I'm not a CHL Instructor yet (waiting to be scheduled for the class) but I do have a couple decades of corporate training experience. Adjusting a class on the fly in response to student interests is a great thing as long as (1) you still cover the required material; and (2) the class all wants to shift in the same direction. In my experience, everyone (especially the instructor) enjoys it when students are engaged and actively learning. And that happens most when they are interested.george wrote:I am not an instructor, so take it for what it's worth. But I find the best instructors are prepared to allow the class to go in the direction it wants, rather than presenting a rigid presentation. It is a lot harder on the instructor, since they have to be prepared to go in any direction, but the class gets more out of it.
I typically build a little time into a course to allow jumping down an interesting rabbit hole or two so item 1 isn't a problem. As for number 2... every class is different. Sometimes they will be a bunch of peas in a pod, and other times they will want to go in completely opposite directions. In those cases I try to accommodate the differing interests by giving each of them a little attention, but there obviously isn't time to talk about everything that every student finds interesting. One challenge in these cases is to try to avoid allowing the most vocal students to direct the flow of the class for everyone.