Bak 2 Skuul

[captainsblog]

My dreams have been especially potent the past few weeks, and many of them have placed me back in various levels of schooling- usually college or even earlier. None of these, that I can recall, have been the routine OMG-I-Forgot-The-Test type; rather, they've been full-length motion pictures, often of the older-style Coen Brothers variety, with intense emotions coming out.

They do get me wondering, though. Is this some sign that I should be returning to the halls of academe in some fashion?

Can't say what I'd want to take up if I were to return to the student side of the podium. Some kind of literature or writing course, probably. Perhaps more intriguing, though, is trying to get a gig on the teaching side.

It's not completely foreign territory. New York requires lawyers to stay current on new developments, to the tune of 24 class hours every two years. The trick for me, though, has been that you get mondo extra credit for speaking at such seminars, and a couple of different private outfits, plus various Bar associations, have recruited me to lecture a few times every year. I just got my paltry payment for the last one I did back in early March, but with it came a Continuing Ed certificate that burns off almost half my biennial quota, and a set of evaluations with generally high marks.  So yes, apparently, I can both do and teach, as long as it's One Day At A Time (and I don't even have a pack of ciggies rolled up in my sleeve).

My only experience with a longer-term teaching relationship came around the time Emily was born. A private outfit rented classrooms at various New York colleges, offering paralegal certificates to a mixture of career-changing legal secretaries and frustrated junior college dropouts.  I taught my course, on "Bankruptcy and Alternatives," for two full school years, one night a week, four grueling hours each night.

New York is not friendly to profit-making institutions in the schoolmarmin' business, mainly due to abuses in the 70s and 80s perpetrated by truck-driving schools and whatnot that were in the game solely to get their hands on the student loan checks of the often nonexistent attendees. So by the time I signed on, the regulatory pendulum had swung way the other way, requiring my curriculum to be approved by eight different levels of state bureaucracy and then implemented To The Letter, or the whole multicampus institute could lose accreditation. (They faced a near cancellation of their operating license one year because the campus map of one of their locations was not labelled on the page as a "map.") This level of nonsense meant, among other things, that no matter how little the kids participated, or cared, I could not let that class out a nanosecond before 10:30 p.m. on any of those 40 mostly consecutive weekly sessions. They hated me for it, and their evaluations showed it.

The only thing I haven't done is what would make the most sense to try to do, especially with a kid soon in need of a university education, which is get on at a traditional school as adjunct faculty, hopefully with tuition benefits for the fam.  We have a couple people in my office here who do this, so I'm going to at least look into it.

Comments

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

I think you'd be a great teacher. :)

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

In order to keep a TN teaching lisence, one must take a 300 level or higher course every so many years. I think I'll take Abnormal Psychology this time...I like to keep the State guessing. :D