School Daze

Archive of My First Blog – 15

School Daze
September 28, 2009

After 12 years and three months absence, I’m returning to the classroom this week to teach three sections of expository writing at Rogue Community College. I was gone long enough for the writing curriculum to be entirely revamped, which is actually a good thing because that forces me to jettison the old ways and start fresh. When I left, the digital world had barely penetrated at RCC, but now everything’s online, which means I have to learn a new operating system – Vista – and how to navigate the college network. Community college students don’t fit the traditional model of students at four-year colleges and universities, and to me that’s a good thing. Instead of June high school grads studying on Mom and Dad’s dime, community college students fall into two broad types. Most are 20-somethings who are paying their own way through school and aren’t interested in wasting their time or money. And a bunch are mature adults returning to school after 20 or 30 years in the working world, many of whom are astonished to find themselves pulling straight As. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain to a 40-something former high-school goof-off, “No. You didn’t flunk classes in high school because you were stupid. You flunked because you didn’t know how to work, and now you do.” That’s always a fun conversation. On my first go-round at RCC, I had that chat with a lot of displaced timber workers. This time around I expect to meet a bunch of mature students who lost their jobs following the crash, and I’m looking forward to having the chat again and again and again.