Sometimes I can be such a teacher...

Today I sat in Historia de Mexico (my least favorite class) and thought the whole time how terrible it was from a teacher's viewpoint.

First, the class is made up of mostly freshman who are all around the age of 18. I know that 3 years is not a huge amount of time, but the difference between an 18 year old and a 21 year old is enormous. Second, it makes me feel really strange to think that back in the United States I could be teaching students this age in my internship. Weird.

Today we started group presentations about the indigenous tribes in the various regions of Mexico (ugh). Today's presentation was about the tribes in the Gulf of Mexico, but I still don't know too much about them because the presentation was less than informative. They didn't go into any detail and couldn't answer intelligently any of the questions they were asked. I felt bad for them because it's embarassing to be put on the spot like that, but I would expect that kind of presentation from a high school freshman, not a university student.

Afterwards we had extra class time (because the presentation was so short) so the professor went to the library to get a movie about the Olmecas (an indigenous group) to show for the rest of class. It was terrible and the first five minutes (no lie) was footage of the moon with tribal music playing in the background.

There are so many things didactically wrong with this that I'm cringing just thinking about it. From a student's perspective there was nothing really wrong with the class because no participation (or thinking) was necessary. The teacher in me, however, shudders to witness such a terrible waste of educational time.