Ten Thousand Miles

That's my bike's odometer on the bike computer.  Way back in June of 2007, I wrote about getting the bike.  So in just over 7 years, I've ridden 10,000 miles.

Yes, real riders ride that in a season.  Still, those have been ten thousand mostly really good miles.

Today, for example. 

There's a biggish bike race in the area, with both men's and women's pro races, so I left my house early and drove a while.  I wasn't sure how timing would go, but I wanted to be at the first sprint point before the men's race went through.   The sprint point is about 20 miles from the start, and the men started at noon, and the women at 1:30, so figuring 30 miles an hour, I wanted to be at the sprint point by 12:40.  Of course, as I was planning this, I was thinking of the Dauphine, Tour, Giro, Vuelta, etc.  Big crowds, lots of screaming.

I'd scoped out some maps, and figured out that about 15 miles from the sprint point town is a town that's an endpoint of a bike trail, one of those rails to trails things.  So my plan was, if I got to the area early, I'd stop there and go for a ride, figuring the time ahead, and then go to the town with the sprint point.  And then between the men's and women's races going through the sprint point, I could also take a short ride if I wanted.  And that's how it worked out.

I stopped at the trailhead, and figured if I rode for 40 minutes (thinking 20 out, 20 back), then I could hop in the car, drive to the town with the sprint point in time to park, find my way, and so on.  I only rode just over 9 miles there, but it was beautiful, not windy, and quiet, and relaxing, with flowers, birds, and me riding along.  The day was slightly overcast, and just a perfect temperature for riding.

Along the way, I passed by a guy sitting on the ground next to a TT bike, a beautiful Felt.  Naturally, I slowed to check to make sure he was okay, and he said he was, just had two flats and was waiting for his friend to pick him up with a car.  He said the path got really bad ahead, and he'd had two flats.

I turned around maybe five minutes later (at the end of my 20 minutes out), and saw him again and checked to make sure he was okay.  I told him my plans to go see the race, and commiserated on the flats, and asked him what tires he was using (because I carry a 25mm tube, and would have shared, but I don't know if it would work on 23 or 27 mm tires).  But he said he didn't know, just whatever the bike came with; he'd just been set up on it.

What a bummer is that?  Brand new bike and two flats on what has to be a pretty early ride?  BUMMER!

But also, isn't it weird that someone who does triathlons (he said so, when I told him I thought his bike was beautiful, which it is) doesn't know what sort of tires they're rolling?  (I'm not nearly as geeky as to own a TT bike, and I know I'm riding 25mm Gatorskins.)

But anyway, he was hanging out waiting, and not hurt or anything, so I went on my way.

I got to the small town where the sprint point was. 

Luckily, there was someone in a yellow vest, looking vaguely official, so I asked and he just waved at the street and said to park wherever, just out of the traffic lanes.  So I did, just a bit past where he was (near a bar and grill, and near an open tent with stuffs happening).  As I drove past, I saw a sign marked "Sprint 200 m," so I drove 200 meters, and there was a little sign saying "sprint" and a little line across the road. 

I parked and walked back to the bar, bought a diet coke, used the restroom, and went back out to talk to the yellow vest guy, who said that he expected the men's race to come through in 15 minutes or so.  (I was earlier than I'd expected, since it didn't take long to get from the trailhead to the town.)

So I went and waited on some steps leading to a wedding chapel right in front of the sprint point and relaxed with my coke.  After a while, a car drove up, parked off the road, and two judges (with official looking judges' shirts on) and another yellow vest guy got out, and the yellow vest guy put out two traffic cones on either side of the road at the sprint point.  And then we all waited.

And after a few minutes, the official cars came through, and then ZOOM, the race went buy, all nearly in a bunch, with a little stringing out in front so that one guy won the sprint fairly obviously.  And then the rest of the cars went by, with a couple of straggling bikers.

I cheered for all of them, from the first to the last, though I felt silly because it was only me, and the two judges, and the yellow vest guy, and they weren't cheering.

The excitement ended at 12:50 or so, which meant the men had taken 50 minutes to ride the 20 miles, and they were all bunched.  The women's race was due to start at 1:30, and then I figured it would take them a bit longer, but at least 50 minutes to get to the sprint point, so I had an hour and a half to do what I wanted.  And what I wanted was to bike some more.

So I got on my bike and headed out riding the race route backwards.  I had 7 miles to make the 10K on my odometer, so I knew I wanted to ride at least 3 and a half miles out.  And I figured I was starting at 1, and needed to be back by about 2:20 (but if for some reason I weren't, I'd just cheer from the side of the road where I was, but so long as I was back, I'd be able to put my bike away and such).  And off I went.

And it was a slog.  There was a little hill, but then mostly flat, but my legs just felt awful.  I was riding at about 50-60 rpm (the rotation of my pedals), which is slow, even for me, and I just felt like I was riding through thick mud.  There was a headwind, and I was feeling it, but even more, it felt like just a slog.

So I rode to 1:30, and I'd gone about 4 miles, and I decided if my legs were just that bad, I'd turn around and go back, and that would be fine.  So I turned around.

And suddenly, I was seriously flying.  The headwind was now a tailwind.  So when I hit the 10K on my odometer, I was going down a very slight hill at 24 miles an hour, feeling more like a real biker, spinning at 90 rpm and grinning.  It took me maybe 10 minutes to make it back to town, maybe a little more, but the whole time, that tailwind was helping a lot.  So I went a bit beyond the sprint point, and up a little hill, past a different yellow vest guy, who cheered for me, which totally made me laugh. 

I rode back in, changed clothes in my car in the parking lot of a little park (out of the way, and not highly visible to anyone), went to the tent thing, which was a benefit to raise money for a scholarship thing for folks studying to be EMTs and such, made a donation and got a pulled pork sandwich, some baked beans, and some potato salad, and enjoyed my lunch.  I think most of the town was there, all in t-shirts to honor the young woman in whose name the benefit was being held, since she'd died several years earlier in a car accident.  (You can learn a lot in a small town if you ask politely and donate for a sandwich.)

Then I wandered back to the sprint point, and hung out until a new judge and yellow vest guy drove up, and then I cheered as a lone breakaway rider (#61) passed.  She was more than three minutes ahead (but with 50 more miles to go, that didn't seem likely to hold, or maybe?) and then the rest of the peloton came through, and I cheered for all of them. 

And then I walked back to my car, and drove home quite happy with my day.

Delights of Summer

I've named my boat, and even got a decal with the name:

We even christened it, some friends and I, by pouring water from a waterbottle over the bow.  (This is a waterbottle boat, not a champagne boat.)  (The hardest part of the naming decal was deciding on the font.)

I sent away for new bungee cord stuff, new handles (the rear handle is missing), pieces for the paddle keeper (one is broken now), and a cover for the cockpit, so if it's raining and I have to take it on top of the car, it won't fill with water.

