It's week 4 of the semester, and I'm already feeling a bit bogged down. I was at a faculty gathering this weekend, and I commented about things being busier this year. We broke into spontaneous laughter that can only come from a sense of shared experience. The school has continued to grow, but because of the budget, the faculty has not. The good news is that this year the school has decided to put a large investment in growing the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and so next year we will have a significantly larger faculty base. If I remember right (and I might not), I think we were supposed to increase from about 20 faculty to about 30 faculty next year, if all goes well. But that's next year. This year, we're all pushing hard to keep things running. (This was a tough decision from the President to invest in the core curriculum in this manner with the budget that we have. But I think it is grounded in a good vision for the long-term growth of the school as more than just a factory for teachers and nurses.)
Since I'm teaching all three of our "higher level" classes this semester, I'm seeing a lot of the same students often. There's a small cohort of students which I see 5 days a week, and with all of the office visits that they have, I probably see them 3-4 hours a day. It occurred to me that this is probably bad for the students, because they aren't getting enough variety in the perspectives that they encounter. I do things in a certain way, and emphasize certain things, but they need to see it done differently. I think I need to see it done differently, too. In some ways, my understanding of upper level math has become a bit stagnant because I haven't encountered anything new in a while.
Sadly, there's no solution to this problem for this year. Next year, we should have another math faculty for balance -- and my sanity. But that's next year. For now, we're just going to push forward because we don't have much of a choice on the matter.
On top of this, because of my work with the math remediation, I'm not being sent to workshops and that sort of thing all over the place. This Friday, there's a workshop in town. Next Wednesday, there's one in Chicago (and I'm flying out and back on the same day for that one -- if I were not already missing as many classes, I might have left the day before to be there in the morning, but I don't like missing so many classes), and then two weeks later there's one in Reno (another same day trip). This is good for me career-wise because I'm starting to develop a footprint in the conversation. But it also means that more and more is being expected of me.
(This also means I'm going to miss three days of class in the next four weeks, which I think is more than I've ever missed in a single semester, and more days than I missed all of last year! But I see my students so often, maybe they can use a break from me...)
Everything is going well with the remediation program. The part time instructors have bought into the system, which is one of the challenges that we were going to face. The grading is happening at a reasonable pace, which is another hurdle we've crossed. The last big hurdle for this semester (which we have yet to face) is rearranging the students at the end of the first 5-week module. I'm feeling confident that it will go well, but I can be blind-sided by circumstances very easily in this game, so I've got to be ready to come up with quick solutions to problems. If that goes well, then things should be pretty smooth up to the start of next semester, when everyone needs to figure out what class to enroll in.
On the topic of "problems"... church has gotten strange again. Less than 9 months after hiring the new senior pastor, it has been decided that we will not continue to have him as the senior pastor. In some sense there's mutuality, but in another sense it feels like he's taking the blame for things that he simply cannot control. I don't think it's reasonable to think that a church in the position that it was 9 months ago would be expected to suddenly be a healthy, vibrant church. The recovery process is slow, difficult work. The church didn't do much in the way of laying the ground work, which made it much more difficult for the new pastor to get started.
But there's a silver lining to the cloud, because the worship pastor has now taken on the role of discipleship pastor, and it seems like that is starting to move in the right direction. Daniel has gotten involved in that, and I've talked with him often enough about it to have a sense of the direction it's headed, and to feel good that it's a positive development. It's finally something that feels like long-term vision and planning, which moves us away from the event-driven church that we were. Or at least, that's the hope.
I was speaking with one of the elders last weekend, and was asked to fill out the eldership paperwork. This is also an encouraging development, as I've been a bit on the outside of the leadership of the church for a while. About a year ago, when I met with some of the elders to have a vision-type of discussion, it turned into another story about "putting out fires" and being lectured about how I worship and the fact that I wear a t-shirt to church.
(I still wear a t-shirt to church. I guess that might be labeled as open defiance, but I think it simply doesn't matter enough for me to change it. It's clean and presentable, and I'm not in violation of a larger cultural taboo -- though I suppose that some may still think of church as the place where you look and behave in a manner other than you normally do in order to ... ummmm... impress God? Impress other people? I don't really know why dressing up for church was such a big deal. Maybe the internet can be a reliable source of informat... never mind.)
Anyway, I don't know where church is going to be four to six months from now. We'll just have to wait and see (again).
There's a thunder storm rolling through right now. I tried to imagine some sort of interesting metaphor to make of it, but I've got nothing. So I guess it's just going to be a thunder storm, and nothing more.
And I want to try to make baklava again. It's been years since my last attempt, and I'm more competent in the kitchen now than I was back then.
