Top Teaching Thoughts: Prep For New Semester

It's still relatively early in the summer, but I am already seeing some pieces about how academics use summer time- for book projects, revising articles, travel, presenting at conferences. Some people like the free time. Others miss the structure of the semester/year. The routine.
There are some great conversations on #acriwri about summer habits of academics.
I used to use my Teacher's Daybook to organize my life but Heineman stopped printing hard copies so I switched to Passion Planner this last year, and jumped on the bandwagon when they offered this month an academic (August to August) Passion Planner and can't wait until it gets here next month (although Jim Burke should totally work with them to bring back Teacher's Daybook).

I look at my monthly due dates/commitments, then I write down any absolute deadlines for articles, #DevilDiss chapters, etc. I then backtrack these deadlines, marking days when I need to work. So each day gets a project and whatever it says on the calendar I work on- whether I feel like it or not. This means that everything gets done by deadline. It also means that when I take weekends off I don't feel guilty because all my obligations are being met.

For people who are working this summer, and are getting ready to prep for the coming semester, I thought I'd collect all my teaching posts in one post for easy reference.

• What College Professors Could Learn From High School Teachers 1: It's Not Them It's You and Accessibility 
• Some ways to bridge the gap, first in what I hope is an ongoing series 
• Starting the New Semester
• Color Coding, Planners, and Ward books
• Prepping For the New Semester as Grad Students
• Blackboard, Moodle, Favorite Online Teaching Tools, and Online Instructional Design 
• Reflections on Teaching, Student Evals and Plans for Next Year 
• Electronic Grading 
• Using shortcuts in Word to comment on student work
• Please Stop Shaming Your Students 
• Teacher education  
• Teachers Resource Manual
• My Judgey Tangent Post About How TAs should dress (to teach and get a job) 
• Teaching Styles and Philosophies and the Gender Issue 
• The Advice Students Need (that no one seems to tell them)
• Today, I'd probably change to tone of some of this, but the focus on encouraging/teaching students how to be their own advocates is key  

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