Once more into the breach

Yes it's true, summer school has started. In general I'm not a big fan of summer school. I mean, what is the ONE most attractive thing about a career in education? It's the long summer break, right? Regardless, this year I'm only teaching half the summer, so I'll have more free time than I have in recent years. What to do with that free time is another question, but I figure I'll manage.

In the meantime, I have to survive the next five weeks. Yesterday was day 1. It's hard to get a read on the students just based on the first day. I do almost all the talking that day so I can't tell if I'm going to have involved, motivated students or bumps on logs. For another day or two, though, I can hope for the former.

I do already have one "small world" incident though. In the summer a lot of our students are "transient students" -- students who attend a distant school, but take a class or two at the CC while they're home for the summer. Though I'm teaching Econ 1 (the way we number them here), I suspected that some of the transients might have already taken the other principles class somewhere else. When I asked about this, sure enough I had a couple of students in that category. I asked one of them where he had taken it and he told me he took it at Bama. I asked him who he had and it turned out it was one of my old grad school profs that I used to house/kid/dog sit for when he the wife went on summer vacation.

Anyway, today is the first real day of class. I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm trying to remain optimistic. Wish me luck.