And there are flowers!

Civics

I went to my first ever City Council meeting last night.

I wonder how many people have been to one?  I got the sense that there are a few people who go fairly regularly, especially if an issue they care about is up for discussion.  But the rest of us, I'm guessing most adults have never been.

(I live in a small city, and know through a colleague a council member.  I also, it turned out, know another council member because we used to live next to each other when I first lived in town.  How sad is it that I didn't know I knew that second council member?  And barely recognized him when I saw him sitting up, though he recognized me and came and said hello before the meeting started.)

The council is making a decision on how best to repair a fairly important road in town, and last night was the final discussion before the vote tomorrow.  I went to listen, mostly, and to be supportive of the folks who are trying to influence the decision in favor of more bike and pedestrian friendly alternatives.  The road is in horrible shape, even for our generally horrible roads (thanks, tax cutters!).

The meeting started with the city engineer explaining what their plan was, complete with overhead pictures (shown on a big screen) with detailed stuff about lines, paving plans, and so forth.  Then city council folks asked questions.  And then they opened the meeting up to anyone who wanted to speak.  The council president said at the beginning of the meeting that anyone who wanted to speak should get up when the podium is open, wait if someone else is there first, and that everyone gets 5 minutes, and then the council can ask the person questions.

And that's how it went.  Everyone was polite (it's the upper Midwest), and everyone who wanted to speak got to, so far as I could tell (the meeting lasted 2 and a half hours).

While there was some water management and such, the controversial part of the city engineer's drawings showed mostly two car lanes in each direction, with one to be marked as a shared lane with bikes, and then different solutions for a center turn lane or left turn lanes at different areas along the almost a mile stretch (it's largely businesses along that street).

The bike/pedestrian advocates were arguing for a bike lane and wider pedestrian walk instead of the second car lane on each side.  (You have to remember that when we plan for these sorts of streets, we also have to think about snow on the sidewalks from the plows.)

So it was interesting, because the road reworking is supposed to last 40 years, say (that is, it will be resurfaced more often, but not reworked in terms of the major structures), and that means everyone is trying to think about what the community will look like in 40 years, how much we'll drive, how much we'll need other alternatives, and so forth.  It's so complicated!

The bike and alternative transportation advocacy group in town (I didn't even know there was one) had written a letter before asking that the city engineer draw up an alternative showing the bike lane and increased pedestrian area, but they hadn't done that.  (There had been many meetings with neighborhood groups and such to give lots of people a chance to talk about plans and what folks in the area want to happen.)

The lack of an alternative drawing meant that most of the bike lane advocates got asked by city council members if changing the plans would mean that the city would have to put off this major repair for another year.  And, of course, they pretty much had to say that it would be hard to put off the repair, but they wanted the city to do it right, so yes, it would have to be put off.

Anyway, I'd be willing to bet that the council is going to go with the city engineer's plan, and while it won't be as bike and pedestrian friendly as it might be, it will be a significant improvement over what's there now in all sorts of ways.

I'm glad I went, and will probably try to be a little more aware of stuff happening in town, but I wouldn't want to have to go to this sort of meeting every week!

Those Work at Your Own Pace Courses?

Every so often, you see someone administrative talk or blog their ideal of on-line classes where students can work at their own speed, starting when it's convenient for them, finishing when they do, and so on.

In the administrative ideals, of course, most of the "teaching" is "done" through pre-prepared videos, readings, problem sets (where appropriate), and so forth.

Those of us who've taught or tried to teach ourselves something independently know how difficult this model is.  Most of us can teach ourselves something if we really want to, and indeed, some students do it.  Most of us also know that it's difficult to do the task at hand every day, even for half an hour or an hour, much less for the several hours that learning college level material takes most people.

What's missing in the model are teachers.  And what the model basically sets up is a lot of independent work by students and then unmentioned, usually, are teachers answering questions, helping with problems, responding to work, grading, keeping track, motivating, all the usual things. 

Except in this model, unlike in courses where students work in common, teachers will need to be responding to students working at very different paces, providing assignments and exams for each student, all individually. 

Basically, even with all the materials pre-prepared, teachers will be doing individual study with every student in the class.

I don't see that as a money saving venture, not without abusing the heck out of teachers.

And what about the student who lags seriously, who starts in January, say, and trudges through the material through the next January.  Is the same teacher being paid for the year (or longer)?  At the same rate? 

My guess is that teachers are going to be paid a rate for each student or for certain documented interactions, and either docked for students who move slowly or don't finish, or given a bonus for students who finish or finish quickly.  Maybe they'll be expected to pick up new students along the way?  Or will there be a handoff system, where everything will be so regulated that the first teacher will pass off all the students to another teacher while they take a break for two weeks, and then pick up a new group?

How will they keep track of students who drop in drop out?  You know, the student who starts the course, disappears for two months, then reappears and starts working again, asking for lots and lots of help, disappears again, reappears.

The way the model stands to make money is if students pay up front, and then drop out and don't really reappear, and teachers are paid by the documented interaction, so they don't get paid for students once they're not requiring teacher interaction.  Of course, not for profit schools aren't supposed to aim for making money, but no school I know of has money to pay for lots of individual study, so these sorts of courses will need to be "cost effective" in whatever terms the school uses.  (Mine currently cares about how many students drop from courses, how many graduate on time, and so forth.)


I've successfully done truly independent learning once in my life, though I've started any number of attempts.  The things that made the one time successful were:  a strict time limit (I had a summer to learn to read a third language to pass an exam for my PhD program); a relatively easy goal for which I was well prepared (I learned to read Italian after being reasonably fluent in Spanish; I don't think I could have learned to speak Italian that way); time (I was a graduate student during summer, not taking classes and working for money only a few hours a week); resources (I had cheap Italian children's and short story books readily and cheaply available).  If any one of those things hadn't been in place, I doubt I would have succeeded.

But the students with those qualities (especially time, preparation, and resources) aren't usually the students these courses are aimed at.  Instead, they're aimed at working students who aren't close to the university and aren't necessarily well-prepared.

And, of course, the strict time limit is exactly what these courses do away with, and one of the most important things for my own success.  (I realize that anecdote =/= data.)


What are your experiences with learning at your own pace or with these sorts of courses?

Bleacher Seats

It's that time of year, and in my auntly role (and why isn't there a parallel for "avuncular," or is there?), I went to high school graduation this year.

It wasn't too long, which was good, but it's been a long time since I went to graduation and wasn't part of the parade.

This fall, some of these young folks will be students in college.  They looked happy, scared, excited, bored, and so forth, just as you'd expect.

Listening to the three speeches, I once again came to believe that there's little new to be said at graduation speeches.  One of them was amusing, because the student speaker seemed to have a good sense of humor and was willing to be playful.  One of them was a painful analogy that didn't work.  The third was trite and cliché.

