Back to School

My first two classes this week went really well. I do love teaching. Teaching a class face-to-face is much more enjoyable than teaching online. However teaching online enabled me to be at home with my kids more. When I am teaching, I wish I didn't have to give it up, but then when I'm with my kids, I don't want to leave them to go to work. I think this is going to be a good semester. One added bonus is that my classes are smaller than usual, which means my grading load will be lighter. We had a college faculty meeting today and will have a department faculty meeting next Friday so I'll be on campus 3 days a week this week and next week.

My department chair did revise my schedule. He thought I'd prefer being on campus for a shorter period of time 5 days a week. I felt so relieved knowing that he was trying to keep my situation in mind when creating the first schedule. The alternate schedule is oh so much better. My classes would be from 2:00-7:30pm on Mondays and Wednesdays and 2:00-2:50 on Fridays. This means Paul could do about 5 hours of the babysitting each week, whereas he couldn't do any with the original schedule. The new schedule also would reduce my time away from home each week by 8.5 hours when you take into account driving time and such. With the first schedule the kids couldn't have done storytime at the library, ballet, or gymnastics, and I couldn't have done ladies Bible study. With the new schedule we can do ALL of those things, if I switch her to another ballet studio that has a class for 4-5 year olds from 9:30-10:30am on Mondays. The only thing I'd have to give up with the new schedule is choir on Wednesday nights. Paul could still take her to Cubbies on Wednesday nights.

They wanted me to understand I can't ask for any leave in the fall. I know the department has been stretched thin lately. It has been much worse this year because three tenure track faculty didn't return this fall, and another faculty member retired the semester before that. We already had a few vacant tenure track positions before these four left. They are doing two tenure track searches this semester. That will help some, but they need to do more searches next year to get things back on track. Each tenured/tenure track faculty member has over 100 advisees because we're so short staffed. As I sat there talking with them, I was wishing I could teach FT next fall. They really don't want me to resign. They made that very clear. They also really don't want me to work part-time. They want me back full-time. One thing that annoyed me during the meeting is that the Dean outright said something along the lines of "it doesn't matter how sick your son is, you are a faculty member and this department is drowning and this should be a higher priority." I couldn't believe she'd say that. No matter what job I might have, I would never put that as a higher priority over my children. This statement was even more shocking because her husband is a SAHD. Her 5 year old daughter has never been in child care, and her daughter is totally healthy. I see her daughter every week at gymastics (her father brings her). I'm not saying anything against those who work outside the home. It's a personal decision we each have to make. Some don't even have the option of staying home. I'm so grateful it's an option for us. I just couldn't believe the Dean said I would be wrong to put my son's needs above my department's.

I am feeling really badly that I will in fact be using leave next semester. I didn't use any paid leave with Nadia, and I only used 2.5 weeks of paid leave with Ian. So (it seems) this will be the first time that I will get to use the 8 weeks of paid leave I could have used the other times if the children hadn't been born when classes weren't in session. While I was meeting with them I was thinking maybe I could come back after the 8 weeks were up, but then I reminded myself how badly I want nursing to go better this next time, and it's much harder to nurse when I go back to work at 8 weeks (spoken from experience as I went back to work when Nadia and Ian were 8 weeks old). I just want to go on unpaid leave for the last 2 weeks of the semester (or more if the baby comes early). This type of leave is automatic. They can't say "no." I feel badly, but I'm almost 40 years old. I couldn't postpone trying for #3. In the fall I'll put in my letter of resignation that will be effective in early January.

The only downside of the new schedule is that instead of assigning me other classes (which are currently listed as TBD beacuse they don't know who will be teaching them), he rearranged the times of the same courses they had assigned me in the first schedule. I say this is a downside because I had asked if he could assign me to teach courses I have taught before (all the sections of three different courses I've taught before are currently listed as TBD for the fall). Instead he assigned me two classes I've never taught before - "Teaching Reading: Grades 1-4" and "Young Child's Play as an Educative Process." I've never taken much less taught a play course before. I don't have any degrees in early childhood. Unfortunately no one who is in our department right now has such a degree. So I have become the ECE person by default, even though my teaching experience was in middle school. In the near future I'll need to start working on selecting textbooks for those classes. It will take a lot more work to write the syllabi, course outlines, etc. for two brand new courses, but in a case of "pick your battles" it was far more important to me that I have a MWF or T/Th schedule than to worry about what classes I'll be teaching. The professor who teaches most of the sections of the reading course has volunteered to share her materials with me so that one won't take nearly as much work as the play course will.

They admitted part of the reason it was such a difficult situation this semester was because the President waited until the last minute to make a decision. They acknowledged that wasn't my fault, but it gave them very little time to hire someone to teach two of my classes. Since giving them lots of advance notice doesn't seem to do any good, I'm going to wait a few months to tell them I'm pregnant, considering I'm not expecting them to be happy about that news. The downside of that is I'd love to tell my students, especially my Tuesday night class. I haven't popped out very early the last two pregnancies. Hopefully the same will hold true this time so that I can wait until at least May to tell them I won't actually be able to teach the whole fall semester. I do plan on starting out full-time and teaching until I have the baby (5.5 weeks if the baby waited until his/her EDD). I am of course extremely grateful for this little life growing within me. I can't wait to hold him or her in my arms. What a miracle! In 2007 I began to question if I'd ever be a mom - through adoption or pregnancy, and now I have two children in my arms and one in my womb. Amazing! We might be moving in the next year depending on where Paul gets a job, so it might have been impossible for me to keep teaching there even if I didn't desire to be a SAHM. One advantage of me being a SAHM is that the kids won't watch as much tv. I am quite certain they watch more than I wish they would when babysitters are watching them.

It has been a very emotional week. It started with me thinking I was staring at a BFN but then that turned to a BFP but then on Wednesday night I was pretty certain I was having a miscarriage. What a relief it was to find out on Thursday that the baby is doing fine. I'm expecting more good news from tomorrow's bloodwork. I was also very nervous about my meeeting on Thursday night, and that went well in the sense that now I have a MWF schedule for the fall semester. Now if I could only find my sapphire bracelet... But if one thing had to go wrong, I'd definitely pick that to be the one!  All these pics of artwork Nadia has done lately at ladies Bible study, Cubbies, or Sunday School.