Patty brought me to the airport at 9:00 Wednesday evening, Aug. 24, to catch the 11:30 flight to Chicago. I arrived there at 5:00 and took the 6:15 flight to Burlington, arriving there at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday morning. I picked up my rental car from Budget and drove to JSC where I spent the day working until about 4:30 p.m. I spent the night at the Smugglers Notch Inn, but not until after I did a six mile walk on the Jeffersonville Greenway and Rail Trail. The Rail Trail passes the covered bridge at Cambridge Junction, as well as the old train station which has now been converted into a playground and building for community functions.
I also walked by the elementary school which has lovely gardens still in bloom.
Johnson State College and Lyndon State College are in the process of being unified with just one president and top management for both schools, but trying to maintain their unique specialties and identities. One of the problems in the past has there has often been insufficient students to offer certain classes. This has happened to me repeatedly over the last ten years when trying to teach Federal Taxes at JSC - never enough students enrolled to make the class go. Under the new model, we now have tele-presence classrooms at both campuses so we can combine students from both into one class. So this semester, I have four students from LSC and eight from JSC to make the class run. The tele-presence classrooms are digitally connected so that everyone at JSC can see and hear everyone and everything happening in the LSC classroom, and vice versa. For the first two meetings on Friday and Saturday, I was in the classroom with the eight JSC students and the four LSC students participated digitally, including doing practice exercises I assigned in class. In our monthly meetings in September, I will be with the four students at LSC and the eight students at JSC will participate digitally. I and this class are the guinea pigs for this type of teaching - the program is so new, they were still putting the classrooms together when I started Friday afternoon.
Friday morning, I drove to LSC to check out the classroom there, then returned to JSC to teach class. All seemed to go well after the initial hiccups of getting the digital connection working. After class Friday evening, I went back to Smugglers Notch Inn and did another six mile walk on the Greenway and Rail Trail. Since I did not need to go back to Lyndon Saturday morning, I was able to go on another long walk, then taught class Saturday afternoon.
After class, I went to the Fledermaus Teahouse for dinner. It is run by my friends Renate and Glenn. I had a delightful dinner of salad and a slice of tomato tart with iced mint tea and for dessert, coffee and a torte made with fresh peaches and blackberries.
After dinner, I headed into Burlington because I had a 6:30 a.m. flight to bring me back to Portland, via Chicago and San Francisco - another long day of travel, leaving the hotel at 4:30 a.m. Vermont time and arriving home at 6:00 p.m. Oregon time, some 15 hours later. Such is life on the road.
I also walked by the elementary school which has lovely gardens still in bloom.
Johnson State College and Lyndon State College are in the process of being unified with just one president and top management for both schools, but trying to maintain their unique specialties and identities. One of the problems in the past has there has often been insufficient students to offer certain classes. This has happened to me repeatedly over the last ten years when trying to teach Federal Taxes at JSC - never enough students enrolled to make the class go. Under the new model, we now have tele-presence classrooms at both campuses so we can combine students from both into one class. So this semester, I have four students from LSC and eight from JSC to make the class run. The tele-presence classrooms are digitally connected so that everyone at JSC can see and hear everyone and everything happening in the LSC classroom, and vice versa. For the first two meetings on Friday and Saturday, I was in the classroom with the eight JSC students and the four LSC students participated digitally, including doing practice exercises I assigned in class. In our monthly meetings in September, I will be with the four students at LSC and the eight students at JSC will participate digitally. I and this class are the guinea pigs for this type of teaching - the program is so new, they were still putting the classrooms together when I started Friday afternoon.
Friday morning, I drove to LSC to check out the classroom there, then returned to JSC to teach class. All seemed to go well after the initial hiccups of getting the digital connection working. After class Friday evening, I went back to Smugglers Notch Inn and did another six mile walk on the Greenway and Rail Trail. Since I did not need to go back to Lyndon Saturday morning, I was able to go on another long walk, then taught class Saturday afternoon.
After class, I went to the Fledermaus Teahouse for dinner. It is run by my friends Renate and Glenn. I had a delightful dinner of salad and a slice of tomato tart with iced mint tea and for dessert, coffee and a torte made with fresh peaches and blackberries.
After dinner, I headed into Burlington because I had a 6:30 a.m. flight to bring me back to Portland, via Chicago and San Francisco - another long day of travel, leaving the hotel at 4:30 a.m. Vermont time and arriving home at 6:00 p.m. Oregon time, some 15 hours later. Such is life on the road.
No comments:
Post a Comment