While we were waiting for it to start, I read the stuff on the walls and such.  They had banners for other schools in the area, giving their names and mascots.  One of the schools' mascot is the "Ghost."  That seems like an odd mascot to me, and my schools have often tended to have odd mascots.

Then, of course, I got started wondering why the seats are called "bleachers," and why the guy in front of me was sitting so far back, but then I realized that it was just that the seats and legging area aren't long front to back, so anyone who's 5'5" (me) was pretty much trying not to knee the person in front of be kneed by the person in back.

So, ideas about the source of "bleachers"?  (The OED gives a date of first use, but no sense of where it came from.  It seems to be a mostly USian thing.)

Take a Powder?

I recently read this, and while I may have heard it before, it's not deeply familiar to me, if you know what I mean.

I get from context that it means to leave abruptly.

What I'd like to understand is what the metaphor derives from.  I find the origins of idioms absolutely fascinating, and I'm wondering about this one.  Thoughts?

(I love "shot my wad," for example, the origins of which I learned in a most embarrassing way during a grad seminar.)

Reading for Assessment

Relying on the idea that in order to understand what's happening, I need to be part of what's happening, I signed on to do a (paid) assessment gig for NWU.

We're working on assessing one aspect of an assignment for a course that has four assignments in common between all the sections.  So, for example, if this were in intro to underwater basketweaving course, we'd look at a basket the student has produced, and assign a score for each feature, basic basket shape, regularity of weave, and size of weave.  We'd assign a score of blue for any feature that is better than our expectations (based on criteria for each feature), green for any feature that meets our expectations, yellow for any feature that shows progress towards expectations, but doesn't meet them, and red for any feature that shows no progress (they turned in a rock, for example).

In this hypothetical world, the underwater basketweaving faculty have agreed that all sections of intro to underwater basketweaving will include several common assignments, including a basket starting assignment, a patterning assignment, a basic cup-shaped basket, and a non-cup-shaped basket.  We're doing the cup-shaped basket.

The thing is, it looks like while all the sections do assign a cup shaped basket, some of them seem to require that students use at least two different weaving techniques, which makes it really hard to judge the "regularity of weave" section.  Other sections seem to all think cup shapes are tall and skinny, or more shallow bowl, so the basket shape is hard.  And still others let students use different materials, meaning that the ideal size of the weave changes a lot.

We got together in a small group and did a half day of "norming" using four basket examples.  ("Norming," for those unfamiliar with the term, means working together, in our case with rubrics, to come to a basic level of agreement about the scoring of an assignment.)  We used a rubric developed by the faculty earlier, and found some pretty basic difficulties in scoring baskets where, for example, a student had made a cup-shaped basket, and seemingly tried to incorporate several different weaving techniques.  It was an ambitious basket, but it scored way down on regularity of weave because the person wasn't using anything like a regular patterning, and the sizes were pretty all over the place.  So it got a low score.  If I'd been grading it, I would have given it a pretty good grade because it took risks and showed real learning.

One of the problems with assessment done this way is that there's no room for a "no, but" answer.  There's no room for a "no, the weaving isn't regular, but wow, there's something cool happening here."

That's not to say the rubrics are bad, because the UB faculty clearly values basic shape, regularity of weaving, and weave size (the tightness matters, I suppose).  So those are important things to make sure they're teaching.  And so that's what they're trying to measure in their assessment.

What they aren't measuring is how a given student is taking a risk, trying something different, reaching out, finding their own path.  I don't know that those things can be measured, or how, but I know they're important aspects of student learning, probably more important than the regularity of weaving or the size of the weave.

It's for the Students...

Another for the annals of excellence without money:  I was in a composition teaching workshop last week, half an hour of which was really useful, and the other almost two days, not so much.  But it was okay.

The last couple of hours was about helping students who are English Language Learners, and study abroad students (that is, students who are studying here, abroad from their country/school).

Like lots of schools in the US, NWU is actively recruiting increasing numbers of foreign students.  They pay full freight, so lots and lots of schools are recruiting.  And they make us look a bit more diverse, though without serving our community's diverse population any better.

More and more of these students are coming not for a year, but for our degree (or a joint degree), and that means that unlike the students who visit for a year, these students have to fulfill all our NWU requirements, including composition.  So our comp workshop got this talk about how to help these students; all of the suggestions were good ideas, many would help our students in general, especially our first generation students. 

And, as you'd guess, most of the suggestions involve adding quite a bit of time and energy for the visiting student.  And there were no suggestions about what we should give up in order to make the extra time and energy, because "it's for the students.  We owe it to our students."  Yes, I asked.

Indeed, we do owe our students good teaching, help, and so on.  But if we add in more students needing special help and more time, then the time has to come from somewhere.  I can't make it up out of thin air.  Yes, I mentioned that.

And I also asked how many international students we could expect in our 20 person comp classes, and was told that the powers that be are trying to spread them so the we all only have 3-4. 

One.  3-4 students needing additional help, beyond the English as first language speakers who already need additional help, is a lot.

Two.  3-4 out of 20 means that 15-20% of our students taking comp are international students.  That's a lot, no? 

Three.  We all know this is about demographics and money.  There are fewer US students in the traditional age cohort right now.  For schools like NWU, that have traditionally pulled from the middle and working class, mostly white, students, and which don't have big reputations, that means some of our traditional students have been getting into and choosing more prestigious schools.  Others have made other choices (community colleges, for profits, or just trying to find a job) based on the dismal economics of higher education. 

Colleges and universities are competing for a smaller pool of traditional students, and we're mostly (I'm guessing Harvard isn't too worried) looking for students who aren't our traditional students to recruit.  We've tried, without great success, the non-trad aged students, and we're doing a variety of distance learning and jigsaw puzzle major to recruit and get them through.  (The jigsaw puzzle major is a special major supposedly for students who've taken courses here and there in different areas; they're supposed to be able to put those together, take a couple of special courses to teach them to . . .  well, put those courses together, and voila, a college degree.)

And now, all these schools are recruiting international students with great energy.  We're mostly getting students from China, Saudi Arabia, and a few other countries which are putting money behind students to give them opportunities to study abroad, often with a narrow choice of majors.  And we're following that money.

And so is everyone else.  The Harvards have always followed that money, of course.  And the flagships have also, to a lesser extent.  So the top students, the ones most prepared to study in another country are all going to more prestigious schools.  The less prepared students are coming to NWU and other schools like ours.  And they're bringing money, full out of state tuition, and we're all chasing that money.

Truth be told, we're all chasing the money because states don't want to pay for higher ed (or any ed, really), and because our traditional student demographic is on the decline.  But that extra money, where's it going?

Mostly, it's probably like a finger in the dike.  Also, of course, we have to hire a deanling to be deanling of international students.  And that person has to have an assistant deanling.

And then they need to hire some more adjuncts to teach the English prep classes for students deemed unprepared to enter our comp and other regular university classes.

