Let's not talk about how I was late to the start of the final I administered this morning [teaching]

[rebeccmeister]

I don't have the exact time but it wasn't later than 8:31 or 8:32 because I got all of the exams handed out by 8:35, and gave the students until 10:35, which only seems fair.

Because our administration decided to omit the usual Reading Day between the end of classes and start of finals, I decided to make the exam open-note. It will be interesting to grade it and observe the outcomes.

But I think I will wait until Monday to work on grading it. At this point I am just hoping to have enough personal time this afternoon to go to the hardware store. Before I can do that I need to clean the cricket colonies. Ordinarily I do that on Fridays but I had to spend yesterday finishing exam-writing and getting caught up on cleaning the cricket bins because I failed to get that project done earlier in the week.

A friend who is a NP just posted about how they have only been able to shift out of "go" mode as of about a week ago, and about realizing that the emotional process of unpacking everything is not going to happen on any kind of tidy timetable.

A different friend commented on an Inside Higher Ed Article about reclaiming summer break to note that we can't just take a couple of days off and expect to bounce back.

I keep thinking about that "It's a marathon, not a sprint" idea for how one must approach the path to tenure in academia. Okay, sure, but what if there's a sudden thunderstorm that pops up at mile 8, with thunder, lightning, and hail? You're going to have to keep moving to stay warm.

And when you work with living animals, the clock never stops.

Comments

[cmcmck]

And no one ever told animals about changing the clocks.

As an old shepherd in my home county said: 'the ol' cows'n'sheep want feeding whatever the 'ands on yer watch say!'

[twoeleven]

summer break
Since people started proposing year-round school for kids, I've wondered how teachers are supposed to cope with it. Beyond basic questions like time off, when are teachers supposed to prepare new lessons and keep up with the field?

I'll be good and not launch into a discussion of tenure and its discontents. Unless you really want one. :)

[rebeccmeister]

Ha, I'll pass for now on tenure and its many discontents.

I guess the theory with year-round school is that there will be more shorter breaks built in. Those *could* allow for continuing ed and lesson prep, but I'm not sure it results in better learning or life outcomes for anyone involved.

Related to that, the whole pandemic teaching sure shows how all of the nonsense about MOOCs was exactly that. The end outcome for me is that I'll strategically incorporate more instructional videos into my teaching, but I'm in no position to do any kind of effective "flipped classroom." I remain an advocate of in-person teaching and learning with small class sizes.

[twoeleven]

Yeah, that's a good point about mooks MOOCs. I viewed them as a replacement for individual study, trading off low-/no-cost for professional instruction. But I wouldn't have thought anybody would try to use them to replace an actual class. Silly me! :P