Back to School

Well folks, this is the last week of my winter vacation since the Spring semester starts up on Tuesday. I've had a good long time off so I really can't complain.

The greater part of my week has consisted of burying my nose in my textbooks to prep for the coming week. I've been reading textbooks on my couch, reading textbooks at Panera Bread, reading textbooks in the comfy chairs at Borders and reading textbooks at the gym while bobbing up and down on the elliptical machine and attempting not to throw up.

I'm teaching 4 classes this semester. One is a grammar class, 2 are experimental CALL (computer assisted language learning) classes and the fourth is an advanced reading and writing course using short stories and poems in American literature to help my students develop their English skills (can you tell I've just been writing course objectives?). I'm really excited to teach from the textbook I'm using for the reading/writing class. It has a great collection of works and really thought provoking exercises and writing prompts but its really in depth and I underestimated the time it would take to read and prepare for the class.

Tonight I just looked over what I've finished prepping for the week/semester and I am feeling much more at ease with my level of preparation, but Monday of this week I was freaking out, brain on massive overload and in the poetry vein I wrote some haikus, mostly just as a distraction from reading. Maybe some of you teachers who want the summer to stretch on forever can relate.

Words crammed in my ears
the deafening echo of
procrastination

Textbooks are so long
Why did I wait 'til so late
to read them? F*&%! S&%$!