Okieinexile's Blog

By Bobby Neal Winters

Summer is getting short.

That may very well mystify the reader, depending upon when it is read.  If you read it close to the time when I write it, you might be very well confused, but I do mean what I am saying: Summer is getting close to being over.

As the temperatures are regularly over ninety with humidity close to that number as well, I do admit this is confusing.

I am a teacher and I am not working this summer. That is to say, I am not teaching summer school. I am working.  I have been assigned to teach a class that I’ve taught a few times before over the years.  At some point while moving offices from Grubbs Hall to Heckert-Wells, I looked at my notes for the class; I thought about the fact it had been assigned to one of our young, bright faculty; I decided I would never be teaching that class again; and I tossed the notes away.

I realize that some of my readership are likely hoarders and I’ve just provided you reasons to continue hoarding.  I apologize to the relatives who are attempting interventions. But, please, put down that baseball bat and allow me to continue.

I’ve been trying to put together a new set of notes for that class. I am finding that this is harder now for me as an experienced teacher than it was when I was younger, in the spring of my life.

When I was young, I picked one textbook, read it, made notes, and tried to stay a week or two ahead of the students.  This was not hard because most students don’t read at all. They are early enough in the springs of their lives that the plants have not poked their heads above ground.

This has changed. No, they still don’t read. Most of them anyway. What has changed is that I am no longer capable of teaching that way. 

The course needs to be constructed; thought through; put together nicely.  A course needs to be like a well-constructed novel and sometimes a well-constructed mystery novel. You need to have the end in sight. You need to put the clues all in place. You need to have metaphors.  

It all needs to work.

Again, in my opinion, so that I can be satisfied in practicing my art as a teacher, a course needs to be more like a novel and less like the datasheet for a microchip. 

I started off this summer going in to work on my classnotes in the morning and then doing yardwork in the afternoon.  This worked for me. I am a morning person.  The morning is when I have my energy.  I can truly accomplish more in 20 minutes in the morning than I can in two hours in the afternoon.

Then the temperature and humidity started to rise and there came to a fork in the road. I could either swap my morning schedule with my afternoon schedule or I could court heatstroke in my yard.

So I am working on my notes in the afternoon following a rigorous schedule of morning lawncare. Well, lawncare and coffee drinking.

The amount of work I can get accomplished is decreased by working in my low energy time, with energy reduced by the morning’s labor. I am not complaining, but explaining.

Well, maybe I am complaining, but that’s okay.  I am an old college professor: It’s what we do.

I am getting things done.  I have figured out a direction in which the class should go. I am working it all out in my head.

I don’t think that in the time left I will actually be able to have notes for the whole course.  As I said, summer is getting short. But I do believe that I will have a nice outline in place in my head.  And I while will no longer just take one book and stay a week ahead of the students, I can take a half a dozen books and stay a month ahead of the students.

The summer of my life is growing shorter, but part of that is at this time of summer, we are still surrounded by a lot of lush growth that we can call upon. We’ve learned our disciplines; we’ve learned about ourselves.

Bobby Winters grew up near Harden City, Oklahoma.  He teaches mathematics and computer science, does woodworking, and blogs at okieinexile.com. He invites you to visit the blog and to subscribe.