Week 3

It's amazing to think that the third week of school is already halfway over. Things have kind of been a blur since the semester began. I haven't really posted all that much about teaching here lately, so here's some updates.

I'm teaching two sections of the same writing class I taught in the fall and two speaking/listening classes for graduate students. One of those is the graduate version of the speaking/listening class I taught in the fall and the other is totally new to me. On one hand, I'm really enjoying teaching the writing class again. It's nice to have a better grasp on the big picture. However, since I have a few students repeating the course, I have to make the major assignments different, and I'm trying to make sure they don't find the day-to-day too boring. The other big downside is that my classes are huge. The undergrad ESL classes are supposed to be capped at 15 students; last semester, my biggest writing class was only 12 (which was a really nice number). This time, I have one class of 15 and another of 18. My colleague who teaches the third section of this class has 18, too. It seems like a small difference, but in the classroom (particularly the ones we use), it feels significant. So, I'm having to re-think a lot of things just to accomodate/manage the bigger class.

In contrast, my intermediate speaking class (the one I taught last semester, too) has only 4 students. So I have the opposite problems. So far, they've been excellent with attendance, which helps. I'm hoping the extra attention will help the students to learn more, but it's much harder to create energy. The last class is normal--9 students (since it's graduate level, it's capped at 10). I think that class will become more and more fun to teach, once we get through the introductory part.

I hope it doesn't sound too much like I'm complaining...there have certainly been some frustrating moments so far, but I still love what I do. I also have some fantastic students, and I've been interacting more with some of the other teachers. Lots of challenges, but I also have support.

So, what's going on besides school? Well, we're still checking out churches. I'm so ready to find a church home, and I hope we do very soon. We've been getting a little bit of snow here and there, but no major problems on the road this week. Also, I've been invited to join a little book club, which I'm pretty excited about. We're still choosing our book, but I think it should be a fun once we get going. I think that covers it...