Student expectations can drive educators crazy. We expect them to come to class on time, prepared, and ready to pay attention. Some of them come to class and expect to use the time to text, facebook, surf the net, and others to learn. One of the things that I've found over the years is that it is hard work trying to please them all.

Instead, my strategy is to try to get students to think critically about the material. This will vary with some courses, as some courses require more presenting and teaching the materials, first. This would be applicable with the American Politics class. Since I am teaching in Canada, 99% of the students are coming to the thick textbook and information without any previous coursework. This class requires more history, lots of information, and then we can get to the concepts more so in the latter half of the term or with the assignments (papers and final exam).

The best thing about teaching American Politics in Canada: the students do not have a strong, personal investment in the material. They really do enjoy talking intellectually about the material and do not feel challenged personally when they are learning about the material.

One challenging thing with teaching the course, in the US the course is a survey level course. Here, it is a 300 level course. The majority of the textbooks on the market are geared for the survey audience, so at times, the book feels like it is appropriate for a high school audience. Yes, but perhaps an AP American Politics course. Nonetheless, I think that American is probably in my top four or five favourite courses to teach.