Not slacking off (except when I am)

Sometimes the syllabi align in amazing ways: over the weekend I prepared to teach three Harlem Renaissance authors in Literary Theory, prepared an extensive presentation on the friendship between Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings for Florida Lit, and prepared a short presentation and handout on the Harlem Renaissance for American Lit Survey.

Aside from the coincidence in subject matter, I'm a little impressed that I spent that much time preparing new teaching materials even for a class that I've taught many times before. I've taught Hurston so many times that I ought to be able to phone it in, but apparently I'm allergic to slacking off.

Except when I'm not. Today my department met to work on next year's course schedules, which will include a significant change in the way we teach first-year composition, thanks to the recent approval of a new General Education curriculum. I'm mostly in favor of the changes but when it became clear that we'll still need one section of the "old" version of the class this fall, I jumped all over it with both feet. 

It's not that I don't want to change how I teach composition--I just don't want to do it right now. I'm teaching only one semester next year thanks to my spring 2019 sabbatical, which means I'll be teaching only one section of composition all year, and I just don't feel like reinventing my tried-and-true methods for the sake of only one section.

After the meeting I ran into a retired colleague at the grocery store, and he asked how long until I'll be able to retire. For years I said I'd never be able to pay off enough of our horrible debts to ever be able to retire, but careful husbandry and a little help from unexpected sources have eliminated enough debt to make retirement appear possible within the next eight or ten years.

And now I feel myself slowing down, still trying new things in class and putting tons of energy into updating my pedagogy, but I an increasingly unwilling to hop up and volunteer to  pilot the next new thing or revamp a tried-and-true course. Let someone else be the pioneer for a change. I'm happy to watch from the sidelines. I can catch up with the changes later on, but for now I need to hang back until I've caught my breath.