Holidays And The Syllabus

Well, I think I have my syllabi together for next semester. I will have to go through them closely but the nuts and bolts were taken care of this weekend. This semester is a little more challenging than previous semesters.

I will be teaching five days a week this semester. Also, while I have often lucked out in the past, this year the Jewish Holidays that I take off for fall during the week. There are three sessions I will be missing for my Monday, Wednesday, Friday class. For my Tuesday, Thursday class, there are also three sessions.

I actually thought the MWF class would be the tougher of the two, but things just seemed to work out well for that class. The few days I will be missing, I will be able to either give them a take home assignment, or an in-class assignment. Since the college is big on making sure that writing requirements are met, they should not have a problem with what I am doing.

For my TR class, I have also made arrangements. Again, the writing assignments they are encouraging us to give to the students will help. Still, with this class I had to switch things around. I did not want two days of informative speeches followed by a break followed by one more day of informative speeches followed by another break and then on last day of speeches. I was able to make some adjustments, it just was not so easy.

Certainly I appreciate the college’s flexibility in working with me and not giving me a hard time about taking these days off. I realize legally they can’t, but they certainly can make things difficult or uncomfortable. They have been great in making things go as smoothly as possible. Still, taking three classes off in a four week span can certainly make it difficult for me.

Still, I enjoy teaching and I enjoy celebrating the Holidays, so in the end, it is all worth it.