The spring semester here ends in mid-April, which means that a lecturer like me typically wouldn't see a paycheck between the end of April and the middle of September. This summer, though, I've picked up two courses in the first summer session. This will supplement our income nicely.
I've taught summer courses before, but never two intensive writing courses at the same time. Fortunately, I've taught both of these courses before (a first-year composition course for multilingual students and an advanced writing course, also for multilingual students). I'm using the "lighter"(?) summer load to do a little experimenting with how I'm running the course, in hopes that I'll figure out some better ways of evaluating and grading students' work, particularly in the murky areas of peer work and journal writing. We'll see how this works out.
I've been fortunate to land a job here at a school where I can work a lot with international students. I've also had some good classes with USAmerican students, but I feel my strengths are really in working with students from other countries. Like some of them, I sometimes feel like a bit of an outsider in the US and find that "alternative" ways of doing things or thinking about things are not always accepted, tolerated, or even understood.
Well, I've meandered pretty far from the topic of summer school starting tomorrow.
Update, 5/6/13, 6:18 p.m.: Speaking of meandering, this afternoon I fell asleep on the commuter rail and missed my stop. Ended up having to walk 2 miles to get home. (Good exercise!)