But for those of us who will be doing more work, well, there's no money for that.  And no reduction in other responsibilities.

My guess is that the visiting students are selected for their talents in areas valued by governments, so tech, business, mostly.  The impact on faculty will be high in areas required by the university, so comp, math, especially.  These students will have a second language better than most of our first language English speaking students, so they won't impact the languages, except maybe by reducing demand.  Business and tech type courses (computer science, maybe physics and such?), business related courses (communications, public relations) will be in demand.

Faculty in, say, art history, probably won't notice a difference.  Faculty in comp will notice a huge difference.  I'm not sure about math, but I'm guessing some difference.

I tend to really like international students, but I'm daunted when I get them in writing courses, and the idea of having 15-20% of the students in my comp course international students, and students whose first language isn't English, is daunting indeed.

I feel so slow.  Back when I was on our senate, we talked about recruiting more international students, and about special programs, but I guess I assumed they would mostly be visiting for a year, and not working towards a degree from here.  I certainly didn't imagine that comp classes would be so deeply impacted.  I think we all thought about what a good idea recruiting more international students is, and it is in many ways, without thinking about how some courses would be affected.  And now it's coming together, and we're going to really be feeling it.

(I didn't teach comp this year because I taught another course, so I was pretty unaware, but I'm told that a lot of comp faculty were beginning to see the change this past year, especially.)

Summer Begins, Sort Of

I just finished clicking my grades in (how much more pleasant is that than walking a grade sheet over to the registrar's office by hand)!

Tomorrow, I have a refresher on teaching our comp course (because I haven't taught it this year), and then, well, we'll see.

Our rec center was having a used equipment sale yesterday, so I got in line early and bought a used kayak.

Now I need to think of a silly or pretentious name.

And I need to get some new cord stuff because that's worn, as is the seat.  And I need to buy a paddling life jacket and a paddle.

Still, the price was right, and I have a boat.

Definition:  Boat:  A hole in the water you pour money into.

Brown v. Board of Education

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education, legally desegregating schools in the US.  Supposedly.  (Here's the Wikipedia article.)

We Are Respectable Negroes wrote yesterday asking if we're products of Brown v. Board of Education.

I suppose it's telling that I started thinking about Brown v. Board this morning when I heard an NPR conversation with a woman (I was half asleep and don't remember her name, sorry) about being a product of Brown v. Board.

As a white woman who grew up in the 60s, in Northern California, I wonder in what ways I'm a product of Brown v. Board. 

When I was starting elementary school, my school was torn down for earthquake issues, and we were bussed to a school in a slightly poorer neighborhood.  At the time, I remember one Black family in my neighborhood, on one side of a highway, and one other Black student in my class.  In the other school, on the other side of the highway, I don't remember more Black students. 

By third grade, the school in my neighborhood was built anew, in the latest school fashion, and we were all back there halfway through the school year, including the kids from the poorer neighborhood across the highway.  But still, I only remember one more Black student in my class.  I do remember about that time that I spent my reading group time "tutoring" a boy from El Salvador in reading.  (I feel so bad that I was assigned this task, and that he wasn't taught by someone who knew how to teach.  I suspect it had to do with the teacher not having other resources, and our school being unprepared to teach students for whom English is a second language.  I hope things turned out okay for him despite me.)  I don't remember many Asian students in my grammar school, either.

By the time I was in middle school, there were a lot more Asian and Black students; I remember seeing the Korean girls reading their comics in the lunch areas and not understanding.

But I was put in a special classroom, and I'm pretty sure just about all of us there were white, and most of us there were from the wealthier side of the highway and tracks.

In high school, I was in a much more diverse school, but most of my classes weren't diverse because as a white girl from the wealthier side of the highway and tracks, I was tracked into college prep classes (though not AP classes), while most of the Black and Hispanic kids were tracked into non-college prep.  The Asian kids and white kids from the poorer side of the highway and tracks were in both college prep and non-college prep classes, depending, I think, on their parents' advocacy and such.  For example, my high school had, I think, three or four Black teachers, two in English, one in athletics, and one, I think, in shop.   I remember that one of the Black teachers had to really advocate for her children to be in the college prep track, and if I was aware of it, it must have been a huge deal.

So how am I a product of Brown v. Board?

I'd guess the biggest thing was that most Black students in my area were tracked into non-college prep courses, and weren't given the same opportunities that more white students had. 

I wondered as a kid if the bussing I experienced was the same as the busing I vaguely heard about on the news where there was or had been newsworthy conflicts.  Was my school torn down and rebuilt as a way to integrate it further?  It had that effect somewhat, but mostly because the other school was closed and the grounds sold off for condo development.  But I think now that it was really about earthquake issues.

I guess the bussing was the one thing I learned at the time about Brown v. Board because it was on the news.

So, other USians, how are you a product of Brown v. Board?

Spring of the Warblers - And the Value of Teaching

Last Wednesday, my community had a birding day.  The biology department at NWU, working in conjunction with local birders and the community, had set up five areas around town where they stationed experienced birders from 8am to 8pm.  They advertised pretty widely, which is how I found out about it.  So I went.  It was perfect timing for me because I had a final in the early afternoon, but I'd managed to be caught up on grading to be able to give those students back their papers, and I'd have time to grade more before my Friday final.

So I started out with a friend before 8am, and got to the first spot, the Prairie Pond, as the birder was setting up.  We saw some birds there, and then the birder told us about a place not far away, another pond area, where there were likely to be more shore birds, so we checked out that place, McComb Pond.  We saw a number of birds, wrote them down, and then reported back.  And then we moved on to the town pond area, which was up a hill a bit, and where we saw several new birds (new to me, anyway).  Then I dropped my friend off, so that he could go to work, and went to the third spot, Braun's Bay (water is a major theme of the day).  That was the least good place for me of the day.

After my final, I walked over to the campus spot, and saw that the two birding folks were from the biology department, so I had a passing acquaintance with them.  The main spot was right at some stairs, and then there was a path that went on a ways, and one of the biology people said he wanted to check the path.  So I asked if I could tag along, and that's where I really learned some stuff.

Mostly, I picked up much better how to see warblers, where to look for them, how to see them.  I can't explain better, but he was showing me birds, explaining what to look for, and in that way that real birders have, he could just see them way better.

It was super.

I saw a number of birds for the first time, and most of them I could now identify by sight.  Just seeing them, having an explanation, that really seems to stick for me.

After the walk, I went on to the fifth site, and there ran into someone I met several years ago, through a friend, but who I hadn't really had contact with, and didn't know she was a birder, but she recognized me and we figured it out, and voila!  So that was nice, though it was getting a bit late, and I didn't get to see many birds there.  (A few.)

The big thing for me that day was that the more experienced folks were really helpful in pointing out the birds, and in helping me see how to make the different identifications.  I could have walked in those places alone, and I would have seen some birds, but not what I saw with them, and not learning as much as I did.

