Regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve been teaching a night class in developmental writing. This is the first term that I’ve taught this class, but I’ve taught classes in information technology and study skills before this for the past couple of years. This is the first english class I’ve ever taught.

Every time I teach a new class, I try to start out by using the materials that are provided by the department. I first attempt to follow whatever curriculum they’ve outlined so that I make sure I cover everything that was intended to be taught. The problem with this, though, is that I’ve found that most curriculums as set up aren’t very compatible with my teaching style.

First, let me say that I tend to be a pretty laid back instructor. I like my classes to be sort of an open, casual dialogue with very little lecturing. I usually place the most emphasis on class discussions and exercises that reinforce the topic of the class. This has worked well for me in the past and continues to work well now.

For this writing class, I spent the first few weeks sweating over trying to follow the syllabus. Then I gave in to my instincts. I stopped doing the things that I didn’t feel supported the goal of the class. If it didn’t contribute to the development of better writing skills, it was dropped. I feel this approach is the best for a couple of reasons. One, it allows both instructor and students to focus on the main goal of the class and two, it tends to lower the overall workload for everyone involved.

I’m amazed at how much busy work I’ve had to trim off the classes I’ve taught. There was a class in information technology fundamentals, a very basic introductory course, that included a major project using the MS Access database. The first time around I had the students do this project and found that they had a great deal of difficulty. After some thought, I decided that it really had no place in this course and was only put in there as an afterthought to make the course more challenging.

The problem with that was that the course didn’t need to be more challenging. It needed to be more focused on its goals. If the students needed to learn about Access, then they should take a database class. Returning the focus to just the basics allowed me to teach the students better and make much more efficient use of the time available.

When I sit down to plan a lesson now, the first thing I do is to ask myself what’s the goal of this class? Every course should have a goal, usually listed as course objectives in the college catalog. Each class meeting within that course, then, should contribute in some way to that overall goal. Teaching has become much easier for me with this in mind.