next semester's schedule

I got an email with next term's class schedule. It feels weird to look at the chart and to realize that I'll be teaching only halfway through it. We appear to be starting classes on March 10 (placement interviews on the 5th and 6th); I'll have a 21-hour work week, with Fridays practically empty except for a lunchtime pronunciation workshop. The last time I did such a workshop, things went fairly well, but the attrition rate was pretty ugly: we went from a high of about eighteen people (twenty-one on the list, but only eighteen showed up) to an end-of-term total of five. As I've griped before: that's how it goes with non-credit courses.

I'll have only three preps: Level 2 English (the same integrated course I'm teaching now), a class currently titled "Listening and Debate" (I have no idea what this is and have emailed my supervisor to find out what's up), and the aforementioned Fridays-only pronunciation clinic. Coming in for an hour on Friday hardly seems worth it, but what the hey-- it's practically a three-day weekend, a rarity during our longer spring and fall terms.

I have to think about how I'm going to pass the torch to my successor. When Week 7 of the next term rolls around, the students will be in for a surprise. But for now, the main concern is turning in course syllabi to my supervisor, who says she wants them by this weekend (or as her email says, "until this weekend").

Total digression: did you know that "24" won't be airing its seventh season until 2009? What a bastard that Jack Bauer is.


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