Motivations for SLCs

A rather rude saying about educators (that even I have said on occasion when I was feeling particularly angry with a professor . . . not at Olin of course) is “those who can’t do, teach.” To avoid a manifestation of this saying during an SLC, it’s important to analyze your motivations for actually pursuing an SLC - if not for the betterment of your potential students’ learning experience but also for your own personal enrichment. Based on our experiences, we see several common reasons as for why students want to run SLCs:

A desire to learn more about the topic at hand, or further solidify concepts.
Seeing a need in the Olin curriculum for the topic and believing students would greatly benefit from the course.
Having a passion for education and pedagogy.
Securing AHS credit.
Getting professional and personal development.
Improving presentation skills.
Liking the idea of managing and supporting people.
Building strong relationships with faculty advisors and other student-teachers.
Because it’s fun!

Our intent is not to dissuade you from pursuing an SLC, but instead encourage you to reevaluate before you’re two months in and about to have a breakdown in front of your students. So, looking at the previous bullet points . . .

You want a better conceptual understanding of a new topic (and get credit for it)? Consider an independent study.
Helpful for students? Consider a group independent study.
Like education and pedagogy (presumably in conjunction with the topic you want to teach)? Consider creating a curriculum and making teaching materials.
Need AHS credit? (Don’t we know it.) Consider literally all the other easier ways of getting AHS credit.
You want to gain professional experience and presentation skills? Well, welcome to Olin.
Want to be a PO? Wait until SCOPE or ADE . . .
The opportunity to build strong relationships with faculty advisors is irreplaceable unfortunately.
And finally, there are loads of other ways to have fun.z

We also recognize that part of your desire to teach an SLC will come down to actually having students take the course (wild). And, if very few students express interest, you might decide to waste your time on something else. Unfortunately, gauging student interest is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Most students won’t want to express full commitment until they see something partially-fleshed out, but you probably won’t want to spend the time fleshing out something that students won’t take. Since we anticipate you doing an independent study the semester prior (more about this in the Timeline section), we would advise you to work on the SLC as if it’s running, and if literally zero students express interest, package it up for the semester and figure out how you are going to get your AHS credit the next semester.