Crash and Burn

Sometimes, you write an assignment and think it's pretty good.  You do prep work in class, and you think it went well.

And then the assignment comes in, and you despair.  That's where I am now.

Here's the asignment:

Research Question and Project - We'll work on developing research questions together. You'll write a research question and turn it in (yes, typed). Then, once I've approved your question, you'll use the MLA bibliography to find one essay that answers your question to some extent. You'll get a copy of that essay (make a hardcopy). Read the essay carefully, and write a one page summary/response to the essay. The first part of your summary/response should summarize the essay (identifying the thesis statement). The second part of your response should explain how the essay answers your research question.


Make sure to cite your essay. When you turn in the assignment, staple your summary/response to the front of the essay. Make sure to highlight the thesis statement (which may well be more than one sentence) on the original essay.

We'll practice for this assignment with the Traub essay, so you should have a good sense of how to do the assignment and what's expected.

We worked with an essay by Valerie Traub, and talked about how to find the thesis, summarize it, and what sorts of evidence it uses and assumptions it makes.

We worked throughout the earlier part of the semester on writing research questions, and I read and gave feedback on their final question.
 
But I surely didn't do something right, because so far a fair number of these papers aren't doing what I was hoping for at all.  Some people chose bits of books rather than essays.  Some chose book reviews; I'm guessing they didn't recognize them as book reviews.  Some didn't really summarize.
 
I either need to revise and rework the assignment extensively or drop it.  I like the idea of the assignment, though.  I want students to read a work of criticism or historical research carefully for what it is, rather than to quote mine in an attempt to find something that "agrees" with their own argument.  But boy howdy, this assignment did not do the trick very well.

Bardiac Gets a New Roof

I've blogged a little recently about getting a new roof.  And now it's getting done.  They started on Tuesday, and I think (hope!) they'll finish up tomorrow.  (They can't work on it when it's going to rain and storm, so that adds time.)

Here's a before picture from the side of the garage.  You can see that the color is sort of browny-gray, and the shingles have this specific look, and they're not in good shape.

And here's the same area, from a different angle.  You'll notice that it's a different color and a really different shingle pattern.

At this point, it would really help if you said that the new color is a great choice, because I don't have a lot of confidence in my choices about such things.

Hopping

I'm having extended office hours today, and it's been hopping.  I've lost count of how many students have come in, but I'm probably onto my toes, or nearly.

A few have come in for specific help, some for reassurance, and one who's lost.  The lost student started later than zie might have on the assignment, and it shows.

I was hoping to get some grading done, but there have been too many students in and out.  I did read two grad student pieces, and sent each an email response. 

And now to some serious grading.  I have just over another hour of office hour scheduled, but I think it's slowing down.  There's a short break right now, anyway.

Is your semester an uphill finish, a group sprint, or a sprint from the breakaway?

(And yes, the Giro was streaming in my office quietly, which caused nearly every student to ask if I understood the Italian commentary.  I don't get much, but I get names and the occasional important words.)

Expectations

I was having lunch and a conversation with a couple of colleagues in out lunch room this afternoon, when a student stopped in and asked if someone had office hours.  He explained that he needed to have someone proofread his portfolio right away before he sent it off, and the writing center didn't have an open slot, so he needed one of us to do it.  None of us jumped up to offer to proofread, but we did suggest that he talk to the professor he'd written it for.  That, it seemed, wasn't possible.  None of us recognized the name he said, so it wasn't someone any of us knew.

And off he went.

I later heard that he walked into another prof's office and put the portfolio on her desk, expecting her to proofread it.  She declined.

I hope he doesn't get to fill out a satisfaction assessment form, because we'll all fail on the "doing everything we can to help all NWU students succeed" part.

Grading Desperation

I'm grading papers, and they're desperate sometimes, and I'm desperate, too.

I need to remind myself that when students are writing to learn, their writing shows it.  It's painful for both of us, I'm sure.

If you don't teach writing (or music), you might think that once someone has learned to write a basic sentence, s/he will always be able to produce a basic sentence.  But that's not how it works.  If a student is grappling with really difficult concepts or learning new material, and trying to write about the new stuff at the same time, basic sentence writing sort of goes to hell. 

You can take a perfectly able, wonderful, great student writer, and send them to grad school where they'll study Derrida, and while they're figuring out how to write about Derrida, their writing will go to hell.  It's not Derrida's fault, nor the students, that's just how writing is.

If I give my students a short writing assignment to tell me about their family or something, they'll all write pretty much in good sentences.  The sentences will work as sentences.  But ask them to learn about something really new and difficult and write about it, and most students will have trouble, and their sentences will demonstrate the trouble.

In an ideal world, the students would take that horrid draft and go to the writing center, come to my office hours, or just get really good help peer editing, and that would help them fix the sentence level problems.  But, since the students are still (at this level) learning about whatever the topic is, they find revision incredibly difficult.  The ones who visited my office a lot with this paper turned out really solid work, unsurprisingly.

But it's also really important to remember that writing about something you're learning is a great way to solidify the learning (just as trying to teach someone about something helps you learn it), so we can't just ask students to write only about stuff that's comfortable.

Still, reading and grading these makes me really want some cookies.

Happy Monday!

XKCD is especially brilliant this morning!

I put out an orange half on Sunday morning, replacing the mangled and very rained on one before, and was rewarded in about half an hour by seeing my first oriole (Baltimore, male) of the season.  I saw the same or another male oriole in the afternoon, and both were going after the orange with vigor!

I sent off an abstract to MMLA, and was rewarded by having it accepted with alacrity.  I'm guessing they haven't had many submissions to this specific subgroup?  Anyway, those who will be at MMLA in November, let's do a bloggy meet up!

Tomorrow, the roofers and insulation folks come to work on my house.

And it's the last week of classes, so finishing up time.  And grading time.  Then more grading time.  So much grading time!

Feeling the Failure

In writing classes, I spend a lot of time talking about and having students practice a couple pre-writing strategies.  We do these in class, because I think they're important and I'm pretty sure that students won't actually spend the time to do them on their own unless they've been convinced by doing them already that they're worth doing.

Today, we discussed strategies for preparing for and writing essay exams.  You might think in the context of a writing class where students have discussed and used pre-writing strategies a lot that students would mention something about using pre-writing strategies to help prepare for and write essay exams.  You would be wrong, at least based on the limited evidence of my class.  I'm feeling the failure.

On one level, of course, I could try to argue that college students have a really difficult time using what they've learned in once class in other contexts.  It's really difficult to do, and students tend not to do it easily or well.

But I'm still feeling the failure.  So, yes, I tried to convince them that actually using the strategies we've been practicing all semester might be useful. 

And I'm really feeling the failure.

Maybe freewriting really isn't useful to most students.

Or maybe they don't take what they learn in one situation and apply it in other situations.

I want to run away and join a circus (where my snow shoveling skills may well apply in other situations).

Summer Plans

We're a few short weeks away from the end of the semester now, and things are heating up.  I'm working on an abstract to submit to the Midwest MLA.  This one's an abstract on a US author, so I'm a little out of my league about it.  But I think the basic idea is good.

Yesterday, I had another guy out to do an energy evaluation of the house prior to all the work of roofing and adding insulation.  I had to have another guy because the insulation company says that the only way to apply for a rebate is to have someone through this specific program out.  They didn't charge me, but I'm sure it's in the total somehow.

This guy, he irritated me.  He was one of those pat the shoulder of the idiot woman types.  And he kept suggesting more and more work.  I'm on edge anyway, since I've dipped pretty substantially into savings to have this work done.  (I know that's what the savings are for, that's why I've been saving, but it's a substrantial dip.  On the other hand, it's so cool that I can sell mutual fund shares via the internet and have the money show up in my bank account.)

Between the house and the paycuts around here, I'm applying for several project things on campus over the summer based on meeting my interests and getting some extra money.

So far I have one confirmed, have applied for another, and am in the process of applying for a third thing.  It's going to be busy!

Disappointed

Administratively, we're bouncing from one problem to the next around here, while things in the classroom are moving inexorably* towards finals week.

There's an administrative person I like.  There, I said it.  We've been known to have a cup of coffee on occasion, before he moved up into the headier reaches.  There were hints of history before my time, but he's a smart, witty, nominally feminist person.

And now I hear he's been having an affair with someone who reports to him.  And that someone?  Yeah, I like her, too, what little I know of her.  We're a tiny community.

What I heard is just that, something I heard.  I don't have real knowledge of it, don't have occular proof, as it were.  But it does fit with the history.

