Stepping back. . . in a minute

I'm about to post the last of my grades. When I press SEND, I will be done officially for this semester. Except for the planning for next semester, which has already begun.

After I finished the grades for one of my 11th classes, I worked on the first newsletter of the year for that group of parents and mapped out a general idea for a plan for the semester. I'm making some changes and creating the newsletter with parents in mind helped me think through some of the details. I'll continue to tinker with those until school starts.

After I post grades for my AP Language course, I'll spend some time mapping out next semester for those students. Spring semester can go by really fast and there are things to which I know we must attend because it is an AP class.

Then I'll look to my college classes. I teach part-time at a high school because I'm an adjunct at a local university and that gig was first. Anyway, I teach freshman writing and you'd think that wouldn't change much and you'd be right. The focus of freshman writing hasn't changed, but the students sure have so I'm constantly revising that course to help meet the needs of students to assist them in being successful in college and maybe even beyond. I can't prep that much for my literature course until I meet the students as the course is geared mostly for education majors and this semester the range of concentrations is quite astonishing. It'll be fine, though. 

So after I press SEND for my last set of grades and map out three classes for spring semester, then I can start revisiting the texts that I'll be using next semester to make sure I've got those reasonably settled and figured out some alternatives because, well, things always change. Oh, and sort out the books I have because they have gotten really jumbled and disorganized this semester.

Then I can catch up on some of the professional reading and writing I've not had time to do with preps and grading for over 100 students this past semester.

Since it's the holidays, I'll reach out to some friends I've not been able to see because we've all been too busy or too tired.

My "to do" list also includes cleaning out the pantry and the refrigerator, though the former is less  important than the latter. Now that I've learned the replacements for the fluorescent lights I have in the basement are going to be harder to find than I thought, I may have to contact an electrician about redoing the light fixtures in the basement.

And then I'll step back for a few minutes, and just relax.