Motivated for the new school year

I’m feeling awfully spry going into the new school year. I’ve used basically the same course plan for the past three years. My very first year of Human Geography was a disaster, and I thought I would never teach the course again. When I was in the position again years later, I ended up borrowing and slowly modifying district resources through the first semester rather than trust myself. The materials never really sat right, but I realized I wasn't enjoying the trajectory of the course. Why was I doing this? I knew what I had to do: I locked in and designed my course from scratch, starting with the spring semester, staying barely a day ahead of my students sometimes. It was a mad dash. Over the summer, I built a plan for textbook reading, weekly quizzes that practiced their test skills (open book notes if they were keeping up on it), and dedicated writing workshops. Then I designed the fall semester of the course with the same mania as I had designed the second semester - dancing a…