So I'm disappointed.  I'm not the biggest defender of marriage.  Heck, I think we should do away with the governmental privileges associated with marriage.**  But, and I know you're all thinking how naive and stupid I am, I think that if you are married and don't specifically have an open marriage, you should avoid having sex with other people.  There, I've said it.  Keep your pants zipped unless you're with your partner.   Now, I don't precisely know the details of said administrator's marriage arrangements, but I know his partner, and yes, I'm assuming it's not an open marriage.  But maybe I'm wrong.

It reminds me, though, of how much energy and effort get wasted because people can't keep their pants zipped, and how often I'm disappointed by powerful (in a given context) men who can't keep their pants zipped.  Clinton's presidency would have been a different thing if he'd kept his pants zipped, wouldn't it?

I also realize that I've lost much respect for the male administrator, but not as much for the female partner.  In my old fashioned way, I think people with more power have more responsibility.  Somewhere I read recently (Tenured Radical, now that I look, in her review of some books about JFK) about the fine line betwen sexual consent and sexual harassment; that gets at the responsibility, I think.

In other disappointing news, I started teaching The Tempest on Friday, and started by putting up some headlines about it being banned in Arizona, and asking students what's so dangerous about this play that it's banned in Arizona.  It was a good start to the class, but damned, Arizona, banning ethnic studies is utterly inane.  Banning Shakespeare, though?  The good news is that banning Shakespeare is likely to make people who wouldn't question banning ethnic studies question that ban.  The bad news is that it takes banning Shakespeare to make some people question a ban on ethnic studies.  That's called "cultural capital," folks.  And it sucks that ethnic studies doesn't have as much cultural capital as that dead white guy.  I love Shakespeare in all sorts of ways, but learning about people, all sorts of people from all sorts of places is actually more important in the big picture.  Go take an ethnic studies class!



*I originally spelled this "inexhoribly," not as some witty thing, but because my spelling is positively medieval.

**Though I don't think we're going to do that, and if we're not, I think two consenting adults blah blah. But yeah, I resent that married folks around here get up to another 9k in untaxed benefits. And oh so many non-financial benefits.

There's Got to be a Better Way

Here's a typical classroom layout in my building.  The student seating is either at those small, uncomfortable student desks with foldy desk parts or at bigger tables.  The tables are hard to move around, but give students more room for spreading out stuff, which is great for writing classes especially.  Even for lit classes, it's helpful to have room for notes and a text, and the little foldy desks are pretty tiny.  Our classes are usually packed.  We may have a few empty chairs, but few, so students are against both walls and all across (except for the walking space between big desks, which I've sort of indicated here.  (Think of the "student seating" as either indicating several longish desks in rows or lots of small foldy desks.)

Our building was built in the 60s, I think, and the powers that be have done a lot to update and improve classes within the structure that we have.  Since I've been here, we've added desks in some rooms, and also added computer stations, internet access, projectors which work with computers, document display, and a big screen so that you can see stuff from across the room.  The computer station is set up so that a person can stand at the computer and see the screen, which means it's about 3-4 feet tall with the monitor in place. 

All this technology is great in so many ways.  I regularly use the document display and computer stuff.

But except in very rare cases, I don't do powerpoints.  Instead, I write on the board.  I think writing on the board is better for some sorts of information.  It works better, for example, when you're asking students to contribute ideas and want to be open to their order of ideas and to ideas you hadn't thought of.  Yes, I could write on a small piece of paper and use the document display, but the board seems more natural to me (though natural is a crazy word to use for such an artificial environment). 

And now you grasp the problem: the red area indicates the board space that's really usable, that's not blocked from access by the huge screen, by student seating, or not blocked from view by the computer monitor.  (The classes that are more horizontally oriented have better board access, but a lot is still blocked.)

What I'd like to know is how your spaces work, and if you have the same problems or has someone figured out a better way to have all the computer and high tech stuff while still preserving access to board space?  And if you have, can you tell me what it looks like, please?

Thanks!

*Blogger will no longer let me change the size or location of inserted pictures.  Bleargh!

Writing: What We Really Need

We need a book for folks who've never had any training in teaching writing to help them teach writing.

We all sort of know this, that a lot of people who get PhDs in English never took a composition class and never had any training in teaching composition.  As a group, we tended to be the folks who figured out writing more or less pretty early and found it fairly easy, and cruised through the writing part of college.  We also probably loved reading (a likely contributor to the ease with which we picked up writing).

And so, we're exactly the wrong people to teach writing on some level.  We don't struggle with writing the way a lot of students do, and we haven't had to work through steps to getting writing projects done.  We probably struggled with the dissertation, but that's a different thing than struggling with a three page paper on whether you support campus efforts to stop using cafeteria trays.

If there were a book on teaching writing for folks who are suddenly teaching writing in college, what would it look like?  (Is there such a book already?)

Audience:  for English and related fields: grad students, faculty members, others?  What about people who might be getting involved in writing across the discipline or writing within the discipline?


Background stuff, short and positioned, on the current thoughts on "correctness" and writing.  Also, something about how non-linear writing development is, and how utterly crappily we all write when we're using writing to learn difficult, complex, new stuff.

Assignment strategies, specifically for writing assigments that will work well for a college writing class, including research type assignments, and also a variety of writing assignments for writing in and across disciplines.

Grading strategies, omg, there must be a better way than what I've done and it must not involve a machine.

Pre-writing, both strategies and a why do this section: freewriting, listing, bubble-mapping (call them what you will), summarizing.

Teaching critical reading skills, I can't even begin to list this stuff this morning.

Teaching research skills

Proofreading strategies


Should the book include syllabus writing strategies?  Building skills stuff?  What else?

What Do You Do?

Not long ago, a student came into my office and asked for help getting started on a paper for my class.  This is a fairly advanced student, and a really solid student.

I started by suggesting free-writing, and then asked what zie'd learned in hir first year writing class, the one I struggle mightily to teach.   Nope, zie hadn't done free-writing in the first year writing class, but zie was familiar with free-writing from other classes.  So I suggested free-writing about each of the sources or passages zie thought would be important, labelling each, and then using them to create a bubble map.  Nope, zie hadn't done bubble maps in hir first year writing class, but was familiar with them.

I didn't ask who'd taught this person's first year writing class, but zie said that a number of other instructors here have asked basically the same question of the student and been surprised to learn zie hadn't learned these writing strategies. 

My question is, what the heck do you do with a writing class if you aren't teaching them to use brainstorming and other writing strategies?

I don't think I have all the strategies, nor do I use them all well, but I do tend to have my writing students do freewriting in class (because it's the only way I believe I can convince them to actually do it until they learn that it actually works for them, and I know it doesn't work equally well for everyone).  We also do listing, peer responding (to lists and other pre-writing as well as to drafts), bubble mapping, thesis brainstorming, and topic sentence writing.

I know one of my colleagues spends time diagramming sentences, and would probably be shocked to learn that I not only don't diagram sentences, but that I've never even learned to diagram sentences.  (Is that shocking?)

What do you do in writing classes to help your students write?

What are you shocked to learn that I don't do?

And finally, when you're writing, do you use pre-writing strategies at all?

So Tired

I'm just feeling worn.

Today was a non-teaching day for me, but there are student presentations on campus, so I went in to be supportive, planning to have lunch with a visiting faculty member and some colleagues, and then go to presentations from 1 to 4.

Instead, just before 11 am, I got a desperate email from a colleague who's responsible for much of the organization asking me to come to a presentation since there was no one else in the room but her.  So I ran over, literally, ran.  (I'm a lousy runner, but there you go.  At least I can run across campus still.)  By the time I got there, two other people had gotten there, but I stayed.  And I tried to ask a couple good questions. 

That seemed to be my role today: trying to ask good questions.  Unfortunately, I failed at the "good" part, since most of the presentations were on 19th century lit, so I'm not as up on stuff.  So the questions I tended to ask were mostly beyond the students' experience.  I wasn't trying to be mean, but I think I seemed that way.  And since I was sometimes the only person trying to ask a question, it probably didn't feel great to the students.

Last year, I had one class do presentations in groups, and had ten groups.  It was overwhelming.  This year, I didn't do that.  I haven't figured out how to give an assignment with two options, one a presentation and one not, in a way that is about the same amount and level of work for students and which I can grade well and fairly.  But that would be ideal.

There's a bit of disagreement about the student presentation program.   No faculty member wants to take it on (and the current person is ready to be done after several years of good service).  But some people have strong ideas about how it should be run.  Unfortunately, they aren't people who've had classes do presentations (in recent years) or who attend presentations, but they have strong opinions and are very critical of what's been done of late.

