What I Expect From Myself

I expect myself to exercise more discipline over my own creative and professional endeavors.

I expect myself to honor my daily commitments, to recognize that carving out an hour for myself and me and O is not a luxury. It's vital.

I expect myself to sit down and write out the "five-year plan" (oy. I need a better term. I shrivel in the face of that) and then work backwards, figuring out what needs to happen within three, two, years, one year, six months, six weeks, etc.

Seriously, that would be such an achievement. And there are many options! It's not a prescription. It's a blueprint. Right now, I don't even have the blueprint, yo. Let's get on that.

So, yesterday we made a last minute switch to an asynchronous day because the campus was closed until 11 am. It was the right decision to make, and Team Lyra rocked it out in under an hour, but we still made a couple of errors--I didn't change the Tuesday at 8 pm deadline on the Gladstone DB in two sections. Super confusing. It happens, but it sucks that it happened on the first Monday that got changed around last minute.

Last night on the Gdrive to do list (often referred to as just 'the doc'), K and A and I were talking about reaching out to students who seem a little unsure so far. The ones not logging in much, not turning in assignments, etc. A suggested mandatory TA meetings and went into action mode, showing us a GDrive spreadsheet that students could use/ sign up for times, etc. K and I were totally on board; students need to have their 3 Topics memo Tuesday, so this sounded good. Then CB came on and was like "whoa, wait. what? It's been like one freaking day." She argued that if we had "hey, are you okay" meetings right now, students would resist big time. Also, if we told them tomorrow that they had to meet with their TA the next day? That's kind of a lot.

So, we're going to do that next week, but here's the thing:

I think that the way to spend more time on the LPs tomorrow, which corresponds with the 3 Topics Memo, which justifies the TA meeting, is to...okay, well I don't know how, actually. I want to approach it in a rich, good, yummy way, not a logistical "3 papers. Decide by Tuesday. Meet w/ your TA." You know? Besides we spent a fair amount of time talking about them on Day 1. That's all Day 1 was, really--logistical stuff, not fun stuff. The Discussion Boards are so rich--I want to build on THAT energy in class, not revert to logistical yawn-y stuff.

But I'm not sure *how* to do that. Maybe I can dig something out of WA Ch 2 that they read for tomorrow. To make time for this (and to not alienate all of them), I'm cutting the quiz until Monday. I really have to quiz them Monday, but tomorrow is too icky. It would be a pop quiz, and yesterday was really confusing for many of them, they're all still getting their bearings, etc. So, no quiz. We'll start with some rich discussion questions on the board for pre-class, get into those, reference Monday's DBs...then get into the activity...then, if possible, attribution exercise...Monday logistics, LPs and TA Meeting.

Okay. Get this to the doc and the lesson plan. Catch up on email/ working docs/ action items. Note that beginning Friday, no 101 stuff until after 12 noon. I have earned and must protect my own writing time.