The pressure's on for another summer

Ah, yes so another summer of teaching Biology 121 "Ecology, Genetics and Evolution". The course which is the reason I teach.
Last year I tried a new teaching technique, what I called the Eric Mazur method but is probably better known as "Just-In-Time Teaching". The beauty of this method is the level of student engagement becomes very high and they take ownership of the course. It was the most positive teaching experience I have ever had. It was very demanding, but it was worth it. To teach this way you have to have both carrots and sticks to convince the students you really mean what you say.
They had to identify before class what they didn't understand and tell me about it on the VISTA discussion board. I would read what they say and spend almost all classtime on working through what they found tricky. I did not stand and lecture, I just gave them my complete notes filled with many questions to test their understanding. Just because they didn't ask me about something in class didn't many I couldn't ask them about it on an exam. I could and they had to realize it. I think what helped was that I gave them an exam already in the first week so they could see I meant what I said.
Anyway, I will be able to use a lot of my material from last year but I am much less ready to teach at this point than I was last year at this time. It's because I have been in job limbo for so long, having just become a tenure-track instructor. I have spent the last month to month and a half negotiating my salary and working with dept heads trying to figure out what my teaching duties will be. Now as all the dust shakes loose not much has really changed for me yet but that's ok. Not knowing what I was going to be teaching was really getting to me though and I kept wondering about the new molecular lab course and what their time line was and it was making me twitchy. I hadn't even been told if I really would be teaching 121 this summer or not so finally I just told them I was and would be going on vacation afterward and the course planning chips could fly where they would.
My first two tasks are to nail down the course outline and clean up the VISTA site so that Angela Lam, our VISTA person can enroll the students in the new site. Fortunately I brought my dinner with me so I think I can accomplish this evening.
I would like to nail down my first three lectures over the weekend. Then on Monday revise the lectures for the rest of the week. On Tuesday I would like to write the introductory quiz. Whew, good luck.