After I finally got back to my office, I started printing out an assignment that students had turned in electronically.  Along the way, I noticed that about one third don't have names on the assignment.  Now, I know from the students' point of view, they know who they are and don't think everything needs a name.  But from my point of view, well, I send stuff to the printer, and then I go to the office where the printer lives and pick it all up, and I don't want to go back and have to figure out which person attached which file for the whole class.  (I won't.  I'll grade them, and ask students to claim them and put their names on when we meet next, and then I'll collect those again and record them.)

But at this point, I feel defeated by this place in all sorts of ways.  (There's all sorts of craziness coming out of the fort and capital, all of which adds to the feelings of defeat.)

Aunt for the Win!

I usually have a lot of difficulty thinking of good presents for my niece and nephew. They're middle class enough to get all of what they need and most of what they want, and don't seem to have a lot of desires for stuff just to have stuff.

It's actually a lovely combination, but tough for an aunt.

My niece has recently decided that she wants to go to a certain university. It's a fine school.

So I got her a t-shirt with the logo and name on it for her birthday. She found an excuse to put it on last evening (I got here after dinner and gave her her present after dinner). And this morning she had it on again when we went out.

I win at being an aunt!

Da Vinci

We're having discussions these days about how we can give our students "integrative learning"* experiences. One model, of course, has instructors from two fields working together on some level to show how two fields speak to each other, think about a common issue, etc. That can be an expensive proposition if we're thinking of two instructors team teaching or coordinating two small classes. And expensive isn't something that happens here, especially of late.

Another model has one instructor doing something "integrative" in a given course. That's cheap, because the school only has to pay one person.

And, of course, cheap is where we're aiming.

Yesterday, I was at a meeting where a faculty member suggested that since Leonardo had demonstrated expertise in all sorts of fields, we should be able to, too. She also suggested that she'd had a professor once who talked all about the relationship between Shakespeare and Delacroix, and how influential that professor had been on her own learning.

You may be thinking that I was extraordinarily polite in not interrupting to say that Shakespeare and Delacroix couldn't have had a relationship unless Shakespeare had come back from the dead, but mostly I wasn't able to understand what she said well (I have difficulty with her accent; I know this is my failing, so I keep my mouth shut).

I think learning to think in different ways, thinking creatively, and certainly understanding different fields is really important. I'm guessing I've taken more in depth courses in vastly different fields than most of my colleagues. But I also know how well I know my own field, and how little and outdated my knowledge of other fields is.

And I greatly respect other peoples' knowledge.

Now, English lit folks are notoriously unchaste when it comes to dabbling all over. We read psych, anthro, history, you name it. But we don't read in those fields the way experts in the fields do, nor do we read the same things, nor do we keep up in the field. We still teach Freud, for gosh sakes. Seriously, the last time anyone in Psych actually took Freud seriously was sometime around 1953, wasn't it? We still read Levi-Strauss as though he's the latest, coolest thing. And that's sort of okay, so long as we think about what we're doing in terms of teaching literature, perhaps. But if we think we have anything useful to say about thinking in the field of psychology or anthropology, we're probably wrong.

And imagining that we faculty folks here at a regional comprehensive university can somehow reproduce the multi-disciplinary learning of one of the top 10 or so minds in western Europe in the past thousand years? Well, I'm sure as heck not there.

I'm frustrated, too, because some of these folks talk about how exciting and liberating it is to teach all these wonderful new courses, and I can't think of much more exciting and liberating course to teach than Shakespeare, or Chaucer, or a seminar on early modern left earlobe studies. And then I secretly feel sorry for them that they don't get to teach Shakespeare and stuff, and don't seem to be endlessly amazed and fascinated by the stuff they do teach. Shhhhh. Don't tell or they'll all decide they're expert enough to teach Shakespeare and how Hamlet is all about the Oedipal.


* "Integrative learning" is the latest catchphrase here, along with "operational outcomes" or something. It's a way of trying to talk about interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary and just two or more fields of study somehow having something to do with each other without actually carefully thinking about how or what we're talking about.

Teaching Comp Frustrations

My writing students are working on a big essay. It's a pretty good chunk of their grade and we've spent a good amount of time on it in class, brainstorming, bubble-mapping, talking about sources, and so on. They peer edited together yesterday, so today we worked with their peer editing responses to improve the papers. And then we worked on some other improvement stuff.

For example, I asked everyone to go through their essay and note when they'd used someone else's idea(s) or word(s) by marking in the margin. Then I asked them to check for each one that they'd introduced it appropriately and that it was in the works cited section (and to put a check by it there). Then they could see that everything in the works cited section actually had been cited in the paper easily, and they'd made sure they'd introduced sources well.

Good, right?

The thing is, the people who've written really strong drafts and who've cited sources have a lot to check, and it takes them a while to check stuff, revise source introductions and such. So they're busy.

The people who haven't done a strong draft look at their two or three pages and finish in a moment or two. Then they sit in the room looking bored. Because they don't have as much to check, they seem to think that they've got no more work to do. And mostly, they're likely to be wrong.

I can't seem to figure out how to warn them effectively with a general statement about people with fuller drafts taking longer, and those who finish quickly might have more to do overall. And making a more specific statement seems like I'm picking on them.

Kerfluffle

Wow, sometimes stuff comes out of someone over at the fort that sets us all in a kerfluffle, and that happened today.

I was mostly busy trying desperately to finish grading a stack, but I was just as happy not to worry too much about the stuff I can't do much about.

Interesting times around here. Wish us well.

Ugh

This cold sucks. What's stupid, of course, is that it's a little cold, probably not even all that bad as a cold, and certainly something like one tenth of a percent as bad as being really, seriously sick.

I haven't slept a whole night in over a week.

Remember the movie Alien, when the alien comes out of the guy's chest? Yeah, I feel like the alien is up my nose. And not in a good way.

My niece mentioned that whooping cough is going around her school (not at all near me), so I started googling symptoms of whooping cough. I don't think I have it, and I sure hope I don't, because 4-6 weeks of this (only worse) would be truly miserable.

I'd love to crawl back into bed, except I wouldn't actually sleep, and it wouldn't make me better (or I would have gotten better over the weekend when that's pretty much what I did with my life). I am trying to be really careful not to share my germs.

That Time of the Semester Thou Mayst in Me Behold

My office is a mess. I get cranky when my office is a mess, and need to take some time and clean it up.

Mostly it's a mess because there are stacks of books that I've used or referred to but not reshelved appropriately. And it's time. I've also gotten a few new books that need to find their proper place.

Then there are stacks of papers, revisions, research stuff, committee work. I have a bad stacking habit. The thing is, when something I stack will get done and moved on (for example, a stack of papers gets graded, recorded, and handed back), then the temporarly stack isn't a problem. It's the stacks that stick around for very long that are a problem.

This weekend's task list looks like this:

1 big stack for my seminar
1 smallish stack of revisions
1 smallish stack for my seminar
1 play to read for the first time every (I know! What was I thinking?)
Prep that same play for discussion

I've got an idea for a paper, but it's out of my usual comfort zone. Still, it's an idea. I went to the library yesterday and got a couple of books by the same author whose one text I want to look at. I'm going to read through them, just to make sure I'm familiar with what the author's written, and to check if there's something similar happening in these other works that should be included in my argument. Fortunately, these works don't involve learning a new language or anything. And the writer is pretty readable.

Oddly, this writer reminds me in some ways of a blogger whose work I enjoy (but who isn't on my sidebar, though maybe I should add the blogger?). Except I find the blogger more successful as a writer, though the blogger isn't a professional writer in the same way.

It looks like a good weekend ahead. It may rain, in which case I won't mow. And there's a bike race on (Amstel Gold), and I think I'll be able to watch a live feed of it if I get up early on Sunday.

If you Give a House a Repair

Do you know those kids' books, If You Give a Moose a Muffin and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?

If not, what you need to know is that if you give a moose a muffin, then he'll want something else, and if you give him the something else, then he'll want something more, and if you give him the something more, then he'll want another thing, and if you give him other thing, then he'll want yet another thing, and so on. It's like the old for want of a nail the horse was lost thing, except it's backwards; that is, the thread isn't about lack, but about having/getting something, and that causing further desire.

My house is feeling like that lately:

I have a deck, but it has problems, so I asked the handyman to come look at it and think of some ideas, and so on. He did. And while he was doing that, he noticed (quite rightly), that the roof is in really bad shape.

