Summer work

Transcript

This summer it's been been far too hot to go outdoors in the daytime, so I've been preparing classes for Fall Semester. It may seem weird to be working during vacation, but actually I like it. During the school term I get really busy, so in summer it's nice to work at a leisurely pace. Also, I like to prepare early, while the experience of Spring Semester is still fresh in my memory.

As I prepare classes, I read students' evaluations of my Spring Semester courses. Fortunately, they seem to like my classes, but they're also pretty blunt about stuff they don't understand, and sometimes they give me new ideas to make activities more interesting and meaningful.

Textbooks, which I write myself, are already prepared, but each class has supplementary activities and resources. Each of my courses has a Web site, and Web sites need quite a bit of maintenance. Links to resources need to be updated, and there are always little improvements that can make materials more attractive and usable. My big lecture courses include weekly audio recordings, which I put on the Web as podcasts. Last week I wrote a few little computer programs to further automate the maintenance of my podcast Web sites. That should save a lot of time.

Of course, the most important part of class preparation is reading and thinking. I teach several different areas of communication, and I always feel a little behind. Every summer I do some reading and then think about what I really want students to learn.

I suppose a lot of people would say that my way of spending Summer Vacation is boring, but I'm satisfied. Of course, I get a little bored sometimes, but I think my summer preparation makes me a better teacher. That's good enough for me.