Except for my birthday. I did basically nothing for my birthday. At small group, we had some cake, but that was the extent of the celebrating. Maybe I'm old and boring. But at a certain level, not having another thing to do was a good thing, and I enjoyed the quiet and relaxation associated with planning to do nothing.
I've started the process of building towards the Oaxaca trip this summer. We got a slightly late start on it because we were waiting for certain details to settle. But it all worked out in a good way, and everything is 100% to go now. It's only about 2 months away (July 12-20), and that time is going to disappear quickly. This trip will be to Pastor Chable's ranch for a summer youth camp (mostly 12 and younger). My greatest concern is that we're not going to have enough translators, which will make communication difficult. But our activities will mostly be crafts and games, so we'll be able to manage without them, but being able to communicate is an important piece of the relationship building process, and what we hope to see there. But one step at a time. The informational meeting (which I still need to plan) is Monday, May 18.
The end of the semester has come. My list of projects grew and I feel like I put in more hours trying to keep up. I've got all of my notes for the summer class I'm teaching. This will be fun because the class looks like it's going to be very small (perhaps as small as 5 students), and since it's the last time this class will be taught in its current form, I kind of have free rein to do what I want. (And yes, that's "free rein" and not "free reign." The origin of that phrase has to do with horses, not kings.) So I'm planning to play around with a a few things just for fun and experimentation with different teaching outcomes. I'm planning to use a day to talk about fraud detection and another day to do a little tournament using a card game I invented. So we'll see how that goes.
I've still got a huge slate of videos to make. But that work is going to be mixed in with the redevelopment of one of our math classes that will be happening this summer. I'm not quite sure how the balance of time will be on that, but at least in that situation I'm not the only one working on it. Both of the other math faculty have a hand in it, and this will be my first truly collaborative course redesign.
Our math degree program made it through the next level, so it's well on its way to becoming a reality. The path is not without potential problems, but it's unlikely to hit too many of those given that it's math and is an important enough part of the STEM push that's going on that it gets its own letter. To get ready for that launch, we've been building a math department webpage. Because of various restrictions and our desire for flexibility and the ability to manage things ourselves, we're doing it within a Canvas shell. There are some tools out there which make it relatively easy to do, but the technology isn't good enough that the page builds itself. So there's a lot of work to do just transferring information over to the webpage.
The third grade curriculum project is moving forward. I really need to get back to work on those videos. I have an excuse that the files haven't been moved off of a particular server so that I can access them, but the truth is that it's very unlikely that I would have had the time to do much with that anyway.
I'm getting a new job starting in July. No, I'm not leaving NSC. I was selected as the chair of the Department of Physical and Life Sciences (PaLS). There are a couple significant changes with this. The first is that I'm going to be teaching less than half the load I'm currently teaching. Right now, I teach 4 classes per semester. With this change, I'll be teaching 2 classes in the Fall and 1 class in the Spring. What will I be doing with the rest of my time? There will be some strategic planning, some program development, some faculty mentoring, and a whole lot of meetings and emails.
One thing about this is that it was a very sudden change. When I wrote the previous blog post, this wasn't even on the table. But things happen very quickly at NSC, and I went from "No way" to "I guess so" to "Actually, this might be interesting" in a period of a couple weeks. The official notice went out today, and I was chatting with some of the other faculty. Everyone knows how much work this position is. And so there's a hint of sarcasm in the congratulations I'm receiving. My best response so far to describe the situation is to say that "The thrill of victory has never tasted quite like this." On my NSC Facebook page, I changed my profile picture to Pharaoh Bender (Futurama) and posted the following:
Citizens of the Department of Physical and Life Sciences at Nevada State College! The cruelty of the old Chair is a thing of the past! Let a whole new wave of cruelty wash over this lazy land! -- This message has been brought to you by the new Chair of the Department of Physical and Life Sciences. "The beatings will continue even after morale improves."So I own this decision, and I'm going to do the best I can with it. As goofy as it sounds, I might ask the full time faculty to do a SWOT analysis, because I really don't have a good pulse on all the things going on in the department right now, and this is how I think I can get that information relatively quickly and easily.
Tomorrow is going to be a long day, but a good long day. It starts off with the commencement ceremony in the morning, followed by crawfish boil, version 5.0. I'm continuing to take notes, but I feel as though I've got a pretty good system going now. I haven't quite had the time to do as many pre-planning steps as I normally do (I still haven't purchased the extra foodstuffs yet -- that's going to happen tomorrow after the ceremony), but I'm felling pretty good about it anyway. I should have it under control. But I'm going to stop now and make a shopping list, just so that I don't forget anything.
