Joe, my boss at Tiny Community College, called this afternoon and left a message on my machine.
He’s caught in the throes of trying to figure out next term’s schedule, and he warned me earlier this week, when he gave me the schedule for the two classes that he wanted me to take, that nothing’s settled yet. I mentioned before that it takes him a while to work up to full speed, and that I always assume the worst when he wants to speak to me. I’m still not sure why I do it, but I can tell you for sure that I still do – the first few seconds of his voice message went like this:
“Hi, Chili, it’s Joe. I need you to call me back, I’ve got some problems with your schedule.”
“Damn!” I thought, “there goes at least one of my classes, if not both of them…” He saved me, though, with his next sentence:
“I might need you to take on at least one other class. Call me back when you get this. Bye”
I’m now the instructor or record (at least, tentatively) for three composition courses; two standard classes that meet face-to-face twice a week (Joe calls them “chalk and talks”) and one hybrid course that meets once a week in a classroom and does the rest of the credit hours online.
I was hoping to not have any online courses. I’m not entirely comfortable with online delivery and I find that it’s harder to keep students focused when they don’t have a set time to meet and attend to the work for a class. Still, having experience teaching online courses can only be a good thing, given the current trend in that direction in higher education. I’m working on some ideas for an online class – one that may use blogging as a tool for learning to write – and I’m open to any suggestions you may have.
I’m going to have a LOT of reading to do next term!
