Staying of going?!?!

Well, I spoke with the dean and determined the reason they were thinking about not renewing my contract. It seems that it was a situation outside of work that was blown out of proportion. This made me even madder, and I requested that he talk to the person and tell them the situation. I also requested that I get something in writing telling me what was wrong, the reason it was wrong, and what I had to do to make it right. I never did get this thing in writing, but the dean did speak with the person, and he said that he straightened everything out. So, apparently I am still going to be able to come back next semester!!

Today was also interesting in that during my teaching of the lowest level of Vets/engineers, I was being observed by the Regional Academic Quality Control person. During the observation, the Minister of Agriculture along with a television camera and newspaper cameras came to talk a little with the students. I thought I was going to go out of my mind with the circus my class had become. But it only lasted around 10 minutes, so I went on with my lesson as if nothing was wrong.

The results of the observation were quite positive. She told me that my love for teaching came out in my eyes, the patience and interaction with the students, and that I obviously taught from my heart! She said that it was like I was the right person in the right place at the right time, and that I should make a career out of teaching. It was quite the compliment! I still have a hard time with the idea of being a teacher, but it is nice to know that someone has seen that I can do it, and I can do it well.

My university students are still giving me grief though (not their fault, of course). Today they were supposed to pick out the topic sentence of a paragraph. This would seem like an easy thing, especially when they just filled in a passage that said that the first sentence of a paragraph is the topic sentence. The problem came with the passage that they were given to work with next: the topic sentence was NOT the first sentence of the paragraph!! Why would any bookmaker in their right mind do something like that? One should not tell the students one thing and then have the exercise be an exception! Especially when the students are first learning, and you don't tell them that the exceptions exist!

So, I had to spend 15 minutes trying to get them to listen to me explain that the topic sentence is NOT always the first sentence. I don't think they got the message though, as it was nearly time to go home. I guess we shall see when we come back tomorrow.