Monday, December 14, 2009

Off to the Finish Line

One of my seniors did her big presentation today, and did a fine job. For some reason, I think that the big presentation reflects on the prof who's class she did it for, so I was sort of stressy about it. I really wanted her to do well because she wrote a good, interesting essay and I wanted her to get that across.

She seemed much more relaxed and happy afterwards. Me too.

I finally ordered my texts for the third of my courses next semester. It's always a sort of hard decision which Shakespeare texts to teach; if I taught out of an anthology, I could just figure it out as I wrote the syllabus. But I've abandoned the anthology in favor of paperback editions. They're a bit more expensive for students, but they're a heck of a lot better as editions, generally, and way easier on all our backs. I'm planning to further my quest of teaching every Shakespeare play by teaching All's Well for the first time next semester.

Other than that, I'm not planning to teach any new texts in any of my classes this coming semester. That's a big change for me, after teaching three new plays in one class, and new texts in each of the other classes this term.

Now up: grading, mostly senior work, most of it pretty good from my first impressions.

And I have to write a final exam. Oh, that.

One class is all graded, though I haven't done the spread sheet math.

2 comments:

  1. Good luck with finishing up!

    I kicked myself a lot this semester for using a Shakespeare anthology. However, I do like having a complete works available at all times. When I'm teaching the histories, it's very convenient. I can flip to another play and show the students things really easily -- and spontaneously in class if something comes up. Then the other night, we were finishing up The Tempest, and we got onto the subject of legacy. So I said "flip to sonnet 17 and 18" and we were able to do it. If it weren't for having the complete works available at all times, I wouldn't be able to do some of that connecting work with them.

    But believe me -- it's no fun carrying The Riverside when you're nine months pregnant.

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  2. Glad all the work that is coming in is looking good. What are you teaching other than 'All's Well'? I still have the copies of my Arden texts from a Shakespeare class I did in undergrad - I loved those versions. I cracked open an old Penguin copy of King Lear recently to look up a reference, and it disintegrated in my hands!

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