(Re)Working It

My classes begin in less than a week -- well, actually it looks like it might be only one class, but that's okay -- and until tonight I hadn't prepared anything. I'd been trying, but this is the first time I've had to write a syllabus online, in a new tool that allegedly makes it easier. It didn't. There were a bunch of little boxes I had to fit content into and not enough categories to express everything I wanted to. So after I finished my eight-hour scoring shift, I decided to put the basics into the online tool and supplement with separate documents in the class management tool. I think it was an okay solution; I'll find out when I see whether the dean accepts or rejects my syllabus. It's been a very long time since I've had to have a syllabus approved.

I'm getting excited about going back to teaching! The administrative parts have always been my least favorite, but I love being in the classroom. It's been nearly two years since I taught in a formal class setting. I did a course schedule, but it was really just a framework of due dates. I need to develop a list of readings, and honestly I'll be just one step ahead of the students with those. I think I used the current text once before, but if so it was at least twelve years ago. This weekend I'll delve a little deeper into the textbook (beyond the one chapter I've read so far) and print out a few useful documents for the first day. Once I get my groove on, I'm fine, but the first day I like to have props, papers to hand out to go over with the students. I've been stressing about getting all my prep done, but now I'm in the home stretch -- and I was able to pull enough together from former documents that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel -- or the syllabus.