Professor Julie

It’s time to buy myself a jacket with elbow pads and Lennon glasses because I am teaching full time this week. What you may ask could I be teaching? Well what an interesting question. The answer is of course Power Point! Yes that’s right the computer program. Now Julie, you may ask, I didn’t know you knew that much about Power Point. Well funny you should ask… I’m not exactly sure why I am currently trying to explain Clip-Art and Slides to 40 or so students, I may have briefly mentioned that I knew how to use the program. This logically led to my teaching it all week. To be quite frank I agreed because I was under the impression I would only be talking for one class. Instead I am teaching both the morning and afternoon classes of 20 or so students for three hours each. I’m doing a shockingly good job for not really knowing anything about Power Point, or teaching, or the local language. But apparently knowing a little is going a long way or that is to say I am making it go a long way, stretching my ‘thin as a wire’ knowledge to last over the whole week. Let me briefly explain about the computer class. Have I at already mentioned that the main funder for my organization is Wal-Mart? Yes the evil chain of low priced crap is actually rather big in the fund raising department, at least here in Kenya, Where they have their factories. Anyway the section that Wal-Mart funds is the vocational training section including the dress-making and computer skills class, which at the same time as teaching life-skills and necessary job skills for free, we also educate the students on HIV etc. So now that you know why I am teaching a computer class I’ll go back to explaining how I’m doing. To all of you who have taught before I know you will understand what I mean when I tell you how very hard it is to teach the same lesion twice in one day. I am forever forgetting so crucial part of presentation making and the result is the class 2 doesn’t know how to do slide animation yet because I forgot to tell them and class 1 doesn’t know about pie-charts because I only remembered pie-charts later in the day. I mean really I’m not very good. Thank god computer training is like 70% your own teaching. I’m covering my 30% pretty well I guess. I’m really loving the power-trip though. You say something like ‘please change your fonts’ or “lets everybody open a new slide” and EVERYBODY DOES IT! I also really love writing on the board. It gives one a sense of peace and order, my handwriting magically becomes legible, my spelling immaculate. As I look out over the class people are taking notes! Of things that I’m writing! The feeling this gives me is a mixture. I’m happy to be finally contributing, but I also feel I am depriving them of a real education. But really how many ways can you teach Power Point. Today is the last day and I am passing out the final test, a test I made and typed and printed. It’s almost a test for me as well; if they pass that means I actually taught them how to use Power Point. If they do not then perhaps I should stick to the gas stations.