Easing into Spring Semester

We've been under wind warnings for days now, and it does sound thumpy-bumpy-windy outside.  I can't decide if it's better to have daylight, so I can determine how windy it really is, or better to be in the literal dark.  Happily, weather forecasters expect the wind to subside in an hour or two, and I don't have to drive down to Spartanburg until later this morning.

Yesterday I drove down to Spartanburg for a day of faculty development and meetings.  I didn't anticipate the drive down to be as harrowing as it felt:  lots of rain, not much light, wind, big trucks, and at one point, just after the South Carolina border, I stared into the milky distance and wondered if I was driving toward snow.

In short, it was a good day to be inside, sharing good teaching ideas.  Here's the best idea I got from yesterday:  we played trivia at lunch, with each table a team.  We had an envelope of trivia questions, so each table had different questions.  When we got one right, we got to go to the white board and take an index card.  Each index card had a number of points on it, but we didn't know which card had which points (the side with the point value was facing the board, so the board had a variety of colored note cards but nothing written on them that we could see until we pulled the card off the board)--and we discovered that some of the cards had negative points.

I'm always on the lookout for classroom activities that can lead to some small group interactions, can have people getting up and moving around, can be learning disguised as fun.  Right now, this activity seems like one that most obviously would be used as review for an exam, but maybe I can make it applicable in other ways.

I went to other workshops that gave me lots of information, like about Microsoft tech stuff products, but it's less clear to me how to use that in a class.  Why would I use Teams if we're all there in the classroom?  But I do wonder if there's something I should be thinking about.  I don't want to be the little old lady who has been teaching for ages and refuses to use technology more advanced than a pen.

Let me remind myself, though, of how much technology I do us and have embraced, like the Learning Management Systems that I've used.  I do like having paper handouts instead of PowerPoints, and yesterday reminded me of why:  we got to campus to find that anything needing internet access to function (and these days, that's most technology) wasn't operating.

The sun came out as I drove home, but an hour or two later, snow was falling.  It wasn't a surprise:  the morning weather called for the possibility of snow flurries or snow showers in the evening.  It does not appear to have mounted to much accumulation, unlike the snow that fell to the north of us in many states.

Today I'll head down to Spartanburg for the first day of classes:  my Tuesday/Thursday schedule is much lighter than my MWF schedule so it will be nice to ease gently back into a teaching schedule.  My seminary classes start two weeks from now--so my entry into my full schedule will be gentle.