Overlooked Scheduling

The first time it looked like I was going to be teaching three classes in one semester, I was so careful in planning the syllabi and making everything jive. I wanted to avoid having a week where I would have to listen to students in all of my classes give speeches. It takes some time to critique them and I wanted to space them out. I successfully did that and was happy. Unfortunately, one of those three classes did not have the necessary enrollment and my efforts did not matter. I can handle students in two of the classes speaking on the same day.

The second time, the story was much the same. I got to the point where I did not really expect all three classes to go. It varied as to which class did not go, but one of them did not. So, at some point I stopped worrying about how the speeches fell.

This semester, I have three classes, all going, for the first time. This semester, I did not stop to plan out and make sure that students from all three classes were not giving speeches in the same week. It may have worked out that way, but I am not sure.

As it stands right now, I have five speeches from my MWF class that have to be critiqued. I have 11 icebreakers from my class of high school seniors that have to be critiqued. There were supposed to be 14, but three students were absent. And, I have one speech from my other Tuesday-Thursday class that has to be critiqued- a makeup icebreaker. So, while this was not the fault of the syllabus, last week was a week where I heard speeches from students in each of my classes and have to critique them. I hope that does not happen again.

I take a little bit of comfort in the fact that there is an hour break between my two Tuesday-Thursday classes, so if need be, I can use that time for critiquing the icebreakers of the high-schoolers. I would rather use that time for something else, but if I need it, it is there.