I gave my first Freedom Seat: Women in Aviation seminar today for Laramie County Community College's Life Enrichment series, which is held over 3 weekends. I'm only giving two classes, one this Saturday (finished!) and one next Saturday.
Enrollment ended on Feb 17 and we were informed how many students were in our classes. When I learned I only had 3 students in tis class (5 in next week's class) I was initially both disappointed and relieved. Disappointed because I'd hoped to have 20 or 30 students! Relieved because this was my first time ever giving a class and I knew I would be less intimidated to talk in front of 3 people then 20.
I worked diligently on my presentation, proofing each slide, but that didn't stop me from having one slide where the animation didn't work properly. Fortunately it was a negligible slide, and no one knew that there should have been 5 images on there instead of just one.
And I had too much information for the time slot. That's because about halfway through one of my students asked if I'd ever been in a hot air balloon and we spent about 10 minutes talking about what it was like to be in a hot air balloon. I should have said, "I'll answer that question at the end of class" but I was worried that I wouldn't have *enough* material so I let it go.
Then at the end of class, I still needed about 15 minutes but they had to go to lunch (which they had paid for as part of this series of classes, so they weren't about to miss it, not the least because there was a speaker who talked about the history of women's underwear - i.e. what these poor women had to wear in Colonial days - corsets that they were stuck into when very young, and like the neck rings of that tribe in Africa, where they stretch the women's neck as a sign of beauty, but then they have to wear those neck rings for the rest of their lives, once a *girl* started wearing a corset she always had to do so, because her body was never given the opportunity to gain the strength it needed to support itself without a corset.
So I learned a lot about how to time manage a class, and how to have lots of extra, discrete powerpoint presentations so if you finish your segment and there's still 30 minutes to go, you've got another presentation you can start on!
Actually I knew that going in, but I hadn't had the time to prepare extra material, because of personal matters impinging on my time.
In any event, next Saturday I have an afternoon class, and then I am committed to giving three classes for LCCC in the spring - one of which I'll have to create new, Women Drivers.
I'd like to scan in the little class description list that's got my name down in black0and-white, but unfortunately my scanner seems to have given up the ghost. When I get it fixed or get a new scanner I'll add in images to this blog and at my website, Freedom Seat Seminars.
