Yesterday, I got in the car at 9:15 in the morning and drove to Spartanburg Methodist College, just across the border in South Carolina. It was an easy drive, just over an hour, no traffic/construction delays. I circled the campus and decided to go ahead and park in the empty Faculty/Staff parking spaces. I was surprised to find empty spaces at 10:15. I checked to make sure that my parking sticker was Faculty/Staff.
I wasn't able to get the key to my office, but I was able to use the office for the day. I could remember my system log-in info, and the office computer recognized it. Hurrah! I fiddled with the computer for a very long time, trying to brighten the monitor, all to no avail. In all the places where a brightness slider should have been, there was none. Happily, I am not required to spend much time in my office, so I won't be doing much work on that computer.
It's a lovely office, especially for an adjunct. I'll share it with an adjunct who is on campus on a MWF schedule. I sat in it and thought about past offices, past schools, where people reacted as if I was crazy for wanting bookcases--and this office has two empty ones, plus a metal cabinet. There's an L-shaped desk with several file sized drawers, and there's another piece of furniture that looks like it could hold lateral files.
I was happy that the copy machine was working, and I was able to make copies of my syllabi easily. I met some fellow faculty--everyone was welcoming. Soon it was time to go to my classes, which went well.
I have taught in a classroom since 2020, but it was a much smaller group of students: 6 Vet Tech students taking my Speech class was the largest in person class since the pandemic. Yesterday was very different, with one class of 25 students and one class of 13. If we had to, we could space out in the room with 13, but we probably couldn't spread out enough to stop disease transmission. My brain went to that thought several times yesterday, which was not something I'd have thought about in 2019.
Yesterday was also different, in that I was in a room of traditional students in a traditional-ish college. Most of yesterday's students looked to be 21 or younger, most just out of high school (based on their first day writings). It was a good mix in terms of race and gender. By traditional-ish college, I mean that this school has a mix of 4 year degrees, plus Associate's degrees, and the degrees are along the liberal arts and business spectrums, including health and criminal justice in the mix. In some ways, like the courses offered and the career plans of students, it's similar to the big schools in the south Florida area that began as community colleges: Broward College and Miami Dade College. But the campus is much more beautiful, with several buildings of student housing and lots of sports fields and structures--much more similar to other small colleges than community colleges.
I didn't linger after my last class was over. I had seen the light darkening, and I thought my best bet was to get on the road home. Indeed, as I drove and listened to the NPR stations, weather alerts chimed. I was glad that the dark skies and storms didn't catch up with me.
I had an easy drive home, and we relaxed on the deck, enjoying summer weather and waiting to see if the storms had followed me home. I had a virtual spiritual direction appointment in the evening, my one directee. I get as much from our sessions as she does; we do lectio divina, so it's not like the spiritual direction that some people do, which is a bit close to psychotherapy for me.
I spent some time this morning, looking through old files, trying to see what I had created, back when I was creating lots of curriculum. I finally had a moment of insight, where I realized it would be easier to create fresh documents than recycle old ones, if I could find them. I'm not using a textbook, so I feel a bit of pressure to create some content for the course shell. Maybe I'll resist that for now. Maybe instead of writing my own, I'll post links to material that's already out there; I'm thinking especially about grammar refresher kinds of lessons.
I'm really excited about the possibility of bringing in all the literature that interests me, even as I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the directions I could go. But what a joy it is to have these choices.
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