This semester I’m teaching a class with about seventy students. It happens to be about a subject I love — computer graphics. We are having a glorious time. Every week we get to explore different aspects of an endlessly fascinating subject, and the students get a chance to dive in and make stuff — original stuff.
This evening I had a conversation with some administrators from our department. They were surprised at the large size of my class, and they were even more surprised that I’m having so much fun. “Some of our faculty,” one administrator said, “believe that twenty students in their class are already too many.”
I heard this, and on some level I even processed it. But frankly, I couldn’t take it in on an emotional level. When you are preaching your own personal religion, talking about the most glorious and beautiful thing you know to people who are ready to go there with you, why in the world would you not welcome in one more fellow traveler?
I mean, isn’t this sort of thing exactly why we are here on this earth in the first place?
It’s awesome to see a professor in a technical field that’s actually in to teaching (particularly undergrads). So many of them treat students as a nuisance in the way of their research, best handed over to TAs.
+1! Your students are very lucky!
(Hmm…teacher/preacher…I guess the difference is subtle 🙂
Yes, you are right Sharon, there is a difference. It made for a dramatic metaphor, but it is good to keep in mind that it is only a metaphor.