This morning, I woke up early and felt like being up, so I went out to McComb Pond, and I was seeing a whole lot more warblers than I had.  It's like I was seeing them, though they'd probably been there when I went before and just saw a couple, but this time, I was way more aware somehow.  I have to credit the Wednesday outing, because I was able to identify several of the birds I saw easily, and with a good degree of certainty, too.

This is a Chestnut-sided Warbler!  So very cute!

A Yellow Warbler















And a couple others, one of my new neighbors (look inside the house!)

And a local guy, strutting his stuff at the local park.  My commute is far more likely to be held up by this sort of strutting (sometimes in the street, sometimes because I stop to watch when they aren't in the street) than by traffic.









New birds (for me) on Wednesday:
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Palm Warbler
American Redstart
Blackburnian Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Black and White Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Northern Parula
Wilson's Warbler
Veery
Northern Waterthrush
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Tennessee Warbler
Chimney Swift

And today, I saw:
Redstart
Wilson's Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Blue-winged Teal
Pied-bill Grebe
Canada Geese
Lesser Yellowlegs
Killdeer
Red-winged Blackbirds

Administrative Priorities

I had a final this afternoon in a classroom building with halls full of classes for 20-30 students each.  During the semester, the class happened at 1pm, so during the semester, there are a fair number of classes happening at this time.

As is my practice, I got to the final a few minutes early and let students start early.  Time usually isn't an issue with this exam format, but it helps students feel a little less stressed if they have more time.

And then, about five minutes into the exam time, there started to be increasing noise in the hallways.

So I went out and asked people to be quieter.

A few minutes later, way more noise.  Again, I went out.

And a few minutes later, more noise yet.  And again, I went out.  I suggested that the people in the hallways might go elsewhere to chat, and that's when they told me that they had to be THERE because they were told to wait in this hallway for the graduation rehearsal.

After that, mostly the people right outside the room were pretty quiet, but there was a lot of loud chatter from down the hall.

The last time I went out, I asked people to be quieter, and the person who was being loudest told me that they had to talk because it was for graduation rehearsal; she had some handout thing, and seemed to think she was in charge.

And finally, after a half an hour into the two hour exam, things quieted down.

In the meanwhile, I contacted my chair, the two people listed as contacts for the graduation rehearsal, and my university senator.


I don't blame the students; they're graduating seniors, probably all done with finals, and excited, and of course they want to chat.  But holy cow, who over in the Fort thought it would be a good idea to gather all these people in a classroom hallway during the last afternoon of finals?  (And really, do people need to rehearse to walk in line, sit down, stand up, walk across a stage, walk back, and sit down, and then walk out?  Really?)

A Real Question

Serious question here.

Why is grading so onerous?

I'm sure everyone else tries to write assignments that will lead to interesting projects and papers, but still, grading is onerous.

Grading is so onerous that we make jokes about cleaning houses as procrastination and so on. 

But I really want to think about why it's so bad.

That and I'm procrastinating.  Are you?

Countdown

I have about 50 projects to grade, three exams to write, three exams to proctor, 50 exams to grade, and then the semester's done.

If I grade about 13 projects each day, and write one exam per day for the first three days, then I should be on track for handing back projects for finals and being read to grade finals after they come in.

I had a lovely weekend, involving a picnic, birding, biking, and a native plant sale, but not grading or writing exams.  So now the push is on.

Birding this weekend? 

I saw my first ever Swainson's Thrush.  (The local facebook birding group helped with the ID, because I thought it might be a Hermit Thrush.  But no, it doesn't have a white eye ring and does have a buff cheek.)

And my first ever Sora.  That was weird, because it's not like I study shorebirds, but I saw it and thought, hey, a Sora, and looked at the book, and that's what it is.  So for some reason the image and name stuck in my head from just perusing, I guess.  anyway, it was way cool.

And continuing my fascination with the Yellow-headed Blackbirds!

Rethinking Goals

I thought more about the goals, more about the class, and more about stuff last night, and realized that I hadn't put in some of the stuff I think is really important.

So here's some more brainstorming for Shakespeare:

1.  I want students to get better at reading and writing about difficult texts.  (Reading in terms of strategies for reading: looking up words, thinking about sentences, reading aloud, and so forth; writing in terms of putting the reading skills into words on paper.)

2.  Develop understanding of Shakespeare's work in relationship to standard literary genres, techniques, and style (Thanks, Sapience!)

 3.  I want students to get a sense of the historic, cultural, and social contexts of early modern theater. 

4.  I want students to begin to learn research (asking questions, finding information, reading critical articles for the argument).


One of the problems I have with these sorts of exercises is that over the course of 15 weeks, I want students to learn a lot, and to think hard, and to begin to put things together, but I know different things will stick with different students, and that I can't do everything, but that there are probably 20 things I want to stick with someone in some way.

Goals, Outcomes, and Madness

In the ever constant race to update and revise and be prepared for our next departmental review, we're doing these projects to make our courses "outcomes based."   For every course, we're supposed to have goals (which, as I understand it, are supposed to have to do with what we want students to learn), outcomes (which, as I understand it, are supposed to have to do with what students produce to show that they've reached the goals), and sub-outcomes (which, as I understand it, is what students actually produce to show they've reached bits and pieces of the bigger goals and outcomes).  We're supposed to have between 1 and 4 goals, 1 and 4 outcomes (one for each goal), and for each outcome, 1-3 sub-outcomes.

I want to brainstorm a bit here, because I find this sort of stuff intensely frustrating and not fun, and I don't think I find it nearly as helpful as the edu folks keep promising I should.

Let's take, say, an intro Shakespeare course, a genre-based Shakespeare course.

What should the goals be?

1.  I want students to get better at reading difficult texts.

2.  I want students to get a sense of how damned good Shakespeare is.  (I think of this as building in an understanding of some plays, how genre works, how imagery and such work, how character development works, and on and on.)

3.  I want students to get a sense of the historic, cultural, and social contexts of early modern theater.  (Yes, that's huge.  HUGE!)


Do those goals make sense?  Are there better goals?  Are there more goals?

Edited to add:  There should be something about writing in there, maybe in the first one, reading and writing about difficult texts?

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Last year I saw my first Yellow-headed Blackbird.  This year, I saw about four all near by.


I also saw bunches of ducks, and a couple of Wilson's Phalaropes!

 

 



You may need to click on the pictures to see the Phalarope; they're the two smallest birds in each of the last two shots, floating lowish in the water.

Head Meet Brick Wall

We just finished an almost 2 hour meeting; we also had a two hour meeting of the same group last week.

We finally voted, after many hours of discussion.

The frustrating thing is that I don't think a single person changed their mind as a result of the discussion.

I need to go outside!

That Time of Year

It's that time of year when I'm really ready to be done with stupid excuses, both from students and administrators.

