They say it gets easier...

In the university's Faculty Center today I overheard two people talking about the pace of teaching. One mentioned she thought things were supposed to be easier in the spring semester because you had some time before you had to start planning & developing courses for the next semester. Both noticed they were already planning for their fall classes and were voicing the common concern: How can I get everything I need to do done? How do I prep for class, read papers, stay current for this course, engage in university service, and become a productive scholar? In an odd way, I was relieved to overhear their conversation -- they confirmed that what I so often experience is a common experience. It doesn't make it any easier, but it does help to know I'm not the only one who hasn't figured things out.
One thing that causes me a lot of extra work is that I often make changes to a course after I meet the students and we get underway. Many students have said they appreciate this flexibility, while others say it makes them a bit crazy. I do think we need to be flexible and that doctoral students who plan to become high level administrators need to develop a disposition for change & ambiguity. When I make changes, I try to make them in the students' favor -- that is, I prefer to extend a deadline rather than to move it up; I'll reduce, rather than increase, reading assignments. But what I've realized is something so elementary, so essential to good teaching I'm really embarassed to admit it ... I need to do a better job planning the course up front. But I don't want to develop such a rigid plan that we have no flexibility in the schedule. I think there's room for both of these values -- structure & flexibility. A flexible structure.
So today I've been very intentional as I think about our class session. I identified a learning outcome for the day, identified how I could assess the learning, and then developed specific activities that will get us to that learning outcome. Okay -- not a new revelation for some of you, but yesterday in our First Annual Symposium on Celebrating Teaching & Learning at Pacific, something clicked for me. The concepts connected for me in a way they hadn't before. I recall working through similar exercises in a class on curriculum development in my doctoral program, but at that time I wasn't planning on a career as a faculty member, so perhaps the assignment didn't have much relevance for me. In yesterday's session, though, it was like I really got it. So today, in painstaking detail, I've mapped out our session ... and I can see the pieces connecting together like a well-designed puzzle.
It's a bit awkward to publicly describe my learning, but I suppose even this is part of the process. Earlier this week I read an autoethnography of a new faculty member -- someone who, like me, moved from an administrative position in student affairs to a full-time faculty position. Her narrative, published in the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching (Vol 21, 1, 2010), was so honest that it inspired me to risk the same level of honesty here.