The "Tele-Teaching" Poster Child or...

... according to my husband's department chair, "everything that is wrong with [that] university."

Apparently, I've become the "poster-child" for tele-teaching at my former institution. My husband heard that from a colleague and then from his department chair, who stopped by his office to share this story a few weeks ago.

Higher-up administrators such as provosts and others had a meeting and K's department chair and colleague attended. The provost was talking about how the project is going extremely well at the university and then cheerfully mentioned that there was this language class that was a great success.

K's department chair immediately commented (probably not to the speaker, but to those around him): "I know who teaches that class, and she's not even ours. She can be a successful instructor for this program, but the university can't even hire her!" and after sharing this with K, he added "This is an example of everything that is wrong with this university."

Well, I couldn't agree more!!!

Yesterday was my very last "extreme tele-teaching" class and I'm relieved that that this is over as well. At the end of our last class I got some feedback from the students and it was all positive, surprisingly to me, since I didn't think it was that great. It did go pretty well, though, my only complaint was that I felt they didn't talk to me much (they recognized that as true). Maybe the administrators are right, it was a good class. Next semester it'll be a regular tele-teaching gig, I'll be in the room with the students and a group from the other university will join us. I'm very relieved I'm done for now (except for two separate finals -- I insisted in driving to the other university to finally meet the students in person and they'll pay for my trip and lodging!).

OK, two posts back to back, that's a little too much for me, so I'll go now!