Summer Work

This summer was a first: I worked out of the home during my summer vacation and stay-at-home-mom time. I agreed to teach a summer course, which after enrollment numbers turned into teaching ten out of twenty-four days of the summer course. I'm relieved I didn't have the whole thing. This was a nice taste of what teaching a summer course.

During the school year, I try to stay committed to not bringing work home. I occasionally resign myself to grading or doing minor planning, but for the most part, I don't touch anything except my work email from home. This means I work through my free periods and my lunch. Well, for the summer course, there weren't any free periods. The course we offered for the summer is a new course in the technology department for the upcoming school year. No one had ever taught it in our school before. Therefore, nothing had been prepped for it at all.  My department chair and I did a brief schedule and went through the first chapter together. Fortunately, we finally had a textbook with a teacher's edition, CD of materials, and an online H&R Block program so we didn't have to make up our own materials in entirety.

However, I relied on TV a lot for Andrew and Lucy during this time. Lucy doesn't really watch it, but she appreciates the background noise and the occasional song on Sprout or PBS Kids. While on, Andrew doesn't necessarily sit there for hours because he's three and needs to be active, but he does sit and watch the shows he's particularly interested in before running around with trucks or trains on the floor of the family room or even his room during the shows he's less interested in. I kept the doors to my room and the bathroom closed so they could run from room to room in the house so they wouldn't get bored too often. Then, I plugged away at rereading my chapters, updating the provided PowerPoint slides for the chapters (we chose a lecture and note-taking strategy for this summer, which I hope I'm motivated to modify for the school year for a more discussion-based course), writing quizzes, modifying projects, checking my email, and after the course got started, grading, grading, and more grading.

Overall, I probably had to spend two to three days (throughout the entire day) prepping for my two weeks and spent numerous other hours grading. This is amidst changing diapers, getting meals or snacks, monitoring them outside, reading a book or two or three, and helping start playing with Duplos or trains. One day, it involved cleaning up a chair full of Andrew's pee, but that's another blog post for another day.

All in all, it worked out and I am thankful for my mother-in-law, Jim, and parents who gave of their time to help.