The new semester is a month away, but I’ve already started planning some of the things I need to do. I have a few documents that I hand out to all my students at the beginning of the semester that I use as the road map for the entire semester. I give them the syllabus, the schedule from week to week, and make lots of helpful suggestions about how students can succeed in my class.

My new schedule is different than last years, with a different day off in the week, and a class load that has classes meeting twice in the week before I see the other classes once. This wrinkle means that when there is a holiday, and there are several, they really throw off my planning. Some students will miss an entire week’s worth of classes immediately in the first week (Who starts classes on a Friday? Really?!) , while others will miss several days spread out through the entire semester. Trying to keep everything running smoothly is really difficult, and can cause serious headaches later on.

At the beginning of the semester I set up a schedule that works as a target for all my classes, then I go class by class, working around missing days and changes to make sure my schedule stays in sync and makes sense. Last semester I didn’t need to do this at all, but now I have to do this for every class! It’s a lot of work to keep straight, and it requires me to know what I’m teaching before I can totally finish it.

The problem is that I am teaching an entirely new book series, and I don’t know what is going to get skipped and what will be taught when I start figuring out my syllabus. Right now I have one unit I’m for certain skipping (How’s the weather? UGH.), while there are a few others that might not make the cut depending on where the holidays fall and how my quizzes need to be inserted into the schedule.

This entire semester will be yet another trial and error test of my class making skills. My students last semester left comments about how my syllabus was rock solid and I didn’t deviate from it the entire course. That’s why I am trying to do my best to set up the classes before the semester starts so that I can make sure I have the entire thing planned from week to week. After I figure out what I need to do for the week, I can start working on individual units to make lessons and activities, but I’m not ready for that at this point.

I’m still in the preliminary planning phase, but if I do it right I’ll be a lot better off later on.