Good Lord, the days are a blur. The academic calendar had us starting the week before Labor Day, followed by having that next Monday off for a holiday. I teach two MW sections, meaning we’re in week three and we’ve only met three times. On top of this, students can still add classes until tomorrow, which means in both classes I’ve had three or four people who have added, shown up for one class, and then dropped. This makes it very difficult considering I’m trying to match names with faces, collect work, take attendance, and have students sign up to lead discussion. It takes a ton of time to figure out the logistics. Not. Fun.

Oh, and the textbook for one course still isn’t in, even though I ordered it in early August. So much for that schedule in the syllabus then…

Happily, the classes are going well—at least from my perspective. There seems to be a core of engaged students in both who are willing to participate in class discussion, which is great. I remember reading a blog written by a bitter student at USC who complained about her professors farming out the class time to the students while they graded papers. Her point was that she didn’t pay for college to listen to her classmates ramble through shoddy presentations, and I think it’s a valid one.

I also outsource class time to students, but that’s because I’d rather have students talk about what’s interesting them rather than what interests me. I actually finding myself adjusting my daily lesson plans so I’m not talking so much. In some ways, straight lecturing is much easier (and perhaps lazier?) approach to teaching. I could blab about craft in my Creative Writing class until the cows come home, but I probably wouldn’t want to listen to it!

I’m also finding a lot of parallels between writing and teaching. With my CW class, I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do each class but it’s challenging to make that actually work when it’s go-time. For my class on college research, I started out having a very rough idea of what I might do from day to day, but that’s turned out to be easier to manage than I imagined.

The classes I’m enrolled in are still in the process of taking shape. More on those when I have a clearer idea of what I’ll be doing, whenever I have time to blog about it…

The game between the Packers and Bears? Fantastic. I’m surprised at the number of fans on both sides of the border who focused on the negatives. The Bears were a worthy opponent and both teams had plenty of opportunities to win it. I thought both teams looked tough as hell, and I can’t imagine too many teams are going to be comfortable playing either one, though injuries took their toll on the Bears. The rematch should be titanic!

Current Mood: Busy busy |