My classroom situation

For the most part in my classes, I have been given plenty of resources to be successful. For my classes, the students have numerous resources that are available to them. The students have access to an online textbook, online lecture videos, study plans which tracks each individual student's progress, and different ways to get help on problems from their homework. For individual problems, the students have examples, a help me solve this feature, short videos, access to the section of the textbook, and direct e-mail with the instructor for help. As for instructor resources, there are not as many as for the students. All instructors are given access to a faculty guide. The faculty guide gives the instructors an idea of how they should structure the class. For some topics, instructors have submitted ideas or activities that can be used for the class. Mostly, the instructors are left to find things that work best for them. It gives you the freedom to teach things in ways that you want, but you have little ideas to be given. Also the instructors are not given much guidance. As a new instructor, you are not given a mentor instructor. You may be given a name of instructor who can help you, but it is left up to you to determine most things on your own. Most instructors do not get to interact with other instructors on a day to day basis. I occasionally see other instructors throughout the day, but do not get to have much interaction. We generally get to meet twice a quarter, once at the beginning of the quarter and once in the middle of the quarter. These meetings are recommended, but not required therefore not all of the faculty show up to these meetings. The biggest challenge I have in my classroom is with the students. Most of my students are motivated which is a big difference from when I worked with secondary students. My biggest problem is the level of my students. There is a big difference in the levels of my students. Some of my students need just a refresher in mathematics since they have not taken it in years, but some of my students struggle with the basic concepts of adding and subtracting whole numbers. With having these great differences, sometimes it is hard to keep the higher level students engaged while not losing the lower level students to confusion.