On one hand, it's really hard to believe it's Friday again already. On the other hand, I'm glad to have made it to another weekend. Really, the weekend is just time to get more work done around the house and work ahead on my reading for the week, but it's nice to be at home.
I feel like my 102 classes went really well this week (Wednesday and Friday). On Wednesday, I based the lesson on President Obama's inaugural address. About half of them had watched it and I recorded about 5 minutes of excerpts from the evening news that we watched in class. I gave them a transcript of the address and we analyzed the speech rhetorically (that's our focus for this unit). They did a nice job discussing it and seemed pretty involved. Today we discussed three speeches given by three different presidents of the UA to incoming freshman classes. The discussion activity I did went over really well and they seemed to have good insights on the texts. So, overall, I feel more confident in the classroom, my planning is going a little easier, and I think my students are pretty good. It'll be fun to get to know them more as the semester goes along.
Another thing I wanted to mention is that Arizona is in a major budget crisis which might have some serious consequences for education. Last week, the state legislature proposed cuts of up to 40% to the higher education budget. The university president has been encouraging people "to speak up now and to speak loudly." There have been protests on the mall on campus and in meetings with the regents. Another protest is planned in Phoenix next week. Obviously, if these cuts happen (and it seems likely that some cuts will, even if they're not as dramatic as 40%), there will be major changes at the university, including layoffs and elimination of some departments. If you're interested in more information about all this, I'd recommend reading the Sally Gradstudent Blog (linked on the right). I haven't been able to attend the protests yet, but I'll be making some time this weekend to write some letters. We're hoping to be able to ride out this situation without major changes in our programs, but it's hard to know what will happen.
On a brighter note, I've made all the arrangements to attend the TESOL convention in Denver, and I'm really looking forward to that.
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