Most of my week was spent reviewing lessons/notes from last Fall and muttering to myself about how much work I had to do in order to update them. Being newer to the profession, I'm finding myself having an odd type of stability for the first time that allows me to consistently teach the same classes, and as a result I'm attempting to refine the material and make it better each time. This generally results in me sitting in my office perplexed over my own notes and realizing that there's a good 15 minute gap in a lecture that I'll be teaching the next day, so I better come up with something. Then I get distracted by the internet (damn you mental_floss!) and this happens:
For my writing classes this past Tuesday I had what I thought was a solid lesson plan. About twenty minutes in I realized there was no way I could fill the remainder of the class with what I had left. Being caught under prepared sucks, when an idea hit me: use the last five minutes of class to let them ask me "anything they want, anything at all" about their research paper. Naturally this didn't work, as most students are in a blissful state of procrastination and don't even know their topic, let alone a question to ask me. I did the semi-baffled professor bit ("Really? None of you have a question about this project? That's surprising."), but they held to their guns, doing the if-none-of-us-ask-a-question-he-might-let-us-leave routine.
After class wrapped I took out my notes and a red pen: NEXT TIME PLAN MORE FOR THIS DAY.
Highlight of the Week:
Since school started, the weather around here has been spectacular. On Wednesday I graded a big stack of papers while sitting out in the sunshine. I'm pretty sure there's a direct correlation to how much higher than average the temperature is and how much higher than average their grades turned out.
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