Next semester's teaching.

We have the head of our bed up on cinderblocks (Robert's acid reflux) and I woke up this morning with my head halfway down the bed, all squshed up in a small little ball, with all the weight of the covers having pulled them off the end of the bed onto the dog.

At least I didn't get up till 11! I don't know how I'm going to start getting up to teach at 8 again in 2 weeks - I so quickly slipped onto the Sleep Schedule of Satan!

Skip this part if you're not fascinated by the inner workings of the academy and, in particular, freshman composition classes. No food here! Go away!
I'm really excited about my English 12 class next semester. Our second-semester required freshman comp class is themed "Writing Across the Disciplines" - you know, where they write themselves into the university by learning about writing for the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. A new rhet/comp professor pointed me toward the Center for Healthy Student Behavior (a subset of Student Health) for some natural science unit ideas (because, really, what do I know from science? I'm in English!) and things took off from there.

We're working with the CHSB through the whole course, providing actual student-collected data on student nutrition and it's been declared a service learning class as well! Unit 1 will be them actually seeing what students eat in the dining halls (and doing statistical analysis of it, and writing it up in lab report format); unit 2 will be them checking students' perceptions of what they're eating and their awareness of good nutrition guidelines through interviews, etc (and presenting a poster presentation of their findings at a mini-conference!); unit 3 will be them actually designing and producing a TV, radio, or podcast Public Service Announcement, hopefully to be actually run on Student TV, the campus radio station, or the local public-access channel, or podcast through the CHSB website.

The big finale is them pitching their ad campaigns to a group from the CHSB, who will choose a couple of the campaigns to be run with their sponsorship in preparation for the Healthy Campus 2010 Initiative.

I know it's totally nerdy, but isn't that exciting? I'm really looking forward to this semester's teaching!