(S)wordplay

There are moments when I, as a teacher, just can't get anything to make sense. Usually, it's just because I have too much on my plate, or too many plates spinning, or some other plate analogy.

The beginning of the semester is generally hectic – especially when it begins a week earlier than planned – but I think that hecticness is exacerbated for Tuesday/Thursday classes. I still need to get the same number of projects/things started/finalized, but I have 33% fewer class periods in which to do so.

Right now, I'm dealing with:

• Actually teaching again: for the first few days of any course, I don't do much teaching. But by week 1.5, which is where/when we're at, I'm usually in full teacher mode.
  
• Roll changes: students are still dropping my courses, so I have to check my roster pretty regularly. Right now, I'm down to 72 students (from an original 75). For some reason, I'd hoped to reach 72 as some sort of magical "it" number for this semester. Now that I'm there, it seems surprisingly hollow and unfulfilling.
  
• Role changes: this one's not real; I just like wordplay.
  
• Students setting up their blogs: there are generally a few hiccups with this process; the chances that all of my students successfully and smoothly set up their blogs on time are ridiculously low, like an eighth of a percent. It's really silly to even think about. The bottom line is that I have to do a lot of boring administrative-type work to ensure that I can find all of their blogs on a regular basis to be able to grade them. The good news is that I'll have a whole new blog list in a few days.
  
• Scheduling all of my students for individual presentations: for the first time ever, I'm forcing allowing my students to perform individual presentations that will enlighten their fellow classmates on our discussion topics for each particular day. But first they all need to choose a day and topic on which to present. Since they all want to present on the history of Disney, the scheduling is a bit difficult. And, of course, the chances that all of my students [insert time-sensitive, response-oriented task] on time are ridiculously low.
  
• First essays: we're to talk about their first essays tomorrow, which means I need to have planned and created their first essay prompts by tomorrow. At this point, I can generally recycle essay prompts from previous semesters, but there is almost always something that I need/want to change.
  

On top of all that, I'm trying to start early with good examples for my students, which is why I decided to write this blog despite all of my spinning plates full of food: because writing can really help during stressful situations. Though, now that I've listed all of my tasks and thought a bit more about each, they don't seem that daunting. Huzzah for writing.

So, with this blog finished, I'm going to get back to my *actual* work (despite the fact that I'm not even supposed to be working today).

Event of the Week:

Announcer swap. On Wednesday, ESPN will air the UNC/WFU game with NBA announcers and the subsequent NBA game with college announcer and general sycophant Dick Vitale. Unlike Vitale, the NBA announcers involved in this swap actually improve the games they work. I love Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy's work as color commentators. They make the NBA roughly 10% more watchable (which brings it up to about 103% for me). Mike Breen, their usual play-by-play guy, adds another 2%.