Past due for a post?

I've been informed that a) I haven't blogged in a while, and b) I don't blog enough about my job.  I think that b-part really just means that someone - who shall remain nameless - is tired of posts about my kitchen and/or cats.  But what the heck - I can post about work.

So this term I am teaching a 150% load - 12 credit hours, when "normal" is 8.  Two of the classes are new to me (teaching-wise, but I'm comfortable with the subject).  These are Criminal Law and Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Inequality.  That means I spend a heck of a lot of time in class prep and powerpoint creation.  Two others I've taught before (Intro to Soc and Criminology) so don't require as much time to prep.  And the final class is a 1-credit ethics in the criminal justice system class that is a discussion group only - no class prep really, and minimal grading.

I'm really enjoying Criminology this time around.  One, it's one of my specific areas of specialization - that, with having taught it before, means I'm more comfortable in the classroom.  Here, it's a continuation of a fact-based course of crimes (who commits what against whom, etc.), with the theory side coming this term.  So I have a group of students that I'm very familiar with, who are largely majors in this area and very interested in the material.  I have to shut down discussion sometimes so we can get through the required material!  They are doing article analyses each week instead of a major paper at the end, so there's a lot of grading involved.  But this is an important skill for them to develop.

Principles of Sociology (aka Intro) is also a lot of fun.  I always like survey courses, because you get to skim over so many fun things without having to get too in depth on anything.  This term is when the nursing majors take the course, so half the class is in nursing.  When I found out this was the case, I decided to put a specific focus on health related issues.  I'm not sure how the non-nursing students feel about this!  ;)  It's a talkative group, and seems to be going OK.  We have our first exam this week - then we'll see how well it's actually all sinking in.

Criminal Law is enjoyable for me to teach, but it's tough to do much more than just cover what's in the book the first time teaching a course for me.  We're in this long, skinny room, and the kids in the front participate and seem to be enjoying it, while the kids in the back look half asleep.  We're in the basics right now - just finished up general elements of crime, and are getting into justification and excuse defenses.  I think it's interesting stuff, at least!  When we get to specific crimes, one of their assignments will be for each of them to do an opening argument for a case.  I thought that would be interesting to have an opening argument (prosecution and defense) to start class each day, and give them a chance to tie various stuff from class together.  Only now I have to come up with case scenarios for them to use!  I'm pretty decent at coming up with different assignments that hopefully are at least a little fun and unique - I don't always think through how much time it's going to take for me to prepare and then grade them!

The other new class (Race, Ethnicity as I think of it, since the full title is so long!) is a block class that starts 4/7.  I'm trying to get prepared for it now, because once it starts I'm going to be drowning in teaching and grading.  I'd like to have Crim Law and these powerpoints all done by then, but we'll see.  It's an older class - students are either in the advance program, which is for adult learners with full time jobs who are trying to complete a degree, or have to be at least juniors.  I'm a bit worried about teaching a night class - it's 4 hours once a week!  But only 5 weeks, and since it's overload I'll make a little extra money.  I like the subject, but I've been told by people who taught this previously that the adult learners can be a challenge - they're tired after working all day, and really want to do the necessities for being able to advance in their jobs.  And to the mind of the former instructors, this course is considered an annoying hoop they have to jump through.  (Sort of how I feel when I have to do the discrimination in the workplace trainings, to be honest!)

So that's what I spend my week doing, mostly.  I teach Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this term.  Tuesdays and Thursdays I spend an hour with the LSAT prep group.  Thursday mornings I spend at home on my "professional development" - aka working on articles.  We're also in recruiting season, so periodically I get called upon to meet with a prospective student interested in one of sociology, criminal justice, or pre-law. 

In long term stuff, our application for a traditional Sociology major was approved, so in my spare time (HA!) I'm working on revising our section of the catalog and the university website.  The website is hysterical - I'm not even on it yet!  It's never been worked on by anyone with much knowledge of how many possibilities there are on the web, so Paul and I are working on making it really interactive and fun.  Right now it's basically the same thing as in the catalog, just print information that happens to be online.  An interdepartmental group, including me, also just put together a proposal to add a Legal Studies minor.  It should be approved - all but one of the classes are already being taught, we just recombined them into an official minor - and the dean is really excited about the idea.  My part of it, aside from continuing as pre-law adviser, will be to develop and supervise a mock trial program.  Really, the program already exists - we'd just join the national association - but getting a team up and running to compete will take some time.  Since I'm not a litigator (not really, anyway, even if I have appeared in court a time or two), it would likely involve finding a "real" lawyer coach and managing it from the school side of it.

So I'm feeling over-busy to the point of freaking out a little (I still have my kitchen to stress over, too!), but it's all with great and exciting stuff.  I've been formally informed that my contract is renewed for next year, and now department chair wise I'm busy with budget requests for next year.  Shortly, we'll be submitting a request to hire another full-time person, as Sister Grace Ann thinks next year will be her last.  With Paul now acting as Division Chair (down to 15 hours teaching) and me getting pulled off to handle pre-law stuff, we think we have a pretty good justification that Sr. GA's half-time slot should be replaced with a full-time Criminal Justice person.  This would also be good since I'm technically a sociology background - I can easily do the theory stuff for criminal justice, but my practical background in law enforcement, courts, and corrections is, to put it nicely, woeful.

And that's the work side of life. :)