I almost can't believe that it's the start of week 5. This semester seems to have taken off quickly.
I have a small number of students this semester. I have less than 30 distinct students total, which is really unusual (that's usually what I have with just one class). Three of these students require a bit of special attention because they are currently teachers and can't attend class at its scheduled time. So I'm meeting with them outside of class once a week for 30-60 minutes to go over the stuff that they need extra help with. They can watch the classroom lectures online (I record them), but it's just not the same because they can't stop me and ask questions right away.
On the other hand, I'm overseeing 10 sections of remedial math, which have somewhere around 275 total students. That's more students than I've ever had. But it's also very different from being in the classroom. I have a student worker who puts together the packets of tests for the students, and I send out about an email a week to the instructors about various things that happen throughout the class. This first part will likely be more difficult than future weeks because we had students adding and dropping for the first few weeks (which is most of the class since the modules are 5 weeks long).
I've been working on an article that was submitted that discusses this program. The article was actually accepted pending revisions, but some of the things that the reviewers wanted wouldn't fit in the space that was allowed for the article. I discussed this with the editor, and she pointed out that they have unlimited space for an appendix because it would be online only. However, even though there is a print version of the journal, they are primarily an online journal, so it wouldn't really harm anything. But this does mean that I've got to rearrange the pieces a bit and write more. I'm hoping to get this done by the end of the month. There's not a particularly stringent deadline on this, but I can't let it linger for too long.
I'm also in the middle of textbook writing again. I have about 1.5 textbooks to write, but I don't know when that will be due. Last week, I sent an email to the publisher to ask for a timeline so I know how much time they need to get stuff done. The target is to have it ready for Fall 2013, which will be tight, but I (still) think it's doable. It helps that I'm just getting through some of the more difficult parts to write and later on it will be a lot more about teaching mechanical manipulations rather than building and developing concepts from scratch.
Church stuff is going quite well these days. We officially launch our small groups this week, and we have a high level of participation (finally!). I've also been brought on as one of the small group coaches, and I'm looking forward to that. It's been a while since I've been involved at that type of level at church. So it should be fun to be doing an intentional discipleship sort of thing again.
I've been trying to account for the other things that have gone on in the past month, but I'm not really sure where it went. A couple weekends ago, I helped empty out a couple storage units and load boxes into a truck. There was a mid-week games night last week. Last night, I spent the evening with some of my Christian colleagues to discuss a short article. So I guess things are going pretty well right now, which is a good thing.
