploma for my Master's Degree in the mail today. It's shiny, in the bright red folder favored by Indiana U, and will look lovely on my shelf. Next to the other 3 degrees. Which I'm also not really using. Woo hoo!