School Begins. Kind of.

In celebration of first days of school,
here is my 4th grade school photo. I'm
pretty much rocking the same hair style today

School is back in session! Well, mostly. The beginning of the semester is today, and although it is a Wednesday, it will be running a Monday schedule. I don't have any of my own classes on Mondays. What I do have on Mondays is the Bailey Scholars Program, of which I am a "co-convener." Joining the Bailey Scholars Program happened somewhat un-planned last spring. I was asking a friend of mine about a research fellowship we was involved in because it was something I might want to look into during my third year. As we were chatting, she mentioned Bailey, and connected me with the program. I wasn't completely sure what it was, but already knew the director and it just kind of turned out with me thinking that being a part of this might be interesting. So, here I am in the Bailey community.

In short, Bailey Scholars are undergraduate students who apply to be part of a student lead learning community. They go through core courses and also complementary courses and when finished, they receive a minor in Connected Learning. Here is more info from the website. I am working with a staff person at Bailey to co-convene these undergraduates, and nudge them. We call it "convening" because the students are the ones responsible for deciding what we will learn, how we will learn it, and how we will assess our learning. You might be thinking, "that sounds crazy!" And yep, I hear it can get pretty messy. But I'm usually pretty comfortable with ambiguity and mess so I'm excited to see how this whole thing unfolds. At the end I may not be comfortable with ambiguity and mess, at least with undergrads, who knows.

So off I go! School has started, and I will be joining 13 undergraduates today as we embark on this co-learning experience for the fall semester. Next Wednesday, my regularly scheduled classes begin...