Gearing up

So I participated in one of my distance university courses (no, that doesn't sound right - the courses aren't from a place called "Distance U") tonight, and I was advised by someone who knows to approach my supervisor (the advisor is my supervisor's former supervisor) about my caseload. So I've decided that tomorrow, I will do just that. And in an accurate show of how confident I am about the decision, I've decided to e-mail her about it.

Here's the situation (I don't mean to sound whiny; I'll try to simply make my point): I have a caseload of 21 visually impaired students. Three of them are braille users, nine of them have direct service (ranging from 1-8 hours/week) and the others are monthly consults. I was thinking about it, and I really think it is a disservice to the students to have one teacher doing a poor job because there is simply not enough time to do a decent one. Kind of like having a classroom with too many students. But having to travel up to an hour to see some of the students and needing time to check e-mail, make phone calls, and prepare materials - it's just not possible to do a good job. And it's difficult to say that something is beyond my capabilities.

My day started off on a fabulous note - I made my first student of the morning cry. OK, that's not entirely accurate. She didn't get her way and ended up crying and still not getting her way. But that kind of set the tone. The afternoon did end up a lot better, though - one of the students I really enjoy working with was having a great day, I felt somewhat prepared, and things just went well. Oh, except for the fire drill that took place midway through the session and I didn't know for certain where to go and talked the whole way out of the school building and forgot to close the door behind us when we left the room we were working in. At least it was a drill.