On Being an Adjunct Political Science Professor

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This week marked my first week back in the university classroom. The difference this time around, though, is that now I’m serving as a humble Adjunct Professor and not a student. I’m only teaching one class called American National Government and I’ve only been at it for one week so far, but I really like teaching!

I am attempting to make this class a combination of all the good things that I experienced as an undergraduate. The class is not writing intensive as there are only a total of 11 total pages to be written throughout the semester (yes, they are double-spaced). It is a lecture-based course and I plan on fully utilizing the internet and PowerPoint presentations in order to bring the information to the students. Last night I had my first class where I taught using a PowerPoint presentation and I think the students enjoyed it (no one fell asleep!).

Believe it or not, one of the most surprising parts of teaching is evaluating the textbooks that we use in class. Given the speed in which I was asked to fill this role, I was not able to totally evaluate the texts that are required for the course. The main textbook (which costs a whopping $100!) has poor definitions of conservative and liberal, casting each in a light that is not entirely fair to either party. The second assigned book contains nothing but selections of various political readings and it’s great - definitely something I will keep in the syllabus for the next time I teach this course. Yes - I’m done with the first of fourteen weeks of teaching for this semester and I’m already thinking about the next time I teach this course!

In any event, the students all seem like great folks and we’ve had some good questions come out of the presentations so far. This is a job assignment that I’m glad I took up when the offer was made. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun teaching these kids about our government and all of its inner workings! Obviously for reasons of employment and privacy, I can’t say too much about the course other than what’s in this post, but if something occurs that is able to be put out there in the public domain, I’ll be sure to post something up.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 11:09 pm and is filed under College & Fraternity Life, United States Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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