The Job

Ready for summer school--I mean, really ready! Over a week in advance. I have all my summer course materials prepared right down to the last point in the grade book. I'm teaching three sections, but I'm eager to stay on top of it, to be responsive and proactive. This will be my best summer school experience yet.

Next, I'm going to build a technical writing course online. It should be one of my better builds, for I've been working on it for a long while in my head, gathering resources, etc. I taught it at Kansas State University for five years, then created three (state approved) technical writing courses at Cowley. What I want for this one is more and more "reality" and less academia. I want to interview people in the field (maybe I'll make it an assignment). I used to edit texts for technical writing, and I've tried to keep up with what's new in them. I've found more scenarios, more real-world documents, and (thank goodness) a move to more multi-media. I still have yet to find one that embraces mobile communication well (text messages, twittering, etc) which I foresee as being very relevant to the Workplace of Tomorrow. At least I can coach them through principles that govern most all workplace communication, show/tell how it applies to all media, maybe (?) I have a good ethics package from my mentor at KSU that textbooks have never caught up with, and I look forward to implementing that, too.

For fall, I'm going to be teaching 24 credits again, but I'm going to continue seeking ways to be more efficient. It's not just the "work smart, not hard" maxim; it's also that teaching this many credits means over 100 students in composition, which in my classes means over 100,000 words! Ugh. I want to guide them to write better material in my own self interest--I have to read it all (and I do read every page of everything, right down to their journals).

I am also continuing to incorporate more multi-media, more LMS-support, less paper, and more grammar/punctuation/mechanics. I've gotten to a comfortable place with documentation, delivering it in a palatable way that gives the students a good toe-dip. I've been building up a good rhetoric-driven approach, been very audience-centered for some time. It can always improve.

Then the bastards keep changing books on us, and I have to find a way to build content that is not text/page-specific, for that causes me HOURS of recalibrating.

All-in-all, I am very content with where I'm at on-the-job. Now if only I earned enough money! I'm still looking into moonlighting for other schools, since my school cannot allow me to have more than 24 credit hours. *sigh*