Routines

The Spring 2022 semester began on Monday. I had planned to also incorporate a routine writing of this blog on Mondays, but was still preparing presentation slides and first week assignments on Monday morning and was waiting in my office for a student who is studying abroad this semester but still wanted to take my Teaching with Games Class. I am teaching five different courses at the university this semester, so I spent the last couple of weeks organizing my schedule to make sure I don't have five different assignments coming in at the same time. I spent last Saturday coordinating schedules. A screenshot of the fruit of my labor graces the top of this post.

My schedule this semester is both jammed together and spread all apart. I have at least one class every day. If you start the cycles at 2 pm, I have 5 classes on Monday and Tuesday, a 22 hour break, 2 classes on Wednesday, a 22 hour break, and five classes (high school classes are only 45 minutes) from Thursday at 2 to Friday noon.

At the university where I teach, the undergraduate students have five core courses, then an exam which, upon passing, allows them into the upper level courses. The core courses prepare them for the exam: English Grammar 1, English Grammar 2, Communication Skills, Writing Skills, Reading Skills, Foundations 1, Foundations 2, and Academic Study Skills. The Communication Skills Courses are all taught by two Americans, one British, and one Irish.  The Foundations Courses are primarily taught by the Hungarian instructors. The other courses are taught by a mix. As you can imagine, core courses will be offered at various time. In the Spring semester, Foundations 1 and Grammar 1 have only a couple of sections, but the other courses will have five or six. 

When I looked at my rosters for this semester, I felt affirmed as a teacher.  Yesterday in class, I felt even more flattered that there were so many familiar faces. Last semester, I had twelve students in my writing classes; six of them are in of of my Communicaton Skills class, four of those are also in my Academic Skills class. It is unusual for an 8 o'clock class to fill up, but mine did. In addition to the former writing students, I also have three students from last semesters' Grammar class in Communication Skills,  Academic Study Skills, or both.  

The classroom dynamics are quite fun this semester, especially for my Tuesday's classes. With each of the classes, I preview the course description (written by the department), course outcomes, and the assignments. I have also planned a warm up activity and a reflection at the end. One of my Communication Skills students said that the course description was scary; several others agreed. One said that it should have an "M" (for Mature Audiences) rating. 

The Academic Writing for Teachers class was equally honest and vulnerable. One of my colleagues suggested that on the first day we ask students about their former experiences in academic writing.  I started with that. I used the question as an opportunity to learn the names on my roll and ask each student to tell about their understanding of what the course would be like and their experiences in other advanced writing classes. Early in the discussion, one of the students implied that the writing class was a bit of a drudgery. By the time I got to the end of the list, more than one-fourth of the students had shared a similar attitude toward writing. Those at the end were bolder in asserting their dissatisfaction. In the reflection at the end of class, however, after they had seen the course description (which they did not label as scary) and the schedule of activities and assignments (yes, I wrote the homework assignments on the syllabus), they seemed to think the class will be useful for them. A couple already had some good ideas for a research project.  I did note in our reflective discussion that several of the students feel insecure about their skills in citing sources. I'll add that to the syllabus. 

I think I'll change my blogging routine to Thursdays.  I realize today is Wednesday. It has also been several weeks since my last posting, so I felt a bit of an urgency. Wednesday is the second busiest market day of the week (the first is Saturday) and the market generally winds down in the early afternoon. Thus, I'll add blogging to my Thursday routine until the end of the semester.