Here Come the Headaches

Who knew I could post from my blackberry?! I didn't but I'm excited I can! Anyway,

Everything seems so good on paper. Students have some great ideas to raise additional funds for the course. However, there are a ton of ideas and only so much time. I could choose the ideas that seem most lucrative or germane to the course objective of improving writing skills, but this concept seems rather totalitarian and to fly in the face of my student-centered learning pedagogy. I could have the students vote on which to pursue, but I'm concerned about hurt feelings and students withdrawling from participation as a result. This would really hurt us since the 17 of us are trying to do the work of 25-35 people. I am really stuck here because we need the funds to accomplish some of our class objectives: honorariums, symposium promotion, etc.

Second, and equally important, the research topics I assigned are overly broad and overlap heavily. Students are assigned to write a group research paper on either rural, urban, youth, elderly, developed country, or less developed country hunger. The papers are supposed to address what complications/road blocks to hunger relief exist within a given category, what steps have been taken to overcome these roadblocks and what changes could improve the current attempts. (Simple enough right?) However these topics have tons of reseach to read, and all of the topics contain some aspect of another, e.g. The group on rural hunger finds themselves overlapping with the developed and less developed as well as the elderly and youth groups. We tried to narrow the scope of each today in class, but nothing came up that was incredibly satisfactory.

Overall, I still LOVE the class. Students are motivated; every assignment has a real purpose and audience; the topic allows us to have an impact on society. However, if I was concerned that all my great ideas might come to fruition as mediocre representations of my platonic ideals, I am now terrified that they might fail alltogether.

I've got some serious reflection to do. Hopefully, it all works out well and doesn't slide down the slippery slope into mediocrity at a break-neck pace!

Till Thursday,
Neal