My ideal work environment is one in which I have the freedom, time, and resources to teach students innovatively. Anybody can give students a canned exercise in which a student uses kriging to model a mineral deposit, but how many instructors get to be on the receiving end of a phone call when the student finds coal based on the results of their model?
My approach to GIS education is to make the experience exciting and grounded. Using local data allows us to connect what the students see on their monitors with the real world. Adding a field component sends an important message to students that their decisions have consequences for people and the environment. It allows students to use GIS and GPS field computers together, so that they obtain concrete knowledge of the use of a system for data collection and analysis.
Is such an approach easy? No. It takes creativity, planning, time, adequate resources, equipment, experience, safety procedures, and a lot of worrying to make sure that exercises such as this go off smoothly, but for the students, the result is a program that they love and recommend to their friends and colleagues.