Quick Update

Another week has come and gone. It's amazing how quickly time is flying by now that we're back in school! It was wonderful to have a long weekend, but it really made the week feel short. In general, that's okay, but it was a strange week as far as my teaching went. Not only did we not have class on Monday, but my classes are participating in a research study for a PhD candidate, so Wednesday's class was spent taking a pre-test for that research. That left only one day of real teaching during the whole week. In a way, it was probably good for my students to have a little break as far as the demands for my class go. They really are in a major phase of adjustment in their lives, especially the international students. So, I don't feel too bad that they had an easy week in my class, but they are supposed to be drafting the first couple of pages of their first essay for Monday, and I'm afraid I didn't do enough to prepare them (again, especially the international students). Really, Friday's class was jam-packed. I was definitely trying to cover too much material, because I wanted to prep them for writing (going over thesis statements, overall essay structure, and paragraph structure) AND prep them for the full-class workshops we'll do next week. I also hoped to give them time to start drafting thesis statements so I could go around and offer individual help. Well, I had to rush through the workshop instructions, so we'll have to take some extra time on Monday for that, and my second class didn't get any time to draft (the first only got about 5 minutes--not long enough). Well, I'll just have to see what I can do next week!

Other than teaching, I've been doing a lot of reading for 2 of my 3 classes. Unfortunately, it's all been pretty tough this week! Difficult concepts, long articles. I'm hoping things will become clearer with more time and repetition.

Yesterday, I also got to go out to lunch with my 1st year EL/L "mentee" (courtesy of the English Department). EL/L has a "mentoring program," which basically consists of a free lunch with each other at the beginning of the fall semester. I got paired with a very nice student, and she and I seem to have a lot in common. So, we had a nice time.