Summer Session

We started Summer Session 2010 today, and I have 15 students in my “News” class. It used to be called “Newswriting”, but they want to focus on more than just the writing aspects of the class in this, the New Century of American Journalism.











At any rate, I have 15 engaged and engaging students who seem to have their stuff together despite the fact that many of them have to work and the fact that the semester is crammed into eight short weeks.

Each class is meant to represent a week’s worth of work, so they have to show up ready each time.

Today was kind of like the first day of track practice where Coach Sill always had us “shock the system” by running across town and back. The first day was always the longest, most frightening day of the year, and it was meant to wake us up and let us know – mentally and physically – that things were about to change and that much would be expected of us.

Today we did a quiz, an information gathering assignment and a deadline assignment. They will do another deadline assignment before Friday, and their first major project must be done between Friday and next Wednesday.

Back to life, back to reality.

I love teaching. I love this part of the gig. I really need to work on my research and on publishing, but teaching is something I expect to love for a long time.