The new hire asked me where she can see the descriptions of the courses she will teach. I strained my brain to the maximum capacity and realized they must be listed in the catalogue.
It never occured to me to read the descriptions of the courses I’ve been teaching. I teach what I feel like and don’t bother not only with descriptions but with the titles. The first semester in this job I was assigned a course titled “Learning a Second Language.” I taught it as “History of Ideas in Spain”. Students were mildly confused at first but it’s a great subject, so why not? I had brilliant reviews in that course.
This coming semester we’ll be teaching that poor old “Learning a Second Language” course as “Ukraine: Language and Culture”. Again, so what? I feel like doing it, so I’m going straight ahead.
For people who don’t know: it takes years and 13 levels of bureaucratic review (literally, 13 levels) to create a new course. And then you have to promise to teach it forever. I don’t want to teach anything forever. I get bored. So I teach what I want and pay no heed to what anybody expects.
People should be freer in what they do.
Clarissa's Blog 
I had a professor of solid state physics in university who took this approach. He worked on superconductors and taught us all about superconductivity. I took his class because I was doing research on organic semiconductors in an engineering department and wanted to understand the basics of how semiconductors work. But I think semiconductors were not exciting enough for this professor. That experience was disappointing for me and I still feel under-qualified to think competently about semiconductors despite having put in significant effort towards that goal in the 15+ years since then.
LikeLike
” I teach what I feel like and don’t bother not only with descriptions but with the titles”
At least you dont’ do the “I’m going to each what I always teach… no matter what the course happens to be called at the time” approach that we all know…
I’m pretty elastic with the content as well. Last spring my boss was scandalized that I hadn’t included their particular hobby horse while teaching a course they usually did. I touched on it here and there and that was, I think, enough. The students were engaged and interested throughout and I gave them a lot to think about that had never occurred to the before…. so… yay me!
LikeLike