I am not exactly sure what I am doing and so I would be greatly appreciative of anyone who can direct me to any good teaching reasources or any details of successful lessons, units.

The photography course I inherited is rather disorganised. It starts off with pin hole cameras and a small section about photo history, then camera and darkroom basics, after that the current philosophy is to let the students go after that to build up a folio and deal with students individually. This is not very successful because I end up spending heaps of time with struggling students and successful photographers get left up to their own devices.

I hope, for your students' sake, that you have some _experience_ in photography from which you can draw in order to instruct them.

That being said, and I apologize for what may appear to be condescention, I think that a brief introduction to the photographic process and history of photography, followed by a thorough exploration of the basics would be in order - types of cameras (pinhole, field, SLR, rangefinder, point-n-shoot, digital), types of film, types of lenses (primes, zooms, wide-angle, normal, telephoto, etc. with explanation of FOV), exposure (the basic math of, shutter speed vs. aperture, f-stops, etc.), depth of field, and composition (rule of thirds, paying attention to the corners and edges, use of DOF, subject/background separation) should get you through a semester if you take your time and allow for plenty of experimentation.

Darkroom techniques - is this a necessary part of the course. In other words, is it practical in that they're going to be processing their own stock? If not, leave it out. It's better that they know how to get the images on film first. If they want/need to develop and print their own film, that would be (in my mind) a separate workshop or course.

Give them a thorough grounding in the basics and then send them off to shoot.

When introducing the equipment, try to have as many examples for them to see as possible. Show them what an SLR looks like, how the different lenses work, and find a unit with DOF preview if at all possible, so that they can see what closing down the aperture actually does.

Have prints, negs, and transparencies to pass around for demonstrating the various film types.

When teaching exposure, have the students shoot subjects using aperture and shutter bracketing to see the effects the changes have on the final image.

When teaching composition, small groups of 3-4 students actively critiquing each others' work is pretty effective. Start getting them to be able to understand and articulate WHY they like or don't like a particular image, and they'll be able to start applying that to their own work.

How often does this class meet per week, and for how long?