Progress!

An e-mail appeared in my box today from the fellow who seems to hold the key to my online employment. He apologized for keeping me waiting so long and told me I had been cleared to the next stage. The next step is to take online instructor training and the next class starts on 1-5. I filled out the application which I will fax to him early tomorrow. He'll sign it and send it off and I should be hearing from the training people real soon. This is starting to become interesting.

"Thirty years from now big university campuses will be relics"
– Peter Drucker, March 10, 1997

I'm ready to be a part of the future of education.

A glimmer of encouragement

I was advised by a local HR manager to call the HR department at Grays Harbor College. I talked to a very helpful lady who promised to contact the fellow who was supposed to keep me posted on my application. She called me later. He was very apologetic and assured her that he would be contacting me soon about employment. I'm sure he's extremely busy. I'll do my best to be patient and wait for him to contact me.

Do I really want this?

I've devoted so much energy in the last 3 years toward getting a teaching position that I haven't really looked at the big picture. Do I really want to give up 2 hours of every evening communicating with my students? Do I really want to hold their hands via e-mail and give them encouragement and answer the same questions about the same test question over and over? Do I really want to get to the end of the quarter and breathe a sigh of relief that it's finally over only to start all over again in a few weeks? YES, of course I do. A lot of people who do this work are just putting in their time until retirement. Some of them that I know teach up to 20 hours of online classes per quarter. I'd like to find out what it's like to teach one class.

I taught a class today to a group at work. There were about 25 of them and I gave a lecture on foot disorders. It was fun and well received. I took along a latex foot that sticks out of a khaki pant leg and looks so real that it makes people jump. It was a great visual aid. These are people who are on their feet all day so the subject was really interesting to them and was followed by a flurry of questions. It was a real joy to do some teaching again.

I want to teach online

I'm Scott Lee and I'm 58. I worked as a podiatrist for 26 years in Yakima, Washington and sold my practice in 2001. Since then, I've worked at our local hospital. I've done a lot of teaching over the years, not only with my patients and staff but also to community groups, professional seminars, and local medical students. One of my greatest joys is teaching Medical Terminology, a subject that is increasingly being offered in an online format throughout the country. Several people at our hospital teach online classes at our local community college in addition to working full time during the day. I would like to join their ranks and have offered my services…for the last 2 years. Nothing has resulted from my patient efforts. In July, I applied to Grays Harbor College on the west side of our state. When I had sent in the last of my many application materials, I was asssured that I would be contacted in October about the next step I would be taking. I was also told that I was a prime candidate for a teaching position and the staff would be placing me into an online training course so that I could eventually be hired. It is now the middle of November and my efforts to contact the staff have been disappointing.

Have any of you readers ever had a similar experience? I would appreciate hearing from you. Distance education, by its very nature, can link a teacher and students from anywhere on the globe. It is, actually, the future of higher ed and is increasing exponentially. Somewhere out there is a college that needs a Medical Terminology instructor who will be happy to embrace the curriculum and facilitate the course for their students. I will keep my readers posted on my efforts to get myself hired.

I welcome your comments, ideas, and encouragement.