So I called the roofing contractor, who came out (well, a couple of them) to give me an estimate, and said that yes, the roof really IS in bad shape (and showed me pictures from up there), and said that when you're having roofing done, it's an ideal time to have an energy audit, and then you can hire someone to add insulation.

So I called the energy audit guy, and he did the audit, which was pretty disappointing (but his toys made me oh so jealous! I love the infrared reader thingy!) because my house loses heat badly.

So when I get his report, I need to call an insulation contractor and have them do a proposal to do the work that's most cost effective for the roofing portion, and so on. (Some things are more cost effective for heating and cooling than others.)

But, the energy audit guy had to turn off the furnace to do the energy audit thing (because they suck air out of the house with a fan and then can tell where more cold air is entering from outside or moving around inside). And when he turned the furnace back on, it didn't come on.

So then I had to call the furnace company and ask them to send someone out. And he came, and then the furnace was more or less working, so he serviced it, and gently reminded me that I needed to change the filter, too, and also get the air conditioning serviced once it's warm enough outside.

So then I went to the store to get a filter, and remembered also that a number of people (including the energy audit guy and some friends) have told me that it's not too hard to put in a programmable thermostat, and if I do, it will be more efficient.

So I bought a programmable thermostat at the store.

And now I need to either woman up and put it in myself (which means turning off electricity somewhere, mostly, and doesn't look all that hard), or call and ask the handyman to come put it in for me.

And that's how getting ready to get an outside deck repaired can lead to a probable hospitalization for electrocuting myself. Or not. I really hope not. Remind me to get a really small screwdriver, though!

Two Random Things, Unrelated So Far As I Can Tell

I missed the Paris-Roubaix bike race (on TV, as well as in person) this Sunday because I was travelling. But I did get to read a bit later, and see some pictures, too. What I noticed is that Tom Boonen (who won the race) wasn't wearing gloves the whole time. A couple weeks ago, looking at pictures from the Tirreno-Adriatico race, I noticed that Chris Horner wasn't wearing gloves (at least in the time trial portion), either.

I wonder why not? (And especially, I wonder why not on cobblestones, where falls seem more likely, and where I'd imagine a tiny bit more padding would be welcome.)

(It sounded like a great day for Boonen, too! From television and such, he's a very likeable biker, so I was rooting for him in the absence of Fabian Cancellara.)

***

Sunday morning, I set the alarm on my ipod thingy for 5:45 so that I could get showered, packed, and dressed to get into a taxi by 6:10 to get to the airport for my flight at 7:45. Unfortunately, I hadn't changed the time zone setting on the ipod, so it was an hour behind the eastern time zone.

Uh oh, you're thinking.

Only not. I woke up and went to use the bathroom, and on the way back to bed, I looked at the room clock, and saw that it was 5:50. And then I thought, shouldn't my alarm have gone off? So I looked at the ipod, and it said it was 4:50. And I looked at the room thing, and then looked at my phone, which said 5:52. And finally, I realized the time zone thing and got my rear in gear.

How lucky was I to 1) need to use the bathroom, and 2) look at the room clock rather than my ipod? I'll count that as very lucky.

When I got to the airport, I asked and was let off at US Airways, because that's who had sold me the flight I was on. But it wouldn't let me check in. Finally, one of the service folks there pointed out that while US Airways had sold me the flight, it was actually a United flight, and I needed to go to the United area to check in. And that was a ten minute walk. Fortunately, I had plenty of time.

But again, how lucky was I that I wasn't already an hour behind? Very!

Some days, I feel like I'm in one of those Buster Keaton movies where the wall comes down but he ends up with the glassless window area coming safely around him.

Observations from SAA

I had a good time, heard a couple of really interesting papers, and got to see some friends (the best part, to be honest). My seminar was run well and had a good discussion.

I felt like I noticed a few things, and checked with someone else, who thought maybe to one, and yes to the other.

1) People from my generation were there in relatively low numbers compared to the people 10+ years ahead of us, or 10 years behind us. Maybe folks my age are mid-career and what with the holiday and such, didn't come? Or they've moved into administrative stuff? Or we're just in lower numbers?

2) When I first went to SAA, there was a fairly strong and visible group of African American scholars. I saw none of that group, and few African American scholars overall compared to those years. I'm not sure what's happened or happening.

3) Looking over the crowd, it seemed very male, and not only older men. There were several men who looked like they were posing as enfant terrible types, right down to the pony-tail.

4) There was an anime conference going on at the same hotel with the Shakespeare conference, and the two crowds were very different. It was really odd seeing someone in anime costume walk through the Shakespeare crowd. (The Shakespeare crowd, we like to think we're among the edgier folks in the English department, but we looked very staid compared to the anime crowd.) Thus, the enfant terrible men looked like real posers in comparison.

(Do women ever get the cache of being the enfant terrible, with the combination of admiration, exaltation, and admonishment from the good old boys, or does a woman just get the criticism?)

And a related observation: I caught a cold. I could feel it coming on last night, and it's been getting worse. Blah. It's amazing how something relatively as innocuous as a cold can make you feel lousy.

I rode back on the shuttle with a man who was way more revealing of his private life than I was quite comfortable with. And he had that too wide eyed look that some people have.

Conferencing

I made it, some 11 hours after I got on the shuttle. My second plane was delayed, and it meant my afternoon conference plans didn't work out.

I did have a lovely dinner with a friend, which was great in every way except it made me wish we lived closer!

Packing

I'm packing to go to SAA tomorrow. It's the first really short weekend packing I've done since I was in England going away most weekends, and it's weird.

For one thing, I have to be at the shuttle pick up at the rather brutal hour of 4am, so I have to leave home by 3:30. So I'm heading to bed shortly to try to sleep some.

I usually enjoy SAA, and I'm sure I will once I'm there, but I'm just tird now and not feeling the joy much, except when I think about getting together with a friend from grad school, one of those really good, really special people I don't get to see very often.

Let's compare:

England: Get a taxi or take the shuttle to the train, take the train for 2-3 hours, be somewhere great!

Here: Drive to the shuttle, take the shuttle for an hour and a half to an airport, get on a plane for a while to a stopover place, get on another plane for a longer while, be somewhere great! But not somewhere with a shambles, castle, Roman ruins, or really dead folks to visit.

Okay, time for bed, and then jetting off to a conference!

ps. I rode my bike today, and went up a hill that's about a mile and not too hard, and it was so good (not fast, mind, but good).

Local Election, Part the Second

The election results were put up on the county site last night, and the local school board results were circulated among folks I know this morning. There was a lot of discussion among some folks I know about that election, and it went the way my crowd was hoping.

This wasn't just a school board and county supervisor election, though. It was also used for the primaries. But I went for the local stuff because I was among those who were worried by some of the school board candidates. In fact, some folks in my crowd made a big effort to "get out the vote" because they worried that a lot of Republicans would turn out to vote for that primary and then also vote in the school board election for the "tea party" type candidates, and Democrats wouldn't turn out because we didn't have a primary to vote in and thus the less "tea party" candidates for school board wouldn't get elected.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that I could also vote on the primary. Not only that, but I could vote in the primary for any of the candidates, Republican or Democratic, or even write in a candidate. (I didn't vote in the previous primary because I was out of the country and didn't make arrangements in time, and before that, I don't remember if I did or not.)

This morning, I was interested to see how things came out, and a bit surprised. For example, in the primary races, Barack Obama got more votes than any other candidate. But added together, the Republican candidates got about twice as many votes as he did. I'd guess that means a fair number of Democrats turned out and voted in the Democratic primary, even though Obama was running unopposed. On the other hand, some Republicans coud have voted for Obama, and I know at least one Democrat who voted for one of the Republican candidates just to mix things up (or something).

For the school board races, the two non "tea party" candidates got more votes each than Barack Obama did. (You could vote for two candidates in the race, so the information to be gleaned from that is limited, but since each of those candidates got more votes, that means that it wasn't just a matter of the same people voting for those two candidates as voted for Obama, if that makes sense.)

That suggests that some people voted in the school board election who didn't vote in the primary, or voted for a Republican candidate in the national primary but for a non "tea party" candidate locally.

(The candidates I've characterized as "tea party" seem fairly extreme to me, and I could easily imagine someone who's a moderate Republican choosing one of the other candidates.)

My car repair guy got re-elected (in another county district).

Local Elections

There's an election tomorrow; for me, there's a county supervisor seat and school board seats to decide about. And there are clear splits between candidates.

