Classes begin...quickly!

Things have been picking up with work lately, so I have not had as much time to write. I have gone from teaching no classes to teaching two classes. What I feared most would happen. They gave me a course in which I know nothing about to teach. Despite my protests that I was completely unqualified to teach this course, I am now teaching “social work with groups” (People at UM understand how ridiculous this is for me to teach this class). The department gave me this class three weeks into the semester, only four days before my first class session! Now that I have been teaching it for a few days, I am quite happy with the course. I have 60+ sophomore students. About half of them are from Namibia, and the rest from southern Africa (except for South Africa). Some of the students will return to their home countries as some of the only trained social workers in their countries (e.g. people from Zambia, Nigeria, etc.). The students are extraordinarily respectful and polite to me, but don’t mind arguing/debating with each other. Since I am trying to teach the class in a way that is relevant to them, I get to focus on the parts of groups that I know best, so I think it is going fine. My other class is for seniors in community work, which is also fun. Students in both classes want to meet with me often before/after class, but they want to talk about the US elections, not class!!!