Robert Hope

For the last four years, colleagues of mine at Cuesta College have been after me to begin teaching part-time as part of their “pool” of instructors. This “pool” is used to fill teaching vacancies for classes that the college either doesn’t have faculty for, or to help when faculty leave, that sort of thing; basically a temporary pool of teachers available to teach a class or two each semester.

I’ve been fighting the urge to take them up on it because I already have so much going on, with a full time job that I enjoy, an energetic and busy family, and, ironically enough, my own pursuit of my Bachelors Degree at Western Governors University…the pursuit of the same degree that I am now going to be teaching parts of to other students looking to achieve the same goal. The irony is not lost on me, but with my industry experience, and my current college credits giving me an “equivalency” to an Associates degree, I actually qualify to teach classes at Cuesta. Seems like my industry experience is finally earning me some value other than my continued employment!

So with that, since I enjoy teaching and mentoring and have always wanted to someday get into it, I’ve been approved as a CIS Pool Instructor. I won’t be teaching my first class until January at the earliest, and it may be the fall in 2013, but it’s definitely something that feels like it will be interesting career wise and a way to see if teaching is something I might actually like. Code Camps and the .NET User Group were always entertaining, and this seems like a logical extension of both of those endeavors, in addition to a logical career extension somewhere way down the line.

Just don’t call me “Professor Hope”!