Fall 2024 Semester ~ Weeks 6 & 7

I’ve had some ups and downs in weeks 6 & 7.

Week 6 was my busiest yet. I had collected first drafts to respond to and some second drafts were coming in that I needed to grade. My literature class wrote their first papers, and I was needing to do some planning for my paper 2’s in my composition classes.

Students are really pretty patient when I’m responding to papers, but I wanted to get them done since more were going to be coming in. I even enjoy the work most of the time, but it was definitely too much.

As I talked about in the post about weeks 4 and 5, my self-care slows down, my house gets messier, and I am not in the space to relax as much as I’d like.

When I realized that school was kicking my butt in week 6, I tried to think about how losing my health, being stressed, etc. is just not worth it. I had a full but relaxing weekend, and I knew I wanted week 7 to be better, so I did my best to change my attitude.

I can say that week 7 was better. I have gotten most of the papers from week 6 graded, so I have a grasp on how weeks when I take in papers will work. I got enough planned so that I felt ok going into the week, and I think most importantly, I enjoyed my classes.

I am continuing to get to know the students, but I know enough about them that I can tell how they’ll respond to me or other activities in class. For example, I know the 3 male athletes that come in late on Tuesdays and Thursdays will talk with the young women in the back of class—whether I am talking or not. I know the student with a severe disability will distract me from getting class set up if I let her. The talkative students in my literature class will bring up interesting points while the more passive students will stay quiet.

Since I know the class dynamics, I can make some changes. The most enjoyable change I made was when the 3 athletes come in late, the class takes a 3 minute talk break. We brainstorm silly questions like if you were a day of the week, what day would you be and why, and everyone talks before we move on. With that need taken care of, we move onto class. I am still working on not allowing the student who distracts me, well, distract me as I get ready for class. She can talk with classmates if she chooses. I’m working on creating activities that get everyone involved in the lit class. Things are going ok there—not perfectly, but ok.

I kind of can’t believe we are going into week 8 next week. Week 8 is midterm. One gift I get to give my students is that we don’t have a midterm. We simply go about our business writing and reading. Wherever we are in the process of a paper or a book, we continue on that path, which is a relief to students who have other tests to study for.

Something else that has struck me this week is I am finding more joy than I’d anticipated I’d have in some of my day-to-day work. I am responding to some personal narrative papers, and I love learning about the experiences my students have had. I’m learning about the struggles they’ve had and their resilience. It’s heartening.

I also threw together a survey for classes to help me plan the next paper. We talked about students’ answers, which was fun because I had never asked these questions quite like this before. We talked about where students get their news, what social media they are on and how they see themselves in terms of their identities. A student had mentioned that they are on Reddit, which I am not sure is social media in the way I think of it, but anyway . . . Since we were talking about news outlets, I asked, “Do any of you get your news on Reddit?” An appalled student cried, “Oh God, no” and everyone laughed. I’m glad they see the problem of getting news on Reddit (or only on Reddit), and it was great my honest question got such an emphatic response.

I still haven’t planned the week I am going to take off. I don’t feel like I have time and space to do that. I’m starting to worry that once I have things more planned out, I’m not going to want to take time off. I have a hard time leaving students to work on their own for a full week. And it’s hard to lose the continuity. I am still going to try though.

I have an equally busy week this upcoming week to the last 2 weeks. I have more papers and more planning. We’ll get there though. I’ve just finished what could be my last September teaching full time, so that’s progress.

Peace Out (and In),

Julie