I'm Just Visiting This Planet

I teach a least one class each day, Monday through Thursday. The calendar this year has been very strange. First, because Labor Day was so late we started classes on Wednesday, September 2. I can only remember starting classes before Labor Day once before (and I have no memory of what year it was, only that I was still a doctoral student, so we're talking late 90's). Second, the first Monday was a Labor Day, so Monday classes met on Friday of the first week of school. Since I teach two classes that meet twice a week on Monday and Wednesday, the first week of school I taught Wednesday, Thursday (my regularly scheduled Thursday class) and Friday. The week of Labor Day I taught on Tuesday (my regularly scheduled Tuesday class), Wednesday and Thursday. Okay, now let's go to the week of September 14, the week after Labor Day.  Monday was Rosh Hashanah and we didn't have classes. So I taught Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday again.  And that brings us to the week that just e

Happy Labor Day weekend! We started school last week and that makes this Labor Day very different from other Labor Day weekends. This is "just" another three day weekend. Or is it? Last week Barry Schwartz wrote a piece in The New York Times, Rethinking Work . In this piece he says, "In the face of longstanding evidence that routinization and an overemphasis on pay lead to worse performance in the workplace, why have we continued to tolerate and even embrace that approach to work?" One might go further and say that not only have we tolerated and embraced that approach to work, but the true horror is that we are now bringing that approach to education. I am appalled at the lack of "soul" in most workplaces. I am luckier than most, I know, because I have quite a bit of control over my work. I bring my "whole self" to work, and that includes my compassion, caring and "soul." I am also at the end of my career, not the beginning. I h