Year 2 found me exhausted and a bit wiser. My personal mother of invention was the realization that my 20 paid hours a week had turned into 80 hours. Simple math solves the amount of unpaid work I was doing (60!) but how would I keep the pace if I was already burning the candle to a waxy nub?

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Split the work. I was determined to double my output with half the energy expended.

Which teachers would match up or be able to go off their own clock/class schedule? I would cast a large net and ask them all. I sent an email with a link to an Outreach page with other links to examples to get the other teachers thinking.

What did I learn from spending an Xmas holiday fine-tooth combing through students webpages before posting them to the website? You cannot spell check enough for everyone else. Sooo as my creed states: You must ask for help from all corners and comers. I dangled the carrot; 1 point per mistake found, telling the contestant/students that there were 10 known mistakes. So an easter egg hunt turned into a chance at grade redemption for many.

One student, bless his heart found over 30 mistakes I could not see. This was part of my interdiscpline creed and put the students to work.

Translation for the single french speaking student.

It came as a surprise, that student's grades were not to be posted in a public forum. One of the few quizzes I gave tapped into my desktop publishing and limited spreadsheet skills.

A simple calendar helped to ground me realistically in what could be accomplished between holidays & vacations. It also made my master plans known to the students 24/7. Even when they did not see me for a week, in theory they knew what was expected of them for next classtime, and what to expect from the one class a week they did attend. In other words, no excuses.

I will admit my plans were ambitious to a fault. My second year of teaching got bogged down with spell checking for the web pages. Too many iterations that dragged on for weeks. Because of the staggered nature of the classes, some students were finished and ready to move on, while others were overseas.