Who I am.
I am a person that needs to have control. It has always been true. I like to be in charge, I like to have all of my ducks in a row. I even wanted to be a football referee growing up. That’s right, not a football star, a referee. I was drawn to the order, authority, and structure the referee provide for the chaos happening on the field. I am certain that my teaching style reflects that. My point system for grading students is elaborate. My course organization is detailed down to the day in most cases. As Alex points out, even when I am spontaneous, I feel the need to do it in a structured way. And because I put so much effort into creating structure, I get very frustrated when I have to change it. That’s part of what has made this course so difficult for me. I’m just not good at change and, as I’ve noted before, online teaching requires me to do something I hate – completely rethink my approach. This course has brought that fact to the forefront of my mind and really caused me to examine why structure is so important to me. I suppose there is some deep psychological answer -maybe Jim could help me with that question. Nevertheless, I am what I am and I’m really trying to work within myself to achieve success in this course.
So, in designing my course, I continue to emphasize structure. Even things like the consistency and clarity of document formatting is important. Unfortunately, one of my struggles is that amount of time this course is taking. Because these details are so important to me, I want everythng to be perfect and I’m not sure creating an entire course “perfectly” given the time I’m able to spend on the course is possible. I haven’t entirely solved this problem yet and so I continue to put off an awful lot of other things in my life to try and get my course where I want it to be.
I’ve also learned that when I loose control of the structure I have a tendency to procrastinate and put things off. You’ve probably noticed that many of my posts come in the latter half of the module. I know this to be true and it is something I’d like to change but doubt that I ever will. So the answer is quite obviously that I need to maintain organization and structure from the beginning. As I’ve mentioned before, it seems this courses bounces around so much that I’ve never quite been able to focus my efforts. It didn’t help initially that this was my first online course and I wasn’t too sure what I was getting into. Now I at least know what to expect – something that is very important to people who need control.
By the way, I hope all of this doesn’t make me sound like a complete control freak or crazy person. I’m really not but I’m being as honest as I can. Lastly, Alex asked us to discuss how we want to communicate with our students and how we want to present ourselves. First, I want to be seen as organized, consistent, and clear. I’m certain that every student feels more comfortable when expectations and the pathways to success are clear. What I’ve also learned in this course is the instructor needs to be a voice of support and I hope to do that for my students. At various points I’ve just about lost my mind and felt the need to share that with Alex. She’s always talked me down of the metaphorical ledge and assured me that I would make it. I have seen plenty of students who didn’t feel like they could approach their teacher either have a minor meltdown or just quit on the class. Obviously neither is good so being seen as a friendly (though still firm) person is important.
Okay, I think I’ve beared enough of my sole for one night. (4)
