Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The third teaching demo from the week after the end of classes was a former student of mine who was enrolled as a scholar in another school my university was in a consortium with. That was around ten years ago. He had since graduated and moved to teach in another campus nearby where two of my co-teachers (and his former co-teachers) told him to apply here.

The only thing I can’t figure out from his story is where he was able to see my picture near one of the entrances where he discovered that I was teaching here. Hopefully I find it one of these days.

And once again the fact that I will be working with someone who I once taught brings to bear how long I have been in this profession.

Despite the fact that the Vice Dean told him to treat us like his students, he still began the lecture by showing his appreciation to us for giving him the chance to apply there.

When he did start his lecture, on the topic of Fusion and the Mass-Energy Relation, he went through a basic overview of the history of the discovery of the atom and its parts, really getting into the role as he asked the two directors present for answers.

His talk was very voluble, such that it took him about five minutes to finish one slide. But the passion to impart knowledge was there, different from hearing someone drone on just to keep being the center of attention.

Eventually the Vice Dean had to cut his lecture short. There were other questions from the panel, such as most innovative moment (even outside of teaching), most and least memorable experience in teaching, and my standard question on how our brand of education differs, positively and negatively, from the other institutions he’s been part of, both as a student and as a teacher.

In the middle of it the Vice Dean passed me a note asking if I was okay to teach Mechanics for Engineers One (as opposed to General Mechanics) as well as Electricity and Magnetism, so that we could have one class of both each. If it had pushed through, that would have been my first experience with team teaching.

But the MECENG1 classes conflicted with my Mathematical Methods 1 schedule, and since he was only being hired as part-time, it was best to limit the number of days he would have to go to school, which was not possible if he also taught ELECMAG.

That was too bad. Having ME1 under my belt would have boosted my units even further (I already have a one unit overload) because it would be my first time teaching that subject, instead of having a low-numbered repeat preparation for EM.

Of course, that was based on the Vice Dean’s assessment of 41 engineering students in that batch, when in fact they have been whittled down to size steadily from failures in MM1, Trigonometric Applications, Differential and Integral Calculus, and, of course, GENMECH. So there is a distinct possibility that one or both of those sections for ME1 and EM would be dissolved, as well as my MM1 section, which is the fifth in line with a maximum of thirty students from the freshman enrollees each, not counting the repeaters.

I’ll give more details about my tentative load next time. For now, class dismissed.