Classes so Far

So, at this point you might be asking yourself "Self, what are classes at Antioch like?" Well if you are, than this is the blog post for you! Now that classes have been going strong for a couple weeks allow me to share a bit about what they have been like thus far.

AUS's GTP (that's "Antioch University Seattle" and "Graduate Teacher Preparation" for those of you who may not be acronym inclined) classes are scheduled for students who are working while going to school. To that end, typical classes are on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 4-9:30pm. There are occasional exceptions. For example, I have a class meeting three times throughout this quarter on Wednesday nights, it's an integration seminar so does not meet as regularly as other courses.

The first term classes are fairly standard, I am taking an Educational Foundations course, Human Development and Learning, Technology in the Classroom, and Curriculum and Instruction (in addition to the seminar). They are all great and I have found that I really enjoy having a mix of core faculty and adjunct faculty members. This term my classes are 3 and 2: three are taught by adjunct professors and two are with core faculty. What I realized is that there is a great advantage to having some of your basic courses (like curriculum and instruction, for example) taught by someone who not only has a Doctorate in Education but is also currently teaching in a Seattle school. There's a great balance of perspective in the program thus far, balance between the theoretical side of things and the hands-on view of people who are actually teaching in public schools today. I like that.

The only serious difficulty of the program to this point has been keeping up with the reading. There is a lot of it. This is a graduate level program and they don't let you forget it but they do help you get through it. We had a nice little pep-talk from one professor last week about the work-load and this professor (who shall remain nameless) really summed up their philosophy in two pieces: A) Deal with it, get the reading done. And, B) If you can't, the sun will still rise tomorrow. After all, that's why we have coffee right?

'Till next time,
Mike