I dread not have a schedule. I definitely don't want to have to deal with students everyday, because I get sick of them. However, I function much better with some kind of schedule to keep. If i have somewhere to be, for even just a few hours, I'm happy. It's that simple. When I'm left to my own devices, I feel a little lost. There are too many things for me to do, and I get overwhelmed. I'm working on fixing that. I need to learn to just relax.
Anyway, I'm back to school in a few weeks. As in college school. I'll be spending the week of July 12 with the North East Writing Institute. I'm sure I'll be exhausted by the time those 5 days are over, so I should rest up now. Two weeks after that ends (Aug 2) I'll be in my second week-long class: Fiction Writing Seminar. When that's over, I have like 2 weeks and school starts again. When I think of it like that, there's not much summer. But, on a day-to-day it's a lot of free time that I'm somehow filling quickly.
In September I start an actual, semester-long class at UMO. I'll be taking young adult lit, and I have my work cut out for me. I emailed the professor for a book list so that I can get ahead, but she doesn't have it done yet. However, I have to read 8-10 self-select YAL books, so I've begun that. I read them anyway, so it's definitely not a chore. But, I do have to complete responses for each book I read. I get to chose whatever genre I want for the responses, so I'm going to try out projects I assign in class. I did my first today on A Wrinkle in Time. I just finished (2 hours after I started), and I'm pretty happy. I like that I'm doing things my students do. It reminds me, and shows me, how difficult some of my tasks are. It also reminds and shows me that sometimes, my tasks aren't hard enough, or they are just right and the kids blow them off. It's neat to be a student again. Here's the brochure I designed. What grade do you think it deserves?
Natalie, I love that you are doing your own projects and tieing to your masters class. I used to try to do all the things I assigned my students, but definitely let it slip. I am also totally jealous of your Y.A.L. class :) Remember taking Denise's?
ReplyDeleteI still used the books we read in Denise's class ... And some of the presentations people did. I LOVED that class; definitely in the top 5 of my college career! Hey - what's your summer like? I'd love to meet up for lunch or something and chat with you!
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