board of teaching

I finished the draft of the Board of Teaching institutional report last Friday. The culmination of approximately 300 hours over the summer and fall, mostly nights and weekends, because it was done on top of my teaching load and other responsibilities. I sent it to the faculty and my Dean, and got all the feedback via email and at our faculty meeting this afternoon. I made all revisions and now I'm sleeping on it one more night. Then tomorrow, I send it off to the BoT for review. This feels even more stressful than when I emailed off my dissertation draft. There is a lot at stake, not just for me, but our whole department. I mean, another institution is the center of some big news related to their botched BoT visit. No pressure.

what is keeping me up at night

We've had some major turn-over in my department at work. Some of it was necessary. And all of it has turned out well so far. But because our previous department chair was less than effective, some balls were dropped last year. One was our accreditation visit from the board of teaching.

See, every program that recommends graduates for licensure needs to be approved every two years. But the institution itself undergoes a big accreditation site visit every seven years. Last year was supposed to be spent writing our institutional report and gathering evidence for the standards of effective practice set by the state board of teaching. But none of that happened. And since I'm the second most senior person in our department, the job fell to me. So I have five months to pull together what was supposed to take 15. I'm making good progress, but it is overwhelming to be tasked with such a high-stakes project on top of my normal teaching and committee load. But we all persevere. 

It would probably be better if I was having nightmares about my upcoming Ironman battle, but I'm not.