Day 45 - English Class and just a bit of Controversy

Worked today on a seminar for the CompSci department this morning. I was supposed to have it in the afternoon, but it was postponed until tomorrow. Col Rahman decided to have another feedback session instead at the same time. This one was a bit more interesting than the last two. The previous sessions were with the juniors and seniors, so primarily all CompSci majors. This one was with the Sophomores, so they were asked to give feedback on the core course. Cadets at NMAA take two CompSci core courses. This feedback session was attended by the Dean since he really enjoyed the last one. However, the atmosphere was much different.

The students showed a lot of courage and hit the issues head on. It turns out that the CompSci majors get much better access to the labs and do a lot more hands on work in the upper level courses. The core courses on the other hand, while lending themselves very well to hands on activities, are very much taught in a lecture style without a lot of activities. When you consider the content (a lot of MS Office and Windows usage training), sitting through a lecture where an instructor demos how to do equations with Excel, but doesn't let you reinforce anything by trying it, can be extremely frustrating. I get the feeling that the CompSci instructors and upper class cadets are cautious or protective of their labs. They don't want the core courses to "mess up" their lab machines. Therefore, lots of demo/lecture, with very little practice.

Unfortunately, even though the students had the courage to politely challenge this practice, the instructors, department head, and even the Dean, pretty much shot them down. I had to bite my tongue pretty hard. This means I'll have a lot of chai to drink while doing as much behind closed doors mentoring as possible. I've been trying to persuade the department to open up the labs to all the students since my second week here. You've heard the old saying "give me a fish and I eat for a day, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime." Well, the Freshmen and Sophomores are only getting daily rations.

I did have some fun before lunch. One of the other mentors grabbed a few of us and asked if we'd help with an English class. It is more effective if we can get the students in smaller groups for discussion and practice. It was a lot of fun. The cadets are very anxious to work on their English and talk about themselves, but in a large class they don't always get the opportunity. I had about six of them in a small break out group. We talked about where they were from, what the wanted to do after graduation, why they came to NMAA, etc. We also talked about food to increase their vocabulary. Turns out they all think tomatoes are a vegetable. I tried to reason with them, but to no avail...