work

This was a busy week on the work front. Our annual summer group training with all the CRE's kicked off this week, and finishes up next week. There are a bunch of new people this year, and the ones I got to talk to all seem alright. The training was for the most part painful, but that is to be expected.

There is a push throughout the field towards an increase in accountability, and being able to justify how we spend money and the purpose of the activities we put on. This is annoying, but at the same time I find it pretty interesting. I sat through a full day training on "learning outcomes" where they had us look at some of the things we do, and really define what we want students to learn or be able to do. It is all apparently pretty standard stuff for curriculum writing, but it is a lot more formal than my usual mental process I go through when creating a program or lecture. Obviously when I have to teach something to my RAs, or give some sort of training, I think about the material, I try to order it in a logical manner, and I try to get my point across as effectively as possible, and it doesn't seem that different, but for me it is MUCH different than sitting down first and setting a goal for the program, specifying outcomes, and defining how the outcomes will be measured.

Now I have a feeling I am going to have to go back through a lot of the programs we do an reverse engineer them into the format we are being asked to use. I roll my eyes at the prospect, but at the same time I think it will be fun (at least a first) to try any find creative ways of shoving my square activities and lessons into the round holes of this template rather than change the ways I have done things in the past. I don't think that is what they quite had in mind... but I feel pretty good about a lot of the programs I have done, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to get them to fit.