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Life can get so crazy sometimes. I keep a printed calendar on my desk by my computer and strike through each item each day with a highlighter when I’ve completed it. I update the calendar every Friday afternoon and print it for the next week. I like having that hard copy next to me, rather than having to get into something on my computer to see if I’ve done everything. It’s physical, right in front of me, and when it turns to highlighted, it helps me stay on track.

Or, it can be a total train wreck. Sometimes life gets in the way, like this week with not one “writing-500 words” highlighted as complete, not one “yoga” highlighted as complete, and several other tasks undone. It is our fall launch time though and I’ve had my hands full setting up courses, welcoming new students, helping new students understand how to work our platform, calming anxious parents (times a million), oh, and grading, grading, grading. All this while I try to maintain a personal presence in each and every course, connect with and get to know my students, and try to begin to form community in each course so students feel like I’m a real person and I see them and hear them and care about them, which I do.

So, while I’ve posted links to free PDFs of required novels my students need, made videos about how to do class discussions for them, read their funny and touching first memoir assignments, tackled the strengths and weaknesses in my AP students first essays, redirected some lost students back to unit one from their attempt to start with the last unit, and worked hard to find new Laffy Taffy jokes (I really dislike the banana flavor), my daily writing has gone by the wayside. Fortunately, there is always tomorrow.