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Okay, talk of the education and teaching stuff leads to this -
TMO University is now open - what do you teach and why?
My degree was in Arcaheology (which I fucking hated - bunch of mature students wanking over dig sites and academics arguing that archaeology is marxist, that we shouldn't dig up anything until we have the technology to ensure that we don't damage anything while trying to get to the pay-dirt finds - it was bollocks) and Ancient History (which was fantastic, make-it-up, if you can justify a point of view then you can suggest anything - it was the best) - and now, naturally, work in film - so Ancient History/Classics and FIlm Making are mine....
and yours?
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I taught a course called Introduction to London at an adult education college for four years and for five or six years I taught/bluffed/walked a variety of programmes of London walks. I'm currently putting together a proposal to get an FE college to pay me to teach a 'course' in Psychogeography. It's quite delicate, I have to present it as a serious discipline rather than just me walking around spouting seditious, pseudo-occult bullshit and encouraging my students to trespass and vandalise London's landmarks. Fingers crossed.
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BM - I've just submitted a proposal to teach a 'short film making' evening course, well, 2 courses really, one theory one practical - I got a reply about it the other day, saying that it is going to the programme director and that they'll contact me soon. How easy is it to wing it? I have no experience and have been trying to conect the loose ideas for classes that I've been having (discussion about genre using Aliens to show that a film can cross many genre's - ie, war film, sci-fi, horror, chick-flick and so on - script writing talking about the importance of writing characters over situations - and so on). I have crap hand writing and speak really quietly/mumble so I'm getting a bit nervous now.
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Winging it depends a lot on the college. I got my first London Walks gig on the strength of an interview and my first degree in Urban Design, all the other work developed out of that. A lot of programme/course directors have quotas to meet, X number of courses per year, Y number of new courses, Z% of new students. If they've already met their quota taking up your proposal for a course won't be a priority, if they're desperate (no offense and no reflection on your talents or ability) they'll snap up anything they can get their hands on. In my second or third job a course director tried to talk me into teaching a course in Anthropology. I had to look Anthropology up just to tell him what precisely it was about the subject that I didn't know the first thing about. He was still very persistent.
Presentation is quite important. Don't worry about handwriting, you can make overheads or Powerpoint presentations, right? I wrote hardly anything in class. I have shit handwriting, too. I write in upper case with a dirty great marker on a board or a flipchart. But keep that shit to a minimum, that's what handouts are for.
You do need to speak up. Rehearse a couple of spiels about something you can really get carried away over, that way if you go off-script or get asked questions you can still speak with enthusiasm and authority, you're on firmer ground. Practice on family, friends, pets or action figures.
The main thing is being able to communicate with genuine (or excellently faked) authority about your subject. If you're teaching something you do for a living, like an aspect of film-making, think about your presentation less as a lecture and more as if you were simply explaining to a friend what you did at work that day, how all the shit works, what it's for and what you like and dislike about it.
quote:I have no experience and have been trying to conect the loose ideas for classes that I've been having (discussion about genre using Aliens to show that a film can cross many genre's - ie, war film, sci-fi, horror, chick-flick and so on - script writing talking about the importance of writing characters over situations - and so on).
A couple of my courses at university had to do with scriptwriting - one for radio, one for film - and tended to focus as much on writing exercises as discussion. Things like everyone chucking a character, a time, a place, a dilemma etc into a central pot, and everyone picking one of each and having to string together a short drama based on each. For the most part they were wuite worthwhile, especially when they dovetailed into discussions on the craft of storytelling - you know stuff like how tyhe drama springs from what characters want and why they can't have it.
As for what I could teach at a TMO University... my degree was in English Literature and much as I enjoyed it and felt I got alot out of it, for the most part that would just involve me teaching people on here to suck eggs. I could probably make a decent fist of a couple of vocational courses in writing for business, that kind of thing. Like a beginner's course in marketing and business journalism or something equally as soul-less and depressing.
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The only thing I'm capable of doing to any sort of standard is what I do for a job, which is web developing. Sometimes, when I'm trying to get my head round something new, I give myself a little lesson in my head; I explain how it works to myself. Which I find quite helpful.
Trouble is, I'm really rubbish at teaching other people. But if we were stranded on a desert island for many years, and it happened to have a fully functional IT suite, then I could probably get the message across in the end. Although I imagine we'd have to start completely from scratch several times over.
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I'd quite like to tutor a course in Sonics, but much in the same way Braniac destroy things. Experiments would include recreating the famous scene from Back To The Future when Marty blows himself backwards into some cardboard boxes with the largest and sweetest stack possible. I'd arm the students with nappies and bombard them with brown noise to see who can hold on for the longest. There'd be a tutorial on how to create a sound source from simple electronics. We'd build a 10 foot recorder powered by a wind tunnel and the class would have to play Frere Jacques by plugging the holes with their asses and would be fired off onto some crash-mats. It would be like it's a knockout, but vaguely music-geeky.
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I bunked from University after just six months to work for a stockbroking firm where I later passed the SFA Securities and Futures & Options Representative exams, so - in theory - I could teach trading methods and stock research techniques. If required.
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