Teaching at GHP

How will you know if you’re doing a good job? We use both operational criteria and classroom criteria in deciding whether to ask you to return to teach another summer. The operational criteria are what Dale’s wife (a personnel director) calls “conditions of employment,” i.e., if you don’t take care of these, you’re not doing your job (and will not be rehired).

Attention to time constraints

Start on time, finish on time. Majors start at 8:00 a.m and end at 12:30 p.m., unless your classroom is in Fine Arts, in which case your time is 8:15-12:45. (The time difference is to spread out the 800 people for lunch.) Also, dance majors in University Center are on the 8:00-12:30 schedule so that they can arrive at Palms Dining Center at a reasonable time.

Do not allow tardies, and do not ever let students go early. This is a matter of supervision. They cannot get back into their dorms until 12:30—the doors are locked until then—and if they come to lunch before then, then that fact will be noticed by either Dale or Marcie.

Students can not “get out of minors” to do work on major classes. Remember this as time becomes short and nerves become frayed.

Supervision of students

Know where they are! Do not allow the students any opportunity to get into trouble. Even if you have them doing independent work, circulate. If you’re in the library (or out on campus somewhere), arrange to meet everyone at a specified checkpoint before returning to class, leaving for break, or dismissing.

Prepare yourself a series of sticky notes to leave on the classroom door for when you’re not in there: computer lab, library, West Lawn, the creek, wherever we can find you if we need to.

Discipline is the same, yet very different, than a regular high school. It is the same in the behavior we expect of our students (although the atmosphere is quite a bit more relaxed), but it is different in that we have no administrative system to monitor that discipline. Nor do we want one: we interpret inappropriate behavior as an indication that the student doesn’t want to be a part of the GHP community. It is part of your job to make sure it doesn’t get to that point.

Make your expectations clear. Don’t tolerate behavior that impedes your class, but do your best not to draw lines in the sand.

Use of support areas

In addition to the sixteen majors at GHP, there are four support areas: computers, counseling, fitness, and media. You are expected to use each of them in your department. If your department chair hasn’t broached this with you already, ask.

We have one computer lab for student use. You can sign up for lab time for majors. Computers have their own minors, so lab time is more sparse in the afternoon. (The VSU library also has banks of computers that we use.)

Counseling, in addition to serving as a support area for your instruction, actually counsels. A lot. Look out for those unhappy/angry/withdrawn students the first few days, and offer to hook them up with a counselor if necessary.

Fitness offers fitness activities before breakfast and in the evenings which you are welcome to join. They’ll have a schedule posted in the dorm. They also offer team-building exercises for your majors (as well as other sessions you will find useful).

Media is there to guide your students through the resources they need to do the work you assign. During the first week, you are required to take your class to Odum Library at some point for orientation.  Work with the media specialist on that!

Response to requests for information

Better known as “paperwork.” There’s not a lot at GHP, and your department chair will handle most of it, but when we ask you for info, we need that info. If we have to come ask you for it, that’s a bad thing.

Engagement & participation

You, too, should be engaged and participating in GHP. Go to the concerts. Attend other departments’ public events. Teach a seminar. (Dale teaches a Sunday night series on historical social dance: the waltz, the polka, English country dance, the foxtrot, the tango.)

You should be having a good time: hang out in the dorm lobby with the nutcases there. Eat lunch with members of other departments. Give the math people a hard time.

It is also acceptable to sit quietly in your room and work on lessons.

Finally, maintain your sense of humor. As Mr. Bennet says in Pride & Prejudice, “For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors, and to laugh at them in our turn?” It has been our experience that someone without a sense of humor, particularly about themselves, will not succeed at GHP.

Random details

We require the students to wear their nametags at all times. You will do the same.

GHP is free to its participants. Do not ask students to spend money on anything in order to do the work you assign.

NEXT: Your evaluation: Instructional functions, part I