The semester, so far...

Well, I thought that I was back in the swing of things about a month ago. Once I got back in Korea, I expected that the jet lag would last a few days and then life would go back to normal, whatever it is normal looks like...

In my last post, I wrote that I would be teaching five, possibly six different courses.... It turns out that I'm teaching six different courses in two different departments. The amount of prep and paperwork is insane, much less adding in the grading on top of all of that. There have been some changes in the structure of our department this year. At first, we were all excited about the changes, because they included a rather significant pay raise.... But it has turned into a bit of a nightmare.

It's complicated to start with, because there are two different contract cycles in our department. One cycle starts in March, one cycle starts in August. We all sign one year contracts, but the start and end dates are different. I'm on the August cycle along with four other teachers. There are supposed to be 20 teachers in our department, so there should be 15 people on the March cycle. At the end of last semester, three teachers decided that they were going to move on to other things. The administration, in all of their wisdom, decided that it would be a good idea to only hire one new person instead of replacing all three. To further complicate matters, at the last minute, one of our teachers had to quit. So we went from 20 faculty members to only 17.

So now there are five of us on the August cycle and 12 on the March cycle. Most of the classes that we teach are mandatory Freshman classes. Because we were short staffed, and because the incoming Freshman class is apparently the biggest ever, all of our classes are huge. I have more than 40 students in almost all of my classes.

In the old contract, the one that the August cycle people are still one, we are supposed to teach at least 9 credit hours a semester, possibly up to 15 credits, which will be paid as overtime. In the new contract, it is at least 12 credit hours, then anything more is overtime. Everyone has to do 9 hours a week in their office to be available to students for meetings and such. This is the same for both contracts. What is new this semester is my boss has decided that we all have to do our office hours at the same time. So on Monday and Wednesday from 1-5:30, we all have to be in our offices.

This wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for the second department that we are supposed to teach classes for. I don't know the official name, but we all call it the language center. They are non-credit classes that students who want to study abroad can take to help prepare them. I taught a language center class last semester, and they're generally quite fun. But because of the mandatory office hour times, we couldn't teach any classes in the language center on Monday and Wednesday. As you can imagine, that threw a bit of a wrench into the schedule. Also, because of the way the contracts are split up, most people on the March cycle contract aren't able to teach in the language center. So, that leaves the five of us to teach 10 extra classes. One of those five is pregnant, which exempts her from a lot of these things. So that leaves four of us to teach these classes.

One of the other things under the new contract is apparently we are going to be given more responsibility and expected to act more like tenure track professors. Which is kinda ridiculous, because none of us are actually on tenure track. But we are supposed to develop course proposals that will be added to the course catalog, develop new programs, and do research. Which would perhaps be ok if I were only teaching 12 hours, and were on the higher salary.... However, it has worked out that I'm still getting stuck with all of the new responsibilities of the new contract, picking up the classes that fall into the cracks, and getting paid the lower salary scale. It's been kinda ridiculous for everyone, but it's been especially hard for me and three of my colleagues who are on the old contract and not pregnant.

So. This semester, I'm teaching six different classes at six different levels in two different departments. I'm developing a course proposal with another professor. I'm developing a new program on my own. I'm testing a new methodology for teaching the department's reading and writing class. One other teacher and I are in charge of starting and running a new English Zone, and I have nearly 250 students to try and deal with. In the middle of the semester, the administration decided that it had perhaps made a mistake in not hiring three teachers to start this semester. So they decided to try to hire some teachers mid-semester so they could split up some of the larger classes. Somehow, I got stuck with making phone calls and screening teachers who were applying for these jobs, then doing a lot of the orientation stuff for the two teachers we actually hired.

I'm excited about a lot of what is going on, it's just pretty crazy. I'm teaching two reading and writing classes, both of which are testing out the new methodology for teaching this type of class. On top of that, one of the classes is full of music majors. They have historically been a problem for the department and other teachers. So the university asked me to try to create a program that would utilize music in teaching English to them. That class has like three levels of things to keep straight and record results for. It's fun. I'm teaching a speaking class, which is just a normal class. It's nice to have one class that is just an English class. I'm doing an advanced level class about understanding foreign cultures. This class is actually the one that we are doing as a course proposal for the university catalog. It's pretty cool, and the students like it quite a lot. Maybe I'll write more about it another day. But there is lots of paperwork associated with this class, because of the proposal.

Then on Thursday, I have to go on campus to teach my two classes in the other department. One is an upper level speaking class and one is an upper level writing class. Aside from the grading, there isn't a ton of prep involved in these classes. But one is from 9-12, and the other is from 3-6. So my entire Thursday is shot with these classes. Last semester, I only went on campus on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I hadn't realized just how important those off days were for staving off burnout, getting things done around my apartment, running errands and just generally living life. It is absolutely exhausting to be in an ESL environment for so many days a week.

So four days a week, I'm gone for about 12 hours a day. I spend most of my time in the office meeting with students, doing paperwork and other administrative things, or in meetings about various proposals. So when I come home, I realize that I haven't had the chance to do any marking or lesson planning for the next day. I spend a lot of the evening doing those sorts of things.

Basically, it's a crazy, crazy semester. I'm doing relatively well. I'm just always busy, and I don't have much time to go do stuff that is interesting to blog about. We are just over a month into the semester, so I don't know if things will calm down a bit now that the initial rush is over, or if it will stay like this until mid June when the semester ends. Either way, I'll try to post updates every now and then on here. I'm still alive, I'm still doing well. There weren't any problems with the Nuclear Security Summit a few weeks ago. I'm just really, really busy and don't do anything interesting anymore :)