Apparently, it's been over a month since I've posted anything. It's been a busy month in some ways, but it's been a slow month in other ways. It's not the best combination for me. There's kind of an intellectual constipation that happens because I'm not clearing out thoughts or projects or anything that gives me the sense of forward motion.
But that's about to change. In two days, I'm frying about 35 pounds of creole butter injected turkeys. That's the sort of thing that can get me going again. This is a great time of year, and I'm ready for it.
The last several weeks of work have been very busy with several long tasks. One of those tasks was faculty observations. Even though I set relatively high expectations for the amount of time it would take, I didn't anticipate the mental load that it created on me. Faculty observations last between 1-1.5 hours, depending on how the instructor has structured the class. If it's mostly lecture, I basically stay for the whole time. If they have some sort of class activity planned, I leave partway through the activity. In addition, it takes at least another hour to write up the observation and to craft meaningful feedback to the faculty.
The primary purpose of these observations is to improve the overall quality of instruction. For the great teachers, I have to spend extra time thinking of ideas that can improve beyond what they're already doing. It's hard to give recommendations where there isn't anything wrong. It's like trying to improve an already efficient process. You reach a point of diminishing returns where you can put in a lot of work to get only a minimal amount of improvement. On the other hand, for instructors that are not doing as well (which isn't to say they're doing poorly), there are lots of little things here and there I could be bringing up, and I have to pick the right types of feedback to give to get maximal improvement. There's a tendency to make note of every little thing that could be improved in some way, and that can quickly become overwhelming and almost insulting. So I have to think about prioritizing the suggestions.
It would be a lot easier to do this if they were students. When it comes to feedback, I sometimes feel like with students I can push my authority over them a little bit more. But with peers, you can't really do that without being a jerk. And that's not good for anyone. So I just have to work through the mentally taxing process and find the right way to phrase things.
I'm also still working on the remedial overhaul. That one has taken a bit of a side-burner position (not quite back-burner). It's broken into four content units, and the first unit is the one that requires the most work. I'm about 80% done with the text, and I've got students working on generating problem sets and solutions. I feel as though once I get through this, the rest of it will come more quickly. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. Who knows what it will actually be like.
We're also looking into some issues of potential unintentional grade inflation from PTIs. But that's a project that's going to take YEARS of work before we can really wrap our arms around it, and I'm not even going to get started on discussing it right now. It could quite literally be a book-length essay on the nature and complexity of grading. And I don't want to do that.
At church, we've been doing a video series called "Life On Mission." Overall, I think it's been a great series. I have to admit that I enjoyed that on the very first video poked fun at some of the forms of evangelism that I've always found to be artificial and annoying. It took a very clear shot at the "Share Jesus Without Fear" model in which you use questions to try to force the issue on people. (Questions such as "If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?" which create multiple levels of awkward weirdness.) Instead, it focuses on authenticity in friendships and living a lifestyle of humility and service as the foundation of sharing the gospel. There's no contact evangelism. People are not projects. It's not a program. The goal is not to get someone to pray "the prayer." It's to live a lifestyle that purposefully reflects the goodness of the gospel with the intention to share it with others.
My connection to this outlook comes out of my InterVarsity background. These were the same sorts of things that were being taught to me (through seeing it lived out in people's lives) as an undergraduate. So there's a nice familiarity to it.
I also got a chance to meet with Dave Miller from Adventures in Life to talk about the possibilities for missions trips next year. I was excited to hear that he's got some ideas that fit my background very well. Last summer, we did a VBS-style kids camp. But he's thinking about doing more of a "trade" week where youths (13+ years old) show up and get some training in trade skills like agriculture, culinary, and auto mechanics. He wants to put in some STEM-like ideas into the week to increase understanding while building skills. And he's thinking of things like water rockets and maybe some soil chemistry stuff. Although I enjoyed doing arts and crafts, this is much more in my wheelhouse. I've actually already bought a water rocket kid to see how well it works and to start thinking about what it might take to do it down there (or build a similar setup down there). The missions committee still needs to meet and make formal decisions, but I'm already feeling excited about the possibilities.
We're still working on the potential aquaponics project at school. There are some grant opportunities coming up that we might be able to use to get funding, but even without that we might be able to push forward with some special project funds and do it internally. So we'll see where that goes.
That's probably not all, but that's all I'm going to type up.