The school board part is fairly easy to find information about. But the county supervisor part isn't. I went to the county site, and tried to figure out who my representative is. Finally, I found a map of the area split into supervisor districts, and made it big enough to find my street (which is near an edge). Then it was a matter of figuring out who the supervisor for the district is. But then there's the redistricting question, and I can't quite figure it out. It looks like the person who's my current supervisor has been redistricted into another area. But the newspaper doesn't say anything about my district as it shows on the current map.

So, is the current map the map that the election uses, or does the election use a new map that I can't find?

It really shouldn't take this much work to figure out a basic local election.

When I look at the pictures of the local supervisors, I have to say, the pictures mostly aren't flattering. I recognized a couple of the people I know around town, which was sort of cool in that small community way. But I didn't recognize the person supposedly representing my district.

(Now ask me how much time I spent looking at the satelite view of my community spaces! A lot.)

Do Overs

This teaching gig is difficult at times. One of the little day to day difficulties is what I call the "do-over." Students hand in an assignment, and you grade it, record the grade, and hand it back, and one (or more) of the students wants a "do-over" so that they can hand it in again, and you can grade it again, and record it again, replacing the original grade.

There's certainly a place for revision in teaching at all levels. There has to be a way to try something, not get it right, try again, and maybe again and again, each time trying to get it better.

That's a really important part of the learning process. I build revision time into many assignments, both before the assignment is graded by doing peer editing (and meeting with students who come to office hours or make an appointment) and sometimes after (when I encourage first year writing class students to revise).

I also build in a different sort of revision by asking students to do small, low stakes assignments in a series. They don't do any one assignment more than once, but they write, say, ten journals over the semester, for a total of 10% of the grade overall; thus they can mess up a bit and figure out what's expected, and then do better as they learn (or get in the habit) to develop ideas more fully and write more fully.

There are also times when a "do-over" isn't appropriate, though. I don't let students "do-over" midterms, for example, or a number of other assignments. (And students don't tend to ask for "do-overs" of midterms.")

I get frustrated, though, when students expect a "do-over" of something that doesn't seem appropriate. That happened today. And then, when I'm frustrated, I blog.

Do students today expect more "do-overs" than students in my generation? (I have no idea, obviously, because I only knew what I was expecting as far as "do-overs" in my generation, and I was too afraid of professors to ask content questions, much less for a "do-over.")

When do you think a "do-over" is most helpful/approriate for student learning?

When not?

To what extent do student requests for "do-overs" come up against not pedagogical resistance but re-grading issues?

On the Margin

A student asked me yesterday (while I was handing back papers and such in the few minutes before class) how many grandchildren I have.

That struck me as out of the blue, and vaguely inappropriate. Mostly, weird.

Partly, it's that I don't think of myself as grandparent age, but my grandparents were already grandparents at my age, and it's not at all out of the ordinary to be a grandparent at my age. Still, I don't think of myself that way. Nor do I tend to think of my colleagues that way. So weird.

Partly it's that questions about one's reproductive status seem at least marginally inappropriate in a professional setting. On the other hand, folks who have children do use those children for examples and such, or for chit chat, and I don't think that's inappropriate.

This student is often marginally inappropriate. Stu has relatively little verbal self-control and often seems to talk before zie really thinks.

Stu also tends to want me to chat when I'm handing back papers, though I've told hir that I actually can't both chat and hand back papers. (I can't look at names, walk over to the person, give hir a paper, and then look at the next name and do the same while chatting. I'm sure some people can, but I can't.)

***

Speaking of verbal self-control: students in one of my classes are doing presentations, and several students just (either with or without raising their hands to start) interrupt to ask a question, often only marginally related. It bothers me when this happens, but I usually answer the question and move on, because the time spent talking about how unhelpful it is to be interrupted would make the interruption way worse (and be seen as mean by the students).

But today I talked a bit about it between presentations. And then someone interrupted the next time anyway.

It's like some students just get an idea and instantly, right this very instant, someone else needs to hear about it and respond! NOW!

It's not all students, of course, or even the majority, but the ones who do it really stand out.

Get offa my lawn! (/old fogey voice off)

What's a Liberal to Do?

I've been thinking a lot about the bubble quiz responses I saw here and on the NPR site. I've been thinking about responding, and hesitating, and thinking, and hesitating. I'm learning. I've learned a lot in the past say 5 years from some initiatives on campus and from my colleagues. I've had two colleagues who've been especially instrumental in my learning, and I'm most grateful to them. But I have a lot to learn, and I expect in five years to look back and see real change from now, as I look back now and see real change from then. And I look forward to that. But it does make responding uncomfortable because I for sure don't have all the answers, and some of the answers I do have just aren't good enough.

On the other hand, I think it's important to respond here on my blog where I put up the link. One of the main reasons I think it's important to respond is that I imagine most of you are a lot like me in some ways: you're probably liberal (some more, some less), probably college educated or with a graduate degree, most are female (I think). And I'm pretty sure most of you are white, US born, with a job (though for those adjuncting or in grad school, it's not the job you're aiming for). And most of you want to promote social justice, to end racism, to make the world a better place.

Even though I'm sure what I have to say won't be good enough in some ways, and even though I expect to get schooled, I'm going to respond. Schooling is good for me, after all. Being challenged is good for me, as I think it's good for my students, even though it's uncomfortable.

Here goes:

When I look at the responses both here and at the NPR site, I see some common threads. 1) There's a thread of "yes, but I" followed by some specific point about why one or another question doesn't apply to the responder. 2) There's a thread of "this is a bogus test." 3) There's a thread of "so doing stuff that 'those people' do is good?" ("Those people" are "white trash" in some comments over at NPR)

I'm sure the test isn't perfect, but in some ways my concerns aren't with the test, but with the responses because they tend to come from a space of defensiveness, a space of "competitive victimization" sometimes, and from an attitude of "white guilt" and/or class guilt.

First, there's nothing wrong or right about any of the behaviors or status stuff on the test. There's nothing about living in a small town, working on a factory floor, watching popular movies, etc that is right or wrong. The test is trying to look at stuff most people in the US experience, and asking takers to identify their own relationship to those experiences.

But it sure feels like those are right and wrong answers, doesn't it? I sure wanted to get points for having had a job that sometimes involved walking on a factory floor, though it didn't involve doing the factory labor there (and even though my family members owned the factory and I was employed there as a part-time receptionist largely because I am a family member).

The test is saying, most working class US people have these experiences; if you don't share many of these experiences, then you're probably not much aware of the experiences of most working class US people. The next point is what the test didn't say outright: If you're not much aware of the experiences of most working class US people, then you may think you're aware, and think you share these experiences, and will behave in such a way that adversely affects those who do share these experiences. That is, you may think you understand working class experiences, but you may vote or act in ways that harm working class people.

That next step is where I think those of us who scored low (did you notice how many people reported their scores or not? And a pattern? I did.) felt defensive, and often expressed our white or class guilt. That's also where some of us played competitive victimization, that "yes, you had it bad, but I also had it bad" move we see so often.

That defensiveness, that guilt, and especially that competitive victimization, none of that does anything to work for social justice.

So we white liberal folks can look at our scores and make excuses, or we can look at our scores and think about what our bubble tells us. And if we do that, we can step up and work for social justice. I think we mostly want social justice, but we don't want to feel guilty about our privileges. We want the world to see that we, too, are Trayvon Martin (to use only the latest tag), by which we mean, we're also victims.

I have to say, I'm not Trayvon Martin. I'm sorry he was killed, and I hope the grand jury will look at all the evidence and act for justice, but I'm not Trayvon Martin because no middle-aged, upper-middle class white woman is going to be subject to the sort of structural violence that a young Black man is subject to. I will not be wearing a hoodie and pretending that my wearing a hoodie does anything to work towards social justice.

Here's what I will do, and here's what I hope you are doing:

1) Get educated. Notice I didn't say "educate yourself"? I don't think white folks can really educate themselves about racism, nor do I think middle and upper-middle class folks can educate ourselves about classism. I need to listen to what other people say, and keep my mouth more closed than open in these discussions. (Insert ironic look at self for typing this long screed.)

I need to listen when someone talks about how difficult it is to "make it" on an adjunct salary. I need to listen when people of color tell me about experiencing racism. I need to listen. And if I open my mouth, I should not deny the reality of their experiences or make excuses for how things are.

After listening, I can read and further my education. I found Beverly Daniel Tatum's Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria helpful.

