Seasonal Shifts: Better Fall Teaching Schedules

Here's a seasonal shift that I didn't expect:  on Monday, I got a text from the dean of the school where I have my full-time teaching job asking me to check my e-mail because she needed to think about schedule changes.

One of many reasons I love my dean:  she stressed that she hoped I was still not monitoring e-mail, as faculty are urged to do each summer, and she told me that the e-mail was not bad news.

Those are two reasons, aren't they?

Long story short:  some adjuncts aren't able to teach what they planned to teach this fall (hopefully because of delightful reasons--I do know that it's not because of declining enrollment, not school generated reasons--hurrah!), and my dean was rethinking some faculty assignments.

While I liked my original fall schedule well enough, I now have a much better schedule.  I have had Creative Writing added to my schedule, and in return, someone else will teach my earliest class that met MWF at 9.  Now I don't report to campus until 10 on MWF and at 10:50 on TT.  On MWF, I'm done by 1:50 and on TT, I'm done by 2:55.  In terms of time, I think it's my Spring schedule, which usually worked very well for me.

I'm happy to add Creative Writing to my schedule.  It's a class that I've always enjoyed teaching.  I've only taught Creative Writing to students whose primary reason for taking the class is that it sounded like a better/easier elective than others they might take.  There's been the occasional English major here and there, but mostly students taking an elective.

I've never taught in an MFA program or in other settings where people are hoping for fame and fortune with their creative writing.  It means that I can focus on writing as process, not as product.  I don't have to care that students write a publishable piece of work.

Even if I taught in an MFA program, I would still try to help students find what is unique to them as writers, not what the market wants.  That's one of my teaching approaches regardless of subject.  

If I changed the word "writers" to "humans," it might be one of my core approaches to teaching any subject--and my approach to life.  What makes us unique?  What interests, delights, and passions are most important to us?  How can we put ourselves in situations where we'll be able to delve deeply into those things?

One of the gifts of aging for me has been feeling more comfortable in my own skin:  my teaching skin, my writing skin, my Christian skin, my creative skin, my relationship skin.  I care much less about what others think.

At the same time, I feel lucky and grateful to be at a school that encourages us to teach in that old-fashioned, liberal arts way, and to be surrounded by others who are similarly minded--at school, at church, across my group of friends.