My day job is teaching at the local community college. I teach databases and software development in a Career and Technical Education (vo-tech) program. Normally, this should mean that I have the summer off to get some writing done. Things don't always work as intended.
A CTE program is intended to teach the students for two years and then send them into the workforce. Our particular does an excellent job of this. We can't meet employer demand for employees and all of my students find good work. This is a good thing. The software development we teach is business oriented and very much "applied" rather than "theoretical".
Unfortunately, the information technology (I. T.) world changes quickly. The course for which I am responsible underwent significant changes in the past year. That means new books, updated software, and rewriting the curriculum to match the changes. While my liberal arts colleagues were lounging and reading the few new developments in their academic areas, I had to work my backside off.
Every course has Student Learning Outcomes, also called Course Objectives. These are the things the student is supposed to be able to do upon successful completion of the course. Sometimes, these will be broken further into sub-objectives in order to provide greater detail. To make sure that the course is doing its job, there must be assessments. You assess student success in the course through assignments and tests. When done properly set up, there is a direct map from every assignment or test to a specific course objective.
That's for a normal course. When teaching software development, you must write every program that is part of an assignment. If you are going to make the students do it, you have to do it first to make sure the latest version of the development environment works. I wrote a lot of software and designed a lot of databases this summer.
Another issue with teaching CTE is finding books. Many college books are written for students in a Computer Science program. These texts tend to be a little more theoretical, are math and science heavy, and cost a fortune. The other books available are for absolute beginners or for experienced programmers who are just trying to pick up a new skill. The best books for my students are often missing topics or the topics are presented in a less than useful way. I wrote a lot of supplemental materials this summer.
The result of all of this is that I did very little writing of novels, short stories, poems, or anything else. There have been large gaps between my "weekly" posts to this site. It has gotten very annoying. Will it continue to be annoying?
In a week, the new semester starts. I'll teach five sections and help adjunct (temporary, part-time) instructors with a couple more. I have two night classes of four hours each. Those classes end at nine forty-five at night, after which I can drive home, try to sleep, and start morning classes at ten o'clock the next day. Then there is the grading.
I'm guessing that I will still be too exhausted and busy to do a lot of writing. My psychological health will suffer for it. My writing skills will suffer for it. I just have to make sure my students don't suffer for it.
There's always next summer. It's only about nine months away.