School has already started

I'm already two and a half weeks into the semester when most colleges and universities aren't starting until next week or the week after. And let me tell you, this has been the most tumultuous start of the semester that I've ever experienced. We have a new course director who's in charge of almost every aspect of the class other than the actual teaching that I do inside the classroom. He had been directed by the department head to make the class more challenging, to incorporate critical thinking into the instruction, and to emphasize anthropology and sociology in addition to psychology. So other members of the department assisted in writing a whole new supplementary text to replace the first chapter and by which to conclude the course. Needless to say, I have felt very challenged to teach in areas outside my expertise. There has been so much upheaval with the class that I have been unclear on how to prepare the students for the quizzes. I suppose this confusion has been affecting other instructors as well because the overall average for the first quiz was 75% and the second quiz was 65%.

Above all this confusion and frustration on my part was that two instructors had to take emergency leave for a funeral and surgery. The rest of us were struggling to cover their classes. I was teaching every day and had caught the cold virus running rampant among the students. It was so stressful. At least I don't have to cover additional classes next week; other instructors who don't teach our course have pitched in to help. But, I was rudely woken up this morning from a terrible teaching anxiety dream. I dreamed I had come back from a conference and was unprepared to teach. The students were disrespectful and complained; the AV equipment was on the fritz, turning off and on at the drop of a hat. Ugh! I hate teaching dreams! And I needed just a couple more hours of sleep to catch up on lost sleep from last week. I was so stressed out last week that I would wake up at 2:30am, 3:30am, or 4am many nights, unable to fall back asleep before I had to get up at 5am (I teach the first class of the day, way to early for me.) I'm really hoping things will settle down soon.