Hi everyone,
It's a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, and I have a bad case of the "Sunday Scaries" for the start of the academic year even though I still have a few weeks! I'll pop back in to give information about the new session, which will start mid-September, but in the meantime here's a post for anyone who needs to set some goals or share some news. In absence of any funny or sensible words, here's Bear, catching up on his rest.
I have one doing that (my avatar), one sprawled out, and one wandering around hoping dinner will be early (she has an hour to wait).
ReplyDeleteI accidentally fed Shoutypants three times one day whilst I was on annual leave (got up, fed cat, went back to bed to read without getting properly dressed, fell asleep, woke up mid morning a bit blurry and Shoutypants was VERY clear he hadn't been fed yet, so I fed him, THEN realised what I just did... and he's been trying to make that the New Normal for nearly three weeks now...
DeleteIn Catland, once is not an exception, it's precedent.
DeleteYesterday was my birthday (pretty much a non-event) but I'm just plugging away at edits. And also hoping to get one syllabus up today, and the second tomorrow. And then forget about teaching until next Monday.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday (late)
DeleteHappy birthday week!
DeleteSo, I have three weeks until Welcome Week and four weeks until teaching starts, but I am already having the Sunday Scaries and time feels very short. So this week (a short week as we have a bank holiday today) I need to feed back on a LOT of text for Junior PhD Student (who is due to submit at the start of welcome week), make some triage lists for teaching preparation and actually do some teaching blocks, and write for at least one hour on two different research projects (we have a paper deadline also in Welcome Week...). Sigh!
ReplyDeleteI'm setting up the first of my Canvas course sites today, and it makes the fact that my first class meets next Tuesday very real.
DeleteScary! But we can do it, right?
DeleteYes, though one of the things I don't think people outside teaching understand is how much MORE work it is with setting up your LMS site than it used to be when you just wrote a syllabus!
DeleteA good canvas site is worth the effort but I have to keep reminding myself of that very firmly at the start of each semester as I slog through all the 5-or-six step fiddly processes and wait for the progress bar...
DeleteI start teaching tomorrow without a completed syllabus, or anything on the ViLe site. I have . . . maybe two hours tomorrow in which I can work on these things, before my first class meets. Nobody needs a syllabus before the second day of class, do they?
ReplyDeleteWhat I did was give an overview of the class and solicit student input: how many points for the semester, how do you think we should handle this and that, what do you think is fair as a policy on electronic devices? They seemed very happy to be asked! Next time I'll present a "draft" syllabus and workshop it with them. IOW, how to spin lack of preparation so I look like The Cool Prof.
DeleteI am in awe. I might try some of this when I get back to teaching. It wouldn't work with first-years and sadly we have constraints on what we can/can do e.g. assessment is standardised across types of module. But I would love to agree things like policy on electronic devices and especially rules around participation. I have heard of people implementing rules such as 'no one speaks for a second time until everyone has spoken once' but never sure if that would just create a wall of silence. Keep us posted on how this goes!
DeleteAmazing! I think that I'm too much of a control freak to do this...but maybe not so much anymore? I'm definitely getting more, shall we say, languid about class prep as I go along.
DeleteA lot of what they said was stuff I'd do anyway: big surprise, what is important to students in a syllabus is a clear schedule of assignments and due dates, points for assignments, grading expectations, not the land acknowledgement and the welcome of first-generation students! I've just posted a syllabus draft to the ViLE site and we can look again at the electronics and generative AI policies tomorrow. I'm trying to get buy-in on these, as I do not want to spend my time policing the class if they're willing to police themselves. And since these are upper-division, many of them "returning" students, they are more mature than the average/expected college student. This is one of the things I love about LRU: I really do work with adults most of the time (and in contrast, the young ones are so cute!).
DeleteAwesome! I look forward to seeing how it develops!
DeleteWe don't have the freedom to do much of that, as classroom/module policy is set at University, Faculty or School level and the various student voice organisations are adamant that consistency across modules is essential (because all workplaces will be the same and learning to adapt to different expectations is pointless? Sigh). But there are some areas where we can be flexible - I often give my higher level students the opportunity to determine what sources we read or what specific case studies we use for the later part of the semester - I've always struggled to pick from the many possible topics or themes, so allowing some student choice helps me out too!
Happy belated birthday to Susan! The joys of being on research leave next year is that I don't have to have Sunday scaries in relation to teaching. Sending sympathy to all who do, and a reminder that you just need to be one step ahead of the students, not a whole term ahead of them...
ReplyDeleteI have to finish reading one PhD thesis this week and write a report (it's for a Spanish university, so the system is different - examiners read and suggest changes in advance), and also keep plugging away at research for the second chapter I have to write so it doesn't drag into next year.
Happy birthday, Susan!
ReplyDeleteI start teaching on Tuesday, and the syllabus is done, I think, but I haven't actually prepped anything (and it's all new, sigh). I have a few things that I *need* to do, chiefly to prepare for a roundtable presentation on the 15th, but also some administrative things--write the fall newsletter and try to find a time when both grad students and faculty can meet (which will be impossible, let's get real). And I Simply Do Not Want To Do These Things!
OMG so much admin stuff I'm putting off! Got to get the book ms. done before the deluge!
DeleteOh the power of the Do Not Want To!
Delete