School did end up being cancelled today, but I didn't get a chance to read much Frank O'Hara. Instead I did a bunch of work that I should have finished over the weekend. Second semester is looming, and apparently I think that if I ignore it, it will go away or something? I don't know. At least now I've got syllabi sent to print and that first week is hammered out. Also, I have a concrete To Do list to tackle this week, which is better than that nebulous "Hm, I'd better start thinking of what I'm going to do" thing.

I'm excited and nervous to start teaching Creative Writing again. The first time you teach something you have this ready-made excuse for things that you screw up, and it's pretty easy not to beat yourself up about every little hiccup. But now it feels like the bar has been raised. It will probably be nice and not terrible at all. I just have to wait and see.

World Lit will be a repeat too, but I'm changing almost all of my assessments, so the focus and timing of the daily lessons will be different. It won't be much like repeating the stuff I used last year, but not having to actually sit down and read each of the novels should ameliorate some of the pain of my novel-heavy work load this semester. Besides the three in World Lit, English 11 will be reading five novels during the next 18 weeks (if they whine I'm going to tell them about the novel-a-week classes we English majors relished in undergrad), two of which I've never read at all, and one I haven't picked up since tenth grade. So part of my productive afternoon today was spent chipping away at the first few chapters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which we will be starting exactly two weeks from today. If I can maintain the two-week cushion all semester for all four of my preps, I tell you hwhat [sic], I will be one happy girl come June. If if if.