I'm tired of the same few students being regularly absent, and wanting to hand in work late, or to email it while class is going on.  It's not that I don't believe they're sick, because I do, but I'm tired of the extra work.  (And I'm sure everyone who's sick is tired of being sick; I'm totally tired of this stupid cold, even though it's almost all gone.  If even a little cold makes me cranky, what would I be like with a serious illness?  Worse, no doubt.)

I'm tired of administrators putting up hoops, and then saying that we have to make our hoops or someone else will make them for us.  And I'm tired of fellow faculty deciding to hold the hoops up as high as possible for other faculty so that they can look like proper hoop makers and holders for the administrators.

I need a serious break before I participate in even one more meeting about goals, outcomes, rubrics for programs of varying levels, and so on.

Retirement and Educational Opportunities

I was following link bait from effbee earlier today, and read an article about retiring near college campuses to communities with close ties to those colleges, including opportunities to audit classes and so on.

In the comments, people talked about wanting, during retirement, to audit for free, or take a BA for free, and complaining about the costs of doing so.  Some states do have laws that allow people over 60 to audit classes for free, just as some states have laws that allow veterans to take classes with free or reduced tuition.  (In my state, the legislature basically said, you have to have veterans, and provide appropriate special services, but you can't charge tuition, and no, the state isn't going to make up the difference.)

The long answer, at least for state schools, is that as state (tax) support for schools has gone down, tuition and fees have gone up.  The voters have long voted for politicians who promise lower taxes in all sorts of ways, and keep voting for those politicians.  They argue that education is a private good, and we state taxpayers shouldn't pay for it, and so we pay less for it (as taxpayers) and students pay more individually.  It's no secret that I don't like any of this.  I'd happily pay a lot more in taxes for well-supported schools (at all levels, from pre-school to graduate programs), universal health care, and better social services of all sorts.  And I vote that way when I can (though finding any politician to vote for who will promise to raise taxes to support schools seems pretty impossible).

So, should seniors get reduced or free tuition or auditing privileges at state schools?

I think no.  And I know not all seniors have had opportunities, and I want them to, but these folks have been voting for a long time, and their collective votes have put into office politicians who've consistently voted to lower taxes and lower the support for public schools (at all levels).  That hurts almost everyone who wants to attend public schools, and it especially hurts younger students who are taking on serious loan debt, even at schools such as my own, which charges under $10K tuition/year. (Yes, there are other fees, and no, that doesn't count housing, books, etc.)

What about you folks?  What do you think?

Spring Birding

I took my non-teaching responsibilities today and went birding. 

 I'm remarkably bad at IDing ducks.  Still, these are ring-necked ducks, though I'd be hard pressed to find the ring in these pictures.

 I love Northern Harriers; they're right below kestrels and white-tailed kites in my favorite raptor list.

 This is a trumpeter swan, I think.  If so, it's a first time seeing one for me!

Pied-billed Grebe.  Very cute, and a picture that's surprisingly sharp for me.

 American coots.  And you can sort of see that there's snow falling.  It wasn't a perfect day for birding, except that it was pretty darned good to see birds.

 Buffleheads!

 Blue-winged teal.

The same Blue-winged teal, and a female Blue-winged teal, too.

Another trumpeter swan.

 A Northern Shoveler.  I love the size of their beaks.  Those are serious beaks.

 And a female Northern Shoveler, with an equally impressive beak!

 This isn't a great picture, but if you look carefully about a third down and a third to the right, you'll see a duckish bird with a sort of horizontal stripe on its head.  That's a Garganey, a mostly Eurasian Duck that's been sited around this area lately, and which I was lucky to see.

There's the same Garganey in the picture below, maybe a bit easier to see.

It was hanging around with two female and one male Blue-winged teal.  (Not the ones pictured above.)  You can see the female teal in the lower picture, to the right of the Garganey if you look carefully.  It makes you realize how hard these guys can be to see!

 

Energy

I'm still slightly under the weather.  As I was walking to my 2 hour class today, psyching myself up to appear energized, I thought about how much energy it takes to enact "professor" in a classroom, and how absolutely vital it is to try to put forward the energy.  I don't think teaching and learning are all my responsibility in a classroom, but I think my trying to enact "professor" with good energy makes a difference.  And is difficult sometimes.

I've gotten hardly any exercise while I've been feeling under the weather, so finally, Sunday, I rode my bike on the trainer for half an hour.  It was fine, and I feel better for it, but I can't imagine trying to compete in any sort of real way while feeling under the weather.  I can fake my way through teaching a bit, but I couldn't fake my way on a bike at all.

Goodbyes

A couple I know who've been adjuncting at NWU are moving far away; this morning, they had a moving sale.  I'm sad for us to be losing them, though I don't know them really well, but I can't decide whether to be excited or scared for them in their new adventure. 

And then later, a colleague who left our department for another job last year was back in town to sign papers and such for the final sale of the house she'd bought here, and to move the last few things to their new home.  I think she's happy in her new place, but we're sad to have had her leave, of course.

Some folks met at a local restaurant to chat and say good bye, and another colleague was there who is leaving us for a better opportunity.  I'm excited for him, though sad for us, since he's an excellent colleague.

It feels like there are a lot of good byes happening right now.

Add a Paper?

I got an email from a colleague the other day, asking about a student who needs an upper division course, but also needs Shakespeare (which I'm teaching at the lower division next semester, as is usual).  The colleague wants to know if I couldn't just add a project or longer paper and make it so the lower division Shakespeare course can count as an upper division course.

1.  Guess what field this colleague is in.

2.  Guess how insulted this colleague would feel if I asked the same question about one of their courses.


How do your departments or fields think about the differences in lower and upper division courses?

Do you think of the differences as being primarily in one or another assignments?

Do you think of the differences as being more foundational and intellectual?

Happy Maybe!

398 years ago today, William Shakespeare died.  So says the parish record.  It's not a nice round number, but there it is.

Traditionally, it's said that Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, too.  The math is nice and round, and there's one less number for Shakespeareans to remember.

But the truth is, we don't know.  The parish record indicates that one William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26th, 1564.  And we know that in practice, in the area, babies were baptized within a few days of birth.

I find the obsession with Shakespeare's birthday a bit irritating.  For me, the baptism stuff is more fascinating, more cool because there are records to look at, and we can think about how we know what we think we know.  But for some reason, the baptism narrative isn't what makes it onto NPR this morning.  (The text version acknowledges the uncertainty, though I don't remember the radio version doing that.  The lack of memory may be my morning fog.)

Still, whether a day or two early or late, the exciting thing is, Shakespeare still rocks!

A friend asked me the other day if I thought that Shakespeare knew his works would have lasting impact.  It's an interesting question, isn't it?

I think he did.  He certainly knew that old works could have lasting impact, since he knew how important he found Ovid, Plutarch, and Homer.  Whether he thought about the ways their works had been made more and more available with the advent of movable print technology, I don't know.  I think he probably took printed books for granted, as we do.  But he knew that printed stuff gets reproduced again and again, and plays with that idea.

