What happens when a student gets to be a teacher?

I just got an email from Hunter College saying that I will be able to teach up to 6 classes of Freshman Orientation in the Fall, and I am very excited (see photo of me and my cat Loki, who is also very  excited).  When I applied for the position, it was a bit of a pie-in-the-sky effort since a Master's degree is generally needed, and my teaching experience is limited, but here I am now, preparing my curriculum.

The best part of this is that there are very few standards for this class, so I will really have the opportunity to get creative and take advantage of my own experiences orienting myself and other students in college. Ideally, this should be a class about how to get the most out of college.
Here are the ideas that I'm considering:

- do a scavenger hunt to get to know the college and one another
- discuss web 2.0 tools and networking resources
- discuss learning and memory strategies
- run a class blog of Hunter College tips, tricks, and resources
- talk about impression formation and have everyone write down their first impressions in the beginning of the course to see how much our perceptions of people and environments change
- come up with a bunch of club ideas and go through whole planning and executing process
- have each student do a presentation on something he/she loves
- improve group work skills by having people do something cool in groups (don't know what yet)
- have students revise the curriculum with me

Anyone have suggestions on what you wish you would have been taught/would have experienced in your freshman year? I would LOVE to get some feedback and ideas. I'll even give you extra credit.

Do I sound like a teacher already?

Comments

[George]

I like the idea of getting students to give presentations on things they love. I think seeing other people get passionate about something goes a long way toward fueling one's own passion.

Perhaps you might want to include some strategies on learning more about your chosen field outside of the school's curriculum, rather than depending solely on classes for your education. I would've loved for someone to teach me that when I started college...

[Inna G.]

In retrospect, I would have loved for someone to tell me that it is absolutely imperative that I take as many very different classes as possible during my first two years (rather than only registering for what appeals to me the most). It was too late when I realized that other courses have much more relevance to my field than I suspected but that, sadly, due to outside context, I could not think my way to taking them when I still had the chance.

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