Looking back at how I spent my time the first week of class last semester, things couldn't be more different. For one thing, I'm no longer department chair which frees up a chunk of time that would otherwise have gone to administrative beginning-of-semester issues. Although I'm teaching two classes this semester (rather than one last semester), I decided not to make major revamps of either although I am trying a few new things. Since I log my time closely, I was able to see that this past week I only spent 10 hours on class prep for both classes rather than the 25 hours I spent on a single class last time. I was rather ambitious last time by having a completely new first week (in terms of both content and approach). This time around, I was much more modest - recycling some old material amid a couple of redesigned short classroom activities. Also there was some amount of content overlap between the two classes.
The early part of the week was taken up with activities as a preceptor. I met my 18 new first-year (we're not supposed to call them "freshmen" any longer) advisees. There should have been 20, but two didn't show up for the meetings or for class. There is always some movement the first week when students have to swap classes and sometimes advisers. So far I've lost one and gained another so I'm still at 20. Since I did a good amount of class prep the week before, I had plenty of time to also meet with individual students and help them with any schedule changes. Several of my upperclass (soon we won't be able to use this word either) also stopped by to say hello. It's always fun to chat with them about their summer and their excitement about being back at school. (Yes, in general my students do seem happy to be back! It helps when you are located in an area with excellent weather.)
I was also able to make some progress in research, thinking about both my projects and my students' projects. My summer students are all continuing with research in my lab this semester and I was able to meet with all of them to do some paperwork (to sign up for credit) and to briefly discuss how to move their projects forward. I also had the luxury of catching up on some journal reading - mainly browsing through some of the key journals in my discipline to see if there are any interesting or relevant articles. (I try to also read articles that are interesting although not directly relevant to my research.) Since I have a course release from a research grant that I am using this semester, I should try to make more progress on the research front this semester.
It was great to be back in the classroom! I decided to put into practice a few techniques I had learned from Jay Howard's book on how to improve discussion in the college classroom. My plan was to avoid what is called the "norm of consolidation of responsibility" early in the semester and to get as many people involved in active discussion. My General Chemistry class has 20 students (who are also all my advisees) and my chemistry for non-science majors class has 40 students. Although I've learned the names of my 20 advisees (my focus for this week!), it will take me a while to learn the names of my other 40 students. Hence I did a lot of cold-calling on students, but gave them sufficient time to first gather their thoughts, write down some responses to my questions and also discuss them with one or two others sitting close by, before they had to speak up in class. Hopefully this sets up a good discussion atmosphere for the rest of the semester.
I'm already looking forward to Week 2 since I have some interesting activities planned for students! Well, I think they're interesting - we will see what the students think.
Amusing factoid: My first week of class would have coincided with Harry Potter's eldest son's first week at Hogwarts, at least according to J. K. Rowling.
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