2) Recognize Privilege. When I look around, and I see that I'm on third base metaphorically, I need to recognize that I didn't hit a triple. I started out on third base. It's uncomfortable, though, because I did work hard to "get where I am" and I want people to recognize and respect my hard work. But I have to recognize that all the hard work I did would have counted for very little if I hadn't had opportunities afforded by my parents, the racism in society, social structures, and so on. And those opportunities aren't available to most people. Yes, a few people have more privilege than I do. BFD. My privilege gave me opportunties not available to the vast majority of people, and in comparison, my hard work means not so much.

In recognizing my privilege, I can try not to assume that everyone has the same privilege. And I can try to not be a jerk about that. I can try to work justly with students who weren't raised to expect to go to college or to know how to behave in college, for example.

3) Think Structurally. Injustice is structural in our society, and we can best change it by working to change structures. And that's damned hard. Yes, it's great to feed people by donating or volunteering at a local food bank. But it's more lasting to work on changing social structures.

In big things, I don't know where to begin. I don't. I don't know how we're going to make sure that every child in the world has food every day, and shelter. I don't know how we're going to make sure that every human being's rights are respected, and that they're treated with dignity and respect.

But I do know that at my school, I can do some stuff.

I can work on making my syllabi and classes anti-racist and anti-classist. I can talk about social justice in my classes, analyze racism, show how our social structures come through in the literature I love and teach. I can love Shakespeare while recognizing the cultural power that very name has, and not be defensive about loving Shakespeare. And I have to know that deconstructing that power doesn't actually diminish it, not really.

I can use my voice as a faculty member to ask questions about how our structures can help all students succeed, and not only middle class white students. I can ask how our structures make it easier for middle class white students to get in and come to my school, and how we can change those structures to welcome more diverse students and promote their success.

I can listen to my colleagues, learn from them, and support them, especially the ones who work more directly for social justice. I can follow the leadership of people who have more experience and different experiences than I do.

But no, I don't need to suddenly watch TV more, go to more movies, eat at the local franchise of chain restaurant. I do need to recognize that I'm making choices to do and not do some things, and that my choices may put me in a bubble.

I do know that I have a lot to learn, and hope that you're going to teach me in the discussion I hope ensues.

Bubble?

Have you seen this "do you live in a bubble?" quiz and article from NPR?

I scored a low number, which means that I do, in fact, live in a bubble of privilege.

It reminded me of a step forward/back exercise I've been subject to in groups talking about racism and privilege and such. You step forward if you're a minority, back if you took private lessons in something as a kid, and so on.

The weird thing about these "tests" is that because of the set up, you feel like you really want to be one stepping forward (or scoring a high number), even though most US folks spend much of their energy in fact trying to step back (or have their kids step back) or trying to live with privilege. (And one of the problems, especially with the structural racism in the US, is that most people of color won't get to a good level of what counts as privilege no matter how hard they work.) Trayvon Martin didn't live with the "privilege" of not being shot because he was wearing a hoodie and went to buy some candy. But that seriously shouldn't be privilege, should it?

(I've got nothing to add to the discussion of Trayvon Martin's death, except to be horrified.)

Anyway, according to the quiz, I'm in quite a bubble. And, yes, I think I am. The bubble being explored (or revealed) in the quiz is more a social/economic status bubble rather than a race bubble, and it exposes my social class privilege pretty clearly.

If you read the comments, there are a lot of commenters sounding very defensive about their results, and I understand that defensiveness. I had the same initial response, and then I thought about it and yes, realized that I'm pretty darned privileged and my behavior shows it. (The questions reflect mostly behavioral choices--did you go fishing, watch certain TV shows regularly, and so on--though some reflect choice less--did you live in a small town, and so on.)

It seems to me that what's important is to NOT make excuses for one's choices just because they correlate with social/economic status, but to think about how one's choices and experiences aren't those that most people in the US make or have, and then to step back and think hard about one's judgments about those choices.

Here's an example from the quiz. It asks if, in the last month, you've voluntarily hung out with people who smoke. I haven't. And really, I'm happy I haven't. It's way more healthy not to smoke, right? And I want to be healthy, and want my friends to be healthy, and so on.

But a lot of people do smoke, and it means something that I don't hang out with them. Here's what the quiz says about this question:

Rates of smoking have a strong socioeconomic gradient, but the wording of the question is designed to get at something else. Open smoking in the world of the new upper class has become so rare that it is nearly invisible. Cigars and pipes appear occasionally, but it is possible to go for weeks in the new-upper-class milieu without smelling a whiff of cigarette smoke anywhere except on a public street. Elsewhere in America, there are still lots of homes, bars, and work sites where smoking goes on openly, and nonsmokers in those settings accept it as a fact of life. The question asks to what extent you have any voluntary participation in that part of America.

That's interesting, isn't it? I might wish that no one would smoke (for the health reasons, and also because we have a lot of land under agricultural production for tobacco that could be growing other stuff), but the survey is more looking at my ability to choose not to hang out with folks who are smoking. And that's a bubble ability.

Should I suddenly start hanging out with people who are smoking? I'm not going to. But I should certainly be aware that my ability to make that choice is something that a lot of US people don't have, and that's important.

To what extent are our choices freely made or not? To what extent are our "choices" determined (or strongly influenced) by our friends and family or social/economic status?

Twins!

Okay, I know they're not really twins, because they're the seeding bodies, and not the seeds or plants from the seeds, but seriously, aren't these cute?

Previously, I've had three (I think) cones from my other young pine tree, but these look like the first for this tree! (I have two other, quite small pines, too, but they're still not mature enough to make cones.) These are in a good spot to see from my deck, so I'm eager to watch them grow!

I have a top super secret special thing that I call the "Pinecone Project." It's sort of embarrassing, or at least has the potential to be. When the cones from the other tree dropped, I opened them up the rest of the way and got out some seeds, and then read up a bit on the internet about pine seed germination and learned about cold stratification. The basic idea of cold stratification is that you put the seed in a cold, wet area (wet cloth in the refrigerator, for example) and fool it into thinking that it's been the spring thaw, so that it gets ready to germinate. So I did that, and had, for a while, a container with seeds in my fridge.

That got me thinking that I should gather some other seeds (since there were so few left in the cones by the time they dropped), and do the same, so I went to a local parkish area (there's a pool area, golf course, walking area, and parking lot all together) and collected some pine cones. Because the cones are differently shaped, I was able to collect both white and red pine seeds, and did. (The nurseries here tend to only carry white pine plants, though I'm not sure why, but I'd like some diversity in my pines.)

I did the cold stratification thing to those seeds, too, and then planted them, and here's the result. I'm pretty sure the one seedling is just a random seedling from weeds or whatever, but the others? They look alike, but they don't look anything like pines, do they? Of course, that makes sense, since pine needles grow out of a fascicle, and it would make sense that a tiny seedling wouldn't just produce miniature fascicles and pine needles. But I'm eagerly waiting to see if these actually ARE my pines or not.

Why the project? There's this lovely green space between my house and the ones on the far side of the little valley thing, and supposedly, that's too steep to be developed with other houses. (Yes, I'm pretty sure that will eventually be changed and they'll decide it's not too steep, but I'm guessing it will be too steep for a while yet.) And if somehow, some tiny pine trees started growing in that area, then in 50 years, there would be a bit more privacy, right?

That and doing it is fun, too.

There's also this. We get a fair bit of road noise, and more trees (in my fantasy world) helps absorb and diffuse that. (Though in 50 years, I have a feeling we'll have less road noise because fewer gas cars and quieter, more aerodynamic cars. And somehow quieter tires? I don't plan to be around in this house, but maybe someone will!)

My plan, if things work, is to put these seedlings in a cage near the house for a couple of years (the rabbits eat anything not caged, if it tastes good), and then in a few years, move the seedlings out to near the sumac plants you see in the one picture.

In other news: The lone surviving Tamarack has greened up already, and the daffodils have bloomed beautifully. There are also the little blue Glory of the Snow flowers, blooming with delicate loveliness! And the grape hyacinths are showing, looking like little, tiny grape clusters. (I should take some more pictures this morning!)

This past week, spring has come in quite dramatically, and it's so wonderful. (But also scary, because we didn't get much snow this winter, and our farmers need plenty of water for crops and such.)

How's That Working Out for You?

You know when someone says s/he does X, and another person thinks that the results of X have been bad, and they ask how it's working out as a way to try to get the first person to re-evaluate doing X? Yes? This post is like that. I need to re-evaluate my grading for the break.

Here's what I listed on my to do list at th ebeginning of break:

Stack of Shakespeare papers
Stack of Writing papers
Stack of Writing peer editing
Stack of Shakespeare journals
Stack of Marlowe stuffs
SAA Response (today!)
Read other SAA papers
Draft a paper for something else
Clean up the house a bit
Plant marigolds (inside little pots)
Reread H5
Reread Marlowe play (how bad is it that I can't remember which one?)


