Wednesday, August 31, 2011

quick thoughts from the back of the room

i start my fall semester (officially) next week. but i have been back in marion, settling into life, for a couple of weeks now. i'll post my set-in-stone schedule later, but here are the major things i will be doing:

2 classes (research and appraisal)
an internship (working with the honors college freshmen)
leading my breakout group (i have transfer students again)
grad assistant position with the office of student engagement and retention (this is new)
grad assistant position with the honors college (i did this last year)

so this week, we are doing training for the peer facilitators (each breakout group has a faculty member (me) and a student peer facilitator). part of my ga position with student engagement means working with these students...the ones who are connecting with other students.

and i am really enjoying it. i have not been super involved in the training...i am mostly observing...but it is getting me so excited. i was already excited for the semester, but this is really good.

we have been talking about a culture shift on our campus (if you knew how students feel about this class, you would understand why), and there is a general sense that revival is coming to iwu. i talked about that in july, and it is pretty cool to hear other people are feeling it, too. this idea of culture shift is something i am going to dig into and develop more thoughts on throughout the semester/year.

so i'm curious...how are you feeling about the next few months? leave me a comment and tell me what you're excited about...and what might scare you. i'll start...

2 comments:

  1. i am excited for what the current generation of students at iwu are going to do on this campus--how they will impact the incoming freshmen and leave their mark on this community.

    i am scared i won't balance things in my life well.

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  2. I'm excited to get to know my new class and new colleagues. I'm super excited to (hopefully) move to Madison full-time and start re-building community there!

    Like you, I'm scared of the workload I'm about to embark on. In addition to normal lesson planning, I have to work on my re-licensure and do work for teacher evaluation.

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