And he knew that in his theater tradition, plays got played again, came back into repertoire, even after they'd found their way into print.

At any rate, I hope he had some inkling of how good his works are, how utterly astoundingly good!

Teaching Sick

I've had a cold this week, not serious, but coughing, hacking, and sleeping a lot.  And yet, I've taught all my classes.  I wasn't nearly as good teaching as I usually am, but they were okay.

It got me wondering, though, how other peoples' schools handle short term instructor illnesses?

Here, you can just cancel classes.

Or you can email the department and ask someone to cover the class.  (It seems to me that most of those emails are more for planned absences, such as for conferences, rather than for illness.)

I have cancelled classes in the past rather than try to find someone else to teach them, mostly because we teach an 11 credit load (with adjuncts teaching a 15 credit load as full time), so it seems harder to find someone with free time than it would if we taught 6 or 9 credit loads; easier than with 12 credit loads, though.  But usually, especially with a cold, I just muddle through, do the best teaching I can, and that's that.

With a cold, I don't think I'm extending the cold.  It's usually a week to two weeks, or, if you don't teach, 7-14 days, right?

But I feel bad about probably sharing germs with students and others.


I was amused, on Friday, though, when I taught with a really ragged voice (mostly trying not to talk), and after class, one of my students came up and did that thing where they apologize for missing class because they didn't feel well, and you could tell as the words were coming out of their mouth, they realized that not feeling well hadn't kept me in bed.  On the other hand, if we all stayed home when we got a cold, we'd share them less, but my students would also have missed two weeks of classes this semester from my absences.

Crocus Smile

Last fall, I was thinking aloud (in the company of friends) about doing that thing where you put crocus bulbs in your lawn, and then in the spring, they come up, bloom, and die back before it's time to mow.  One of my friends suggested I do a pattern.

So I did.  Or at least, I tried to.  Using some wrapping ribbon, I laid out a smiley face, and then worked around it planting the little bulbs.

Behold, smiley face.

Then I took away the ribbon and we had that little winter thing.  You know, with the cold and arctic blasts and such.

And now, the snow's gone, and things are starting to come up.  But, naturally, not all at once.

So here's the same patch of lawn:

If you embiggen seriously, you can see three very tiny bits of yellow.  On the left, just a bit directly towards the camera from near the tip of the shadow, there's a tiny spot.  On the right, if you work forward from the tree in the back, there's another spot, and then forward more, another spot.

I had bags of mixed crocus bulbs, and it looks like the yellows came up first.

You can also see that I pruned some of the lower branches of the tree (it was getting too difficult to mow near it, and getting in the neighbor's way, too).  But mostly you can see that the tree isn't leafing out yet.  Nothing is.

And do you wonder, as I do, what caused the optical illusions of curves in the vinyl sidings of the houses?

Edited to add:  I took another picture this afternoon, and there are a few new blossoms showing up!

SAA Conversation

I asked some of the folks I know who teach at R1s about their PhD placements.  All but one assured me that all of their grads get jobs.  One of these folks said that their students get jobs because their PhD students are even willing to go to places such as the U of North Dakota.  Yep, in his mind, that's the worst thing possible.  My sort of school isn't even on his radar of horrors. 

The one who didn't assure me that all their grads get jobs talked about the ethical dilemma of teaching grad students who probably won't get jobs.  And yet, he teaches where he teaches because he took the best job offered in a tough market. 

Overall, though, the job market difficulty was passingly acknowledge in the presidential address, where Diana Henderson talked about how her connections helped her get a near Ivy job after she didn't get tenure at her first job.  It's good to have connections, no?

I know the folks involved would be horrified to realize this, but to me, SAA often feels like an insider crowd from all Ivies or near Ivies, and the rest of us who exist to buy their books and teach at places they don't really quite believe exist.

Back to the Fifties

My students are working on a project where they pose a question having something to do with our class, and then try to find an essay published in a peer reviewed journal that helps them understand the question or an answer to some extent.  They read and write an analysis of the essay.  It's a stepping stone (see, I chose a different metaphor) along the way to other research.

We're talking through the questions now, and I'm struck again (as every time I've done this) by how often their questions feel very "fifties" to me, where "fifties" means that it feels critically old fashioned.

They tend to want to know if Hamlet is really crazy, for example, or if Lady Macbeth had kids.  These aren't bad questions, but they feel out of step with questions most critics these days are asking and pursuing.

My goal is for them to be able to find a useful essay, so I help them modify and look for stuff, so things usually turn out okay.

Some of them are carrying over from high school questions, it seems.

Others, of course, are asking much more fun (from my point of view) questions.

What sorts of questions do your students ask?  How do the questions change across course levels?  (These are first and second year students, mostly, so they really are early in their development as college students.)

My SAA

Ups and downs.

I was in probably the most useful seminar so far as specific feedback for everyone's papers that I've ever been in.  It was really great that way.

I got to see good folks, from grad school and elsewhere, and that was great.

I felt ever more alienated from Shakespeare stuff here in my NWU home, where I teach more comp than early modern by far.  But where there are other good things that I appreciate.

I planned poorly, I think, and rushed in and rushed out.  The bad in that is that I spent the whole visit tired.  The good in that is that I'm home and got a good and full night's sleep last night, and I get to go to a friend's concert tomorrow which I'm very much looking forward to.

Branding

NWU is going through a thing with an ad agency or something to establish some "brand" so that students in the area will want to come here (and, I hope, so taxpayers in the state will want to support state education, but here I am all naive and everything).

They're having some fancy thing where they're going to unveil "our brand." 

You can imagine how much fun some of us are having with the brand thing. 

But even more now, since they announced the fancy thing to announce our brand via an invitation in a small envelop.  The invitation is a once folded piece of cardstock with the information about the event.  Fine so far.

But also inside, on the same cardstock, are small colored rectangles, each with one or two words, each of which is supposed to make us think of NWU or of the brand or something.  (The fact that it's not quite clear what we're supposed to make of these is all the more amusing.)

That's right, we've basically been sent an envelop with fancy confetti.

You can guess that none of the inspirational words is "sustainable" or "environmentally conscious," can't you?

Alas, none is "snowy," "pays well," or "education," either.  Nor is "change," "feminist," "justice," "work," or "diversity" among the choices.


So my question is:  did we pay these folks more or less than we pay our athletic director?


And also, have your schools been doing "branding," and if so, what's your "brand"?

Growing Up

I was in a meeting the other day, and it really struck me how difficult I find it to say to someone in a meeting situation that I think their idea, however good, won't fly, and that we should do something different.

And then today, I wrote a note to a student to tell hir that I think the project they've been working on doesn't pass muster, and either needs a lot more work, or needs not to happen.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to find these sorts of conversations difficult.  Heck, I'm sure it was worse for the person at the meeting and the student than it was for me.  And I'm sure it would be way worse if I were actually giving life-changingly bad news.