And here's how it's working out so far:

Stack of Shakespeare papers - 9 left to do (33 total)
Stack of Writing papers - 8 left to do (24 total)
Stack of Writing peer editing - about half done
Stack of Shakespeare journals - done, grades recorded
Stack of Marlowe stuffs
SAA Response (today!) - done!
Read other SAA papers - not even started :(
Draft a paper for something else
Clean up the house a bit - done
Plant marigolds (inside little pots) - not even started (which is probably actually smart, given how early it still is in the spring season and how cold it can still get
Reread H5 - I found my text again
Reread Marlowe play (how bad is it that I can't remember which one?) - I figured out the text (and don't have to re-read until Wednesday)

And: I've gone birding to a marsh a ways away with a friend, ridden close to 100 miles, cared for some friends' pets, had a couple meals out with friends, made a verbal agreement for the roof work (they're sending out the contract), read a really good book (The Rider by Tim Krabbe), watched a couple of movies on dvd (A Single Man and Synechdoche, New York), put a book on cd into my itunes so I can listen at night.

And the day is still youngish (before noon)! So IF I can finish one of the stacks of papers today, and start in on H5, I'll call it very good!

But the stacks still look big :(

That Princeton Survey Thing

I just filled out the survey; I'd done the original pass way back when.

They really set it up so that it's focused on folks at R1s, and need to rething the "how many courses" you teach question to also ask about credit hours or student contact hours.

It's hard to be cheerful about professional prospects in this state. I need to not think about that or I'll start getting really upset and will want to go home and make oatmeal cookies so that I can eat the dough.

But, I'm over halfway done with one big grading stack, so at least there's that.

The Thing About Grading

You start, and grade for a good while, and then you look, and somehow your stack feels just as large, and maybe larger, than it did.

If you've got classes in the high 20s and 30s, you can't (or maybe I should say "I can't"?) just power through and finish, as I can with a few papers or small journal type assignments.

The other thing: there's really nothing on TV that works for grading. At least for me. (I need something fairly familiar, not too interesting, just to make some background noise.)

More grading must happen today.

Stress Break?

Today is the first official day of spring break here at NWU. Last night I had a dream, not quite a nightmare, that it was the first day back and I hadn't graded any of the papers I need to grade. Bleargh!

So here's the work rundown for the week:

Stack of Shakespeare papers
Stack of Writing papers
Stack of Writing peer editing
Stack of Shakespeare journals
Stack of Marlowe stuffs
SAA Response (today!)
Read other SAA papers
Draft a paper for something else
Clean up the house a bit
Plant marigolds (inside little pots)
Reread H5
Reread Marlowe play (how bad is it that I can't remember which one?)


It sounds like a lot, and feels like a lot, but it's easier to focus when you don't have classes to prep and teach throughout the day and week, right?

Yesterday, a friend and I went to a big marsh several hours away, but we didn't see nearly as many birds as I would have hoped. The company was wonderful and we had a really good time (at least I did), so it was a great trip.

Crocus Report

My crocuses came up and bloomed midweek, but I didn't have time to get out there in good light with a camera. But here they are.

One of the things I really enjoy about the blog is that I can look back and see what's what with things. For example, I did a search for "crocus" on the blog and was surprised to see that while we're all talking about what an amazingly early spring we're having, I had posted pictures of my crocuses at about this time several years. So it feels early, but the crocuses aren't saying it's that much earlier, maybe a few days, maybe not. I suppose that's why we write things down?

Since I wasn't here in fall to put new bulbs in, or to redig older plantings, I'm happy to see that lots are coming up anyway! And thinking about where to put in some new plantings.

Spring break officially began for me yesterday afternoon! Let the relaxing begin! (And the grading, and reading!)

My Students!

I had 20+ students come to class, and they were great.

I got all teary-eyed reading Hal's farewell to Hotspur. But I noticed one of my students wiping her eye, too :)

***

As for what I do with a class of 30+ for Shakespeare?

This is a sophomore level class, though my junior level classes also cap at 35.

Mostly discussion: break out groups look at passages, then come back for full class discussion. Mini-lecture moments, but mostly looking at the text and pulling from there to talk about themes and issues. Sometimes we draw stuff, enact moments, read aloud, etc.

For grading:
10 short journals (on a specific passage in a text)
4 Research Question assignments (prep for later assignment)
Explication Paper
Research paper based on question (find a published essay that responds to the research question, write a summary of it and how it answers your question, basically)
Midterm
Final Exam

I'd guess I get about 15 full pages of prose from the average student, with some doing up to 30, and some a bit less (not counting the midterm and final). They have some choice on journals (they have to turn in 10 of about 15 possible journals), and on research questions.

At this point in the semester, I've graded 7 of the short journals, and 4 out of the 5 research question assignment possibilities. They've done the explication, and taken the midterm. So the next big thing is the research assigment, and then the final.

Our students tend to be willing to work hard if you ask them to, and are very capable readers and thinkers. They're good people to work with.

Taking Bets

How many of the 33 students currently enrolled in my Shakespeare class will be in class this afternoon?

more than 20
between 10 and 20
fewer than 10

All the students who signed up for conferences with me this morning (five) came, so that's hopeful (but that wasn't for the Shakespeare class).

I haven't been off the floor (where my department lives) and into the teaching wing yet today, but I heard from a colleague that a lot of classes are dark. And presumably they're not dark because they're playing a movie.

Today's the day we talk about Falstaff, honor, death, and then we kill Hotspur. It's a good day! And then break, and that, too, should be good!


*edited to change the greater than and less than signs, which html things mean something different, and thus didn't display as I wanted.

And yes, I said "fewer." Anyone else have that pet peeve about count nouns?

Another Reason to be Glad I Teach English

I read a research protocol today that involved counting and measuring mouse feces.

I've never had to do that as a lit prof. What's more, I've never had to write up a protocol asking permission to do that.

Life's looking pretty good right now!

Three More Days

There's nothing quite like getting to work early in the morning and entering a long column of midterm exam grades in the gradebook. For just that moment you can look and see that yes, you did a good deal of work to get those graded.

But then there are all the blank columns still waiting. And the stacks of papers in my bag and on the desk, all waiting.

I have one big stack to grade still (I'm aiming for Friday, but not really hopeful). Then there's a small stack for one class, a small stack for another class, and a small stack for another class. (The small stacks tend to be journals, so they aren't too onerous, but they still take some time.)

And then, and then, there's spring break!

I have a foot appointment (which I may cancel) and a roofing estimate appointment, but other than that, my time looks flexible. I'm also okay to give blood again in there, but I think I'll put it off for a week so that I can ride my bike and feel good every day. (Giving blood makes me feel less than lively if I ride the next day. I don't feel less lively if I do normal stuff, but riding or other sporty stuff, I do.)

My foot: Last time, the physical therapist suggested trying some support shoes (structured, or something), so I got a pair (running shoes) and have been wearing those. And my foot hasn't been hurting.

BUT, I also haven't been walking for 5+ hours at a time.

If the foot is fine, then it's fine. To test it, I need to walk for five hours (or less if it starts hurting earlier).

If the foot's fine, then I don't really need the appointment.

If the foot isn't fine, then the physical therapist is at a lost and will suggest that I go back to the clinic physician and ask for a referal to a podiatrist. Or, I can just accept that when I walk 5+ hours, my foot will get sore and leave it at that.

And that's what I'm leaning towards: leave it at that. I can't really imagine a podiatrist is going to do anything helpful that doesn't involve a risk of something worse (like surgery), and I don't think the pain is that bad or happens that often to go through surgery about it.

Click!

I met with a student about an assignment recently. Stu wanted to run an idea about organizing a paper with me; zie'd started off thinking X, but was now thinking Y (a MUCH more sophisticated understanding), and wanted to know if it was okay to reflect that in the paper, and if it was, how could zie do that.

YAY!

I told Stu that I was impressed by the development, and we went over one or two organizational possibilities. Stu was in that moment of having realized how much zie is learning in classes (not only mine) and wanted to talk about hir learning, and it was delightful.

Often, students learn a lot, but it takes time to realize that they've learned, and they're long gone from our classes by the time they realize it (if ever). But every once in a while, you get a student who's ready at just that moment to learn and realize hir learning, and it's so fun to hear about hir excitement.

Trifles

Little niggling things are on my mind today.

