Another semester has ended. Almost…just waiting on a few students to submit final assignments. But the classes have ended. All of us in the teaching profession know this experience. A sudden quiet. There is nothing new to prepare for tomorrow. There are (much) fewer emails in the inbox. It is tempting to just not go into the office, and to take off quickly. Some colleagues do so–we all have our ways. Mine is always to journal about what went right and what could be better. It is best to do when the experiences are still fresh, and though I journal throughout the semester, the end of the term is a special time to take a broad view of what has transpired.
I have been keeping a journal of my teaching for many years, but I especially doubled-down on it in the past five years, and I have found it to be an invaluable resource, not just for improving my teaching, but for examining my own mindset over the years. Actually, my journaling is a wild mess of thoughts, written in different colors, with comments on the sides, all to indicate my thinking from different years and semesters. It is a complex polylogue of different many of me over time. But within the mess, I continue to find gems of unexpected value, and so I take time after each semester to write.
This semester was really the busiest ever. I do not like the cult of “busy,” and I am eager to overcome the sense of always being “busy,” but I cannot find other words to describe how this semester felt. With three new class preparations (two of which I only learned about within a month of the semester starting), and 11 classes in total, it became completely overwhelming. (11 classes would be like 5 1/2 classes if you are in the American system). As one might expect, when so overwhelmed, it is easy to expect that teaching will suffer. On the whole, I am happy that I did not cut corners with the classes. I felt like I gave all of the courses 100%. That is not to say that the courses themselves were perfect–I found many things to write about in my journal, many improvements that I can and intend to make next time. But I was satisfied with my effort and the feedback I was giving students and the general content and focus in each of the classes. I really enjoyed two of the new couses–one an introduction to second language acquisition, and the other an introduction to applied linguistics. Many courses I have been teaching for a while are a lot of fun to teach, but my innovations are more about how I teach the class rather than the content itself. With the second language acquisition course and the applied linguistics course, it was content that I am very familiar with, but having an opportunity to discuss it with the academically gifted students who were taking the courses was so enjoyable.
Despite feeling good overall about the semester, I admit that teaching so much left me little time and energy for writing and for completing the vocabulary app I have been working on. After a week of family events next week (it is the start of summer vacation here), I am excited to get to to the book and app during this time off from teaching. Since I have a conference at the end of the month in which I will talk about the vocabulary app, I want to first spend my time making sure I have smooth demostration prepared. Then, I want to submit my book proposal by mid-September, so I hope to get into a writing rhythm each day. It is so exciting to have time again to focus on those projects! But not yet. Today is a day to appreciate that the semester is over. The hallways are quiet. And it’s time to go home.
