Because I worried that students might lose track of the order and relationship of different events, I needed to design a new kind of assignment for my course, Disability and Disease in U.S. History, one that focused on periodization.

In this course, there were days when we studied trends in all disabilities in chronological order, following the work of our synthetic text, Kim Nielsen’s A Disability History of the United States. We started reading about indigenous beliefs before the arrival of European explorers and then attitudes and practices during the early and later colonial eras. However, there were also days when it made more sense to focus on one topic or disability and follow that topic over the course of multiple centuries.

While planning a new course this summer, I remembered something from when I was director of Elon’s Honors Program some years ago. Our advisory committee had been pondering the requirements of the program, including how it would be determined whether students could continue in it and retain their scholarships.

We knew it shouldn’t just be a matter of taking the right courses and maintaining a minimum GPA. Instead, we wanted to know that the students were learning and growing.

Designing a new course over the summer is fun.

I’m working on a course on the History of Disability and Disease in the U.S., and a great deal of the content is new to me. I enjoy searching for possible sources. I like reading them and I’m excited about what I’m learning.

I don’t think of myself as a creative person, but I like the creative aspects of designing a course – using my imagination about what happened in the past and what the experience could be like for students.

To be honest, I enjoy the preparing more than the actual teaching. I love teaching, but it’s very intense. There are many people to be aware of and interact with, things to manage (like technology), and so much to think about (content, time, instructions, clear communication, comprehension). I get ramped up, I feel a lot of anxiety, and the experience can be exhilarating, disappointing, and/or exhausting.