Last Friday, the handyman went to the house to check on a lighting fixture that wasn't working and on the stairs to my deck, which have never been quite right. And while he was there, he glanced up at the roof and then told me that I need to get the house reroofed. (He doesn't do roofs.)

He gave me a couple of suggestions for people whose work he respecs, and I called them. One called back this morning to make an appointment to give me an estimate, and the other I'm waiting to hear (they thought they should be able to look and measure stuff for the estimate without my being there).

Bleargh. I was thinking that I might replace the ugly carpet in my living room with hardwood this spring, but I think roofing's more important. (And I'm really glad he pointed out the roof issues, because I don't look up there enough, and I would far rather replace it early than deal with leak damage.)

***

In our department coffee room, we have: a toaster, a coffee maker, a microwave, and a water-heater (for tea or whatever) all plugged into the same area (because there are very few plugs around in this building compared to what you'd put in a building nowadays). You can use any two things, and it's okay, but if you use a third thing, you'll blow the circuit and then you have to call maintenance and get them to come up and do something in their secret locked room.

So today, I had some stuff to microwave for lunch and wanted hot tea as well, so I put my stuff in the microwave while someone else was using the toaster. Then I waited, and once my microwaving was done, started the water heating. The toaster finished and then another person started the microwave for her lunch.

And then another person came in and without looking at what was already going, started up the toaster.

Poof. No water heating, no lunch heating, nada. So I never got my hot tea, and now my caffeine levels are dangerously low in the late afternoon (which is at least partly my fault because I was up way too late finishing some grading).

***

An advisee came in on Friday and asked me questions about a class over in another area of campus (one we have a fair bit of contact with). On the computer registration system, the lecture and discussion for one class are scheduled so that they overlap. I don't know what's up.

So this morning, I emailed their chair to ask what I should suggest to my advisee. And she helpfully emailed back.

I don't know whether it's a department problem or a computer problem or somewhere in between, but it's not good when they're telling me to tell my student not to register yet. It's really hard to get into classes, and if she got lucky with a good time assignment this semester, she needs to take advantage of it because she probably won't have the same luck twice.

***

I have one of those students. You know, the student who makes you really happy you chose to become a professor. If I could clone him, all our lives would be immensely better in so many ways.

Total Joy

It's gloriously warm out today! I went out for the first bike ride of the year, and it was happiness. Every time I saw another biker I would wave and call "Yay biking!" and they would be grinning, too, and you could tell we were all happy to be out playing on our bikes.

I've opened up some of the windows in the house to air things out, and I'm thinking of going and sitting out on the deck in the sunshine. It's just that good to have the combination of sunshine and warmth.

Last week, I planted some pine seeds I'd collected (some from the two pine cones under my own tree, some from white and red pines in a local parkish area (it's the parking lot for the community swimming pool). So they're sitting outside now, too, in the sunshine.

The sunshine and warmth just fills me with joy.

Communicating

I was at a meeting this morning, a meeting of folks from around the university, students, faculty, administrators, lots of different people. And we were there in part to hear about efforts to introduce a specific diversity program thing on campus. All of that is to say that there were people there who were very versed in the issue, but mostly there were people there who were committed to social justice but who weren't really in the know about this specific issue. One person (let's call this person X) is basically in charge of the next move, and had to leave early for another commitment, so the facilitator changed around the schedule slightly to ask X to talk about the next move.

But then someone else wondered if the whole group should get a quick background. And that made sense.

So another speaker started in on the background. Let's call this speaker Y.

This speaker comes from a culture known for being less direct about arguments, say, than US culture is. And so the speaker started in, and 20 minutes later, when the person facilitating the meeting (let's call this person Z) tried to interrupt the narrative to refocus on the issue at hand, Y got frustrated because zie hadn't had the chance to tell the full story. Y said zie wanted to make one point, and when Z acquiesced, went on for another five minutes not only about one point, but circling around serveral. To me, Y's communication feels like we're circling around, getting a long narrative about stuff that isn't the real point, and not really getting to the real point. (I've experienced Y's communication on many occasions.)

So here's the issue: We're all committed to social justice, and many of us have put in some time to learn about cultural issues of communication. So I know, for example, that the culture person Y comes from tends to be less direct than my own culture (white, US, middle/upper middle class). And I know that in order to work effectively towards social justice, I need to learn about, recognize, and value other styles of communication.

And that means that I (and other people at the meeting, at least some of whom are far more well-educated in understanding different cultures) need to respect non-dominant sorts of communication.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that Y's communication practices are cultural so much as unaware rhetorically. I don't know if Y's communication practices would be more acceptable in hir home culture than they are here.

And, by being rhetorically unaware, Y seems to undercut hir own stated goals, to alienate listeners, and thus to cause problems for the very cause we're working for.

Of course, these are issues some of our students run into a lot: to what extent should they be responsible for code-switching to meet the expectations of people who aren't going to care about cultural differences? And to what extent should dominant US culture learn to respect and deal with other communication practices? And even if we can assert that people from the dominant US culture SHOULD respect and deal with other communication practices, it's not going to happen quickly or easily, and our students are going to be out there working and being members of the community the whole time.

So there I was, wanting Y to get to the point so that X could give us the more important information, and wanting to be a good cultural communicator.

And looking around the room, I could see other people looking similarly frustrated and impatient. And I don't think frustrating these people helped Y's causes at all.

Road Trip!

Text o' the day!

Bits of Sunday

I sometimes call myself "The U-turn Queen." Let's just acknowledge that I have a poor sense of direction. I used to fret about it, but now I just make myself the u-turn and it's fine.

Yesterday, I went out cross-country skiing for only the second time this season. I went alone, out to this gorgeous, wonderful park. This park has a maze of trails, but they're marked with numbers and a map at intersections. The numbers get higher the further you are from the warming hut and parking lot.

And I skied. I'm a lousy skier, but as long as I'm out enjoying myself, it doesn't much matter how clumsy I look. And for moments at a time, I float along and it's glorious! Just wonderful!

I was skiing along, and at first it was totally awkward and blah, and I thought about turning around and heading back right away. And then it started feeling good. I was going slowly, focusing on trying to slide and relax, and it felt good. So I went a bit further. And then I thought I should head back rather than get too tired, so I looked at where I was, and planned my move to the next intersection, and then I needed to go left. But that took me to a hill, and I snowplowed down it with great care (because I felt awkward and it's sort of icy).

But at the next intersection, the sign was shot out. I know :( Think about someone peppering a sign with shot, and think about that sign being in a public park. Ugh. So I went the way I thought would take me back without making me climb that hill. And there were hills, and I snowplowed down, and herring-boned up.

And the next sign I got to was #65, and showed that I was at about the half way point of a long side-loop. Oops! I could have made a u-turn, but I didn't because I figured the way forward couldn't be as difficult as the way back. It was about that difficult, but I finally did make it back. (I DID whuss out and take off my skis to climb up two hills and down one.) Every so often someone else would ski by in the opposite direction (mostly, friendly folks, who said hi), so it wasn't like I was exactly breaking new ground in the wilderness.

All in all, I skied for an hour and 40 minutes, and my heart monitor said I used 900 calories. No wonder I was hungry! And now today, I'm just a bit sore. (I've read that heart monitors tend to overestimate caloric use, but still, that's a lot of calories.)

But, Paris-Nice will be on TV shortly (the prologue)! I, myself, am planning to ride along for a bit. Yay, it's the beginning of the TV biking season!

I should grade a bunch today, too, and I will. And I've already written the midterm for tomorrow, so at least that's done!

Witchy Woman

I'm going to do my senior seminar next semester on early modern witch plays (and some historical context stuff).

Macbeth is on the list, of course. Because yay Macbeth.

What other plays (and in which editions) have you enjoyed or thought would work well in a classroom?

So far, The Witch of Edmonton is HIGH on my list, and maybe The Tempest, too. But there are lots (so maybe not LOTS, but some), and I'm aiming for, say, 10 plays that I can get in reasonably good, affordable editions.

I have a week to turn in my book orders (it's so early!). I know that's a whole congressional mandate thing, but it's obvious that no one in congress ever thought about teaching anything that wasn't constantly on the rotation or taught from a textbook type book.

Sleep In

Yesterday, we had snow, and that meant I got a few emails from students who couldn't make it to class. It happens, and it's way more important that students are safe than that they get to close. And when road conditions are bad, they're bad.

But today, more students missed my morning class. And I got emails from them after class, a few of them, saying basically that they'd slept in and missed class.

It's weird how that can happen with a fair number of students in a class (three for this class). Did they go out partying last night? Was there a midnight dorm fire alarm drill thing? Or was it just coincidence?