Where did my time go? I have had an interesting week after my meeting with Charlene on Wednesday. I think it depicts where I am with this project. I was hoping to have completed Module 3 by now and I am still working on the Syllabus! Thanksgiving is knocking at the door and everything I thought I knew at work is changing. Pressure is pushing me toward working as quickly as I can; but still I am falling behind. I have most of the course worked out; but still need information from Charlene, who is very busy, to push further. She wants only a discussion place and a place to post the lessons for the week (online modules). Most of what her class is about is the “Classroom.” This is her choice and she is free to make them, because she is far more aware of her students needs than I am,since I have not taught her class. I don’t necessarily agree with her on some issues (althought she is the expert); so I am building my own curriculum and finding my own LMS to put it in. Just another frustration!
I have found a new place for my own course called “Haiku.” I think it will work well with my ideas of how a hybrid I design would be taught with very limited classroom time. Most of my ideas have come from the experts in the field of online teaching. I spent one year taking 3 credits each quarter. However, I read far beyond what was being offered and explored every thing I could get my hands on. So, I am building my course, while I working on Charlene’s. Robin is less involved in what I am doing when it comes to content. Charlene is becoming more involved since it is her course design with some feedback from me. I have a great respect for her thinking.
While I am doing this work for Charlene and during this internship, I am expected to look for positions that are full-time. There are a few that I would consider. The question is, will they consider me? The more involved I get with the new position I am working in, in advising, the more I see that position as a type of teaching position. I intend to apply for it! What I am doing now is kind of wasting of my degrees (so whats new here). I like what I see in the advising field so far. I especially like the person that is the head of that area. She was a U.S. Army family member and we have that experience in common. I truly like her style so far. I know she is someone I would trust.
My dear friend of some almost 10 years came back from Maryland. We had some “girl time” on Saturday. She dropped out of her masters program and has too little money to stay in the matured person apartment she is living in. She wants to go live with her son, but is beginning to see that will not work out as well as she had hoped. Of course, I want her to stay in this area. But, her money is too tight for her liking, since they raised her rent, but her income is the same She is also paying back her student loans! She can no longer work. Her arthritis is getting too bad, among other things.
My oldest daughter graduated from college in October 2011, after some 12 years of going to school. She graduated with honors from Belmont Abbey College. She served in the U.S. Army during Desert Storm and had accumulated benefits. However, going to a private catholic college was expensive and now her student loans are due. She makes slightly above minimum wage at Lowe’s in North Carolina and doesn’t have the resources to pay them back. Her hours were cut to part-time due to the economy. Her son is living with her, he is 17. Unfortunately, he isn’t as motivated as his sister to get started on a career after high school. He has been looking for a job for two years and still hasn’t found one.
Both my daughter and I believe in college as a way to improve oneself and one’s chances for employment. That doesn’t seem to have worked for either of us in this economy (or before in my case, since I was over 45 when I hit the job market). I borrowed $15,000 dollars for my doctoral studies and now owe $55,000, which has been paid on since 1995. I still owe $55,000 or slightly over that amount. It will never be paid off. They can take it out of my social security checks when I stop paying on it. My oldest daughter is getting closer to 50 years old and I fear she will lose her home, if she doesn’t find a better paying job. There is no “bail out” for students…no matter the age.
The three videos below are worth the time it takes to watch them (about 15 minutes for all three). Students of all ages are being squeezed by the government, banks and collection agencies. I was told to take any job to pay off my debt by the collectors for the Department of Education. I did; but I found myself homeless more than once, when I did not have enough money to live on. Each time this happened to me, my confidence was shattered. It only takes a few nights sleeping in the cold and being homeless to get the picture. We are becoming a slave class to the government and bankers because we went to college or the university to better ourselves. This is the case whether we are 22-102 years of age. We are asked to pay these loans even when age discrimination blocks us from working, because we are older adults.
JOYSTECHTOOL 
I just read the current blog and the last one. Also watched all the videos–grim, grim, grim (except for the lms one). I was lucky to go to school in the late ‘60’s and early 70’s. Got to go to UCLA while it was one of the best education bargains in the US—top-notch school, ridiculously low tuition. Both I and my husband still ended up with student loan debt and spent some years paying it off. We didn’t work high-paying jobs—I tutored UCLA students, which paid squat but did actually lead into my first teaching job, and that led to another, and so on. In the meantime, we lived in the slums of Los Angeles, Mike drove cab, and we got along. We’d learned to survive on little—had eloped (now there’s an outdated term) and were NOT going to any of our parents for help. It was easier because we were young and a gutsy team, I guess. We got food stamps, unemployment when we could, ate little when we had to do that, drove a car with no brakes but the emergency one, had no car insurance—the whole poverty-stricken student thing. What we both had that made all the difference—parents who paid for undergraduate education at public universities. I remember Mom saying, “You’re going to UW—that’s what we can afford.” It was waay cheaper then, but I bet if we adjusted for inflation, the cost wouldn’t be all that much less than it is now.
My dad was a forester for Weyerhaeuser, and foresters, even though they had college degrees, made about as much money as loggers. Had no vacations, worked summers making sure the forests didn’t catch on fire, guided fire crews when they did. Mom came up in the Depression in the truest sense. Her dad had lost both arms and one eye working on electrical lines for Idaho Power. In those days they had no health insurance or disability benefits. He earned a little money going door to door with a suitcase full of “notions”—shoelaces, needles, little scissors. He could carry the suitcase with his hook—that’s like Capt Hook, you know. My mom KNOWS thrift. And she’d raised me to know it too, so Mike and I were able to live on very little income and chip away at that debt until it was gone.
It seems to me that the way we educate college students is no longer viable. Saddling students with that kind of debt is awful, and then a tanked economy and no jobs—not a good situation. I think that the Western Governors University model will have to take over because it’s cost-effective. Students can get a college education at a community college price. And when it does, college teaching will no longer produce a living income.
But enough about me. The next time I ask an instructor if he or she wants an intern to develop hybrid content, I’ll delve more deeply into what the instructor has in mind. But you’re doing exactly the right thing in response to the situation: continuing to build your skills and prepare for an online teaching job by developing your own site. Just give Charlene what she wants and move on.
Remember, this is a two-quarter internship and you’ve got another quarter to get your own site in shape. When Charlene is holding you up, work on your own site. Choose an open-source lms, and get started.
Onward!!
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WOW! Who knew!
Yes, college or university debt does some not so inspiring things to students these days and in the past. I whole heartedly support WGU, the non-profit online university in Washington state.
I did send you my link for the HAIKU LMS. Part of working on what Charlene is doing is tied into what I am producing. So first I work on the sections for Charlene’s course and then for mine. I am running two courses each Module, hers and mine.
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