The Lecturer's Re-entry Plan: Designing an Encouraging First Week of Teaching

<p>Your energy is a teaching resource. Burn it in week two and you are coasting through weeks six to twelve, which is when the students who needed you most are still in the room.</p> <p>Plan for the dip instead of discovering it.</p> <h3>The term shape and what each phase demands</h3> <table><thead><tr> <th>Phase</th><th>Weeks</th><th>Your load</th><th>Your risk</th><th>What to do in advance</th> </tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td>Rebuild</td><td>Before term</td><td>High</td><td>Over-designing; nothing finished</td><td>Ship the spine, keep the skin</td></tr> <tr><td>Landing</td><td>1-2</td><td>Medium</td><td>Over-delivering on content</td><td>Teach less than you think, ask more</td></tr> <tr><td>Trough</td><td>3-5</td><td>High</td><td>Marking pile plus low energy</td><td>Cut workload; hold office hours; protect one morning</td></tr> <tr><td>Consolidation</td><td>6-9</td><td>Medium</td><td>Disengagement; students drift</td><td>Use the mid-term to reset expectations and re-pace</td></tr> <tr><td>Assessment</td><td>10-12</td><td>Very high</td><td>Feedback delayed, marking resentment</td><td>Publish dates in week 1; ask for help early; triage honestly</td></tr> <tr><td>Close</td><td>13-14</td><td>Medium</td><td>Burnout; reflexivity</td><td>Do the exit task; write the changes for next year while fresh</td></tr> </tbody></table> <h3>Ten protections worth taking</h3> <ul> <li><strong>Batch your marking.</strong> Three fixed blocks a week rather than daily dribble. One block of 90 focused minutes beats five interrupted ones.</li> <li><strong>Do not prepare in the session slot.</strong> Prepare in the mornings or early evenings when your attention is highest, not in the two hours before you teach.</li> <li><strong>Keep one hour a day that is not teaching.</strong> It is the hour where research, marking and admin go. If it goes, the term goes with it.</li> <li><strong>Say no to the request you can decline.</strong> A late assignment extension request, an extra reading, a guest talk in week nine. Write the policy in week one and then apply it; inconsistent boundaries are what makes a course exhausting.</li> <li><strong>Schedule the hard session early.</strong> Teach the session you most want to avoid while you still have energy for it.</li> <li><strong>Build a reusable slide spine.</strong> Make 8 to 10 slides that work every year, with two new slides per session. You are not designing from nothing in week seven.</li> <li><strong>Find one colleague.</strong> Someone to email a four-sentence summary of a bad week. This is the single highest-value professional relationship in a first term back.</li> <li><strong>Ask students for feedback early, twice.</strong> Week three and week eight. Small, specific, five questions. It converts a vague sense that things are not working into a fixable item.</li> <li><strong>Sleep before marking, not after.</strong> Marks made after 9 pm are the marks you will regret.</li> <li><strong>Plan the last week of term now.</strong> Write the exit task, the reading, and the wrap-up in the same week you write the first session.</li> </ul>