Passionate Learners are Natural Teachers
Passionate learners are natural teachers. A disproportionate number of Swatties make a career of academia. While we're young and spry, we should teach each other the funky stuff we love to talk about anyway.For the last semester and a half, I have conducted Internet seminars. I write to Mary Hasbrouck in the Computer Center and schedule time in the Dupont computer labs. I post some signs, spread the word; as many as twenty show up to unleash their personal publishing potential.I find my peers an invaluable resource. Everything I know about potential space travel and blaxploitation films I learned sitting around Sharples.
Arranging, advertising, teaching together take no more than five hours. For that time, I get to share what I love with interested folk; since it's optional, people only show up if they care to learn. By sharing what I love, I extend the range of folks on campus I can discuss it with.
Teaching puts me in touch with my own strengths and weaknesses in the field of online design. Each time I teach a class, someone asks me a question that forces me to reconsider the way I approach building web pages.
People come to Swarthmore because they love to learn. Give them the opportunity to study something funky, and they will repay you with enthusiasm and intellectual challenge.
We are in touch with culture - students know what's hip and happening. Teach rap history. I'd show up, and I could name ten other people that would come in a breath.
Pontificate on the politics of Melrose Place. It would be the perfect cap to another night of Fox's bitchfest.
Instead of waiting for Swarthmore to hire someone to teach the culinary arts, badger a cook to host some home ec.
Recycle material from your classes; teaching a room full of know-nothings will invigorate your own sense of the subject. I'd love to learn a little about Buddhist temple art, if I could do it in two hours and I didn't have to do any homework.
Think Swarthmore costs $26k just for the faculty? The students are where it's at.
Send a message to space@swarthmore.edu and tell them what classroom or facilities you'd like to use, when. It's all here for our education.
By Wednesday the week before, send a message to lkozek1@swarthmore.edu and she'll post your teach-in' to the student activities mailing.
Or heck, invite friends to your room with some hand drawn flyers. If you love it, and you hold it, they will come.
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