Still, it's something I'm weak about, and I need to think how to do it well and better.


On the other hand, I also realized at that meeting, and writing to the student, that I've gotten a lot better at not feeling personally hurt when certain things just don't happen.  Yes, I still feel invested, but I'm better at realizing that I should worry about the things I can do something about, and worry less about the things I can't do something about.  Or something.

And I can't be more invested in a student's project than the student is.

And I have to recognize that I make choices about what's important and what I put my energy into, and that other people make choices, but that our choices aren't going to be the same.  And I'm mostly better at respecting their choices.  (Though not always, true!)


I think everyone here is feeling beaten down by the long, very cold winter and by the semester and by constant budget cuts and administrative additions to the work.

Of course, from administrators' points of view, the work they want us to do is really important and they want us to be totally invested.  For most of the faculty, though, the work is make-work, and we don't see that it helps us teach or research or advise or anything else.  It merely provides more fodder to hire more administrators, it seems.

Bucket List

You know how there's that movie, and now people have a "bucket list" of things to do before they die?

I don't really have a list, but I do have some ideas of things I haven't done that I'd like to, and of things I've done that I'd like to do again, or more often.

So this morning, with wet and heavy snow on the ground, I built my first ever snowman.  Picture or it didn't happen, right?

The snow is super melty, and I'm not that strong, and I'm no engineer, so it's not a great one.  But it's taller than I am.  (Note to self: build with someone stronger so that you can make the first two snowballs bigger.)

Swans!

I happened to be chatting with a friend yesterday, over coffee at a little coffee shop; we'd gone out looking for the snowy owl before, and then I thought of the swans that come through, so we went out to look, and sure enough, there's a gathering of swans in the field pond by the highway!  I counted 40.

(I like to be able to look back and see how the seasons go, and it looks like this is about average for swan sightings.  I did see them in March of 2010, looks like.  But other years, it's been April.  It's cool to be able to use a searchable blog to think about seasonal stuffs.)

Bad Timing

I've posted before about some frustrations I have working with some of our tiny MA program students.  I posted here about some students I had who were rushing to finish after getting extension, and here about a student whose work didn't quite have a thesis.  That last was back in December, and now suddenly, after relatively little contact, only one revised chapter (which still wasn't quite a chapter), the student has sent forward a complete thesis, expecting the faculty folks to read and approve it really quickly.

I really did my best to explain to this student that zie needed to be in regular contact and working along, but I've pretty much had to initiate contact and ask for thesis stuff.  I did that earlier this week, sending information about the last dates to do what needs to be done this term, and a day later zie expects us to take this on.

Every time this sort of thing happens, I want to never work with another MA student.  And yet, I didn't turn this one down when zie asked.  And I try not to take out my frustrations with one student on other students.  But right now, I'm really irritated.

Political Discourse in the Midwest

We've got an important local election coming up.  There are a couple of referenda (is that the plural?) and city council stuff.  But the political discourse, even of the candidate I favor, is all about growing up in the area and family.  At least I didn't see the church reference.

The candidate I don't favor adds a bit about making the community "safe" (for raising kids) and "affordable."  Now we all want people to be safe in our communities, but I think this is coded.  And the "affordable" is about lowering taxes even more.

How can our communities be "safe" in the long run if we don't tax ourselves to support schools, roads, parks, and so forth?  Yet another reason why I will never be in politics!

The Power of the Internet

When I posted about trying to make Hamlet unfamiliar to students who think they really know it, Fie upon this quiet life shared an idea about having students trace a few words through the text.

It sounded like a good idea, but it wasn't.  It was a GREAT idea!

I did it the next day, using "fear," "revenge," "sleep," and "noble" (and asked them to also look for other forms).  It gave me the chance to talk about concordances, and on-line concordances, and to show them how to look stuff up.  It also reinforced their sense of the instability of the text as a text.

And they mostly did a fine job teasing out how their word worked, and how it changed.  The best was the "fear" group; "noble" worked the least well, I think.

So, thanks, Fie!  You made my day way better!

Midterm Grades

We're required to give students a midterm grade report here at NWU.

So I use mail merge to write a short letter showing what grades they've gotten for what assignment, and putting it all together.  Handily, this time it worked out so that they've done just under 50% of the total graded work for the class already.

I'm filled with despair at how many students can't figure out basic percentages.

And I'm filled astonied at how many students are totally and completely flabbergasted at where their grade stands at this point, even though I've given back every single graded piece of work and my syllabus lays out how much each assignment is worth.

The good thing is that the estimate right now tends to underestimate their grade a bit, so they can improve if they finish the short assignments well.  So I can reasonably comfort some of them who are aiming for As and will probably get there, and some of them I've given a realistic sense of alarm, so maybe they'll work a bit harder.


I'm also irritated that our administration doesn't think our students are capable of keeping track of their grades.

(And yes, I know that some instructors are woefully bad at returning graded work in anything like a timely manner.  I do indeed think that students need to get back work reasonably quickly, and that instructors need to explain how they grade.  I just think it's not unreasonable to expect college students to do percentages.)

Teaching Hamlet

I'm teaching Hamlet for the first time in a while, and yet again it strikes me how difficult I find it to teach Hamlet.  It's a huge play.  There's so much going on, so much to it.  But the bigger problem is that a lot of students have read it in high school, and thus seem to think that they have the final answer, and so, to every question, they want to answer whatever thing they learned in high school:  it's passion!  it's Oedipal!  it's all soliloquys all the time!

This time around, I've been trying to start by defamiliarizing the play (I'm teaching it in two classes right now, by odd luck and careful planning, but I have a couple students in both classes, so things have to focus differently for each class).  In one class, I'm trying to defamiliarize by having them talk about Q1 and Q2 parallel speeches (the opening works!), as do some more famously different bits (there's the point!).  In the other class, I've started with more historical and generic contexts.

In both classes, only about a third of students raised their hands when I asked if they'd bothered to reread the play.  And then I encouraged the others to reread because what they'd learned in high school wasn't going to cut it.

How do you find teaching Hamlet (or other super familiar texts)?

What do you to do get students to take these texts more seriously at the higher level?

The Piano Lesson

On my facebook feed, someone I know posted this weekend about how disagreeable it is to make their kid practice piano.

I know a number of people who insist their kids take up an instrument and keep at it, though the kid doesn't seem to enjoy it at all.

And the parent doesn't enjoy nagging the kid to practice.  But then the parent relates that they were forced to practice as kids, too.

And then you learn that no, the parent never plays now, doesn't practice, nada.

Why are they so invested in their kid's playing if they had lessons and could practice and play if they wanted to?  I mean, I understand that practicing isn't fun, and that it takes a lot of time.  But if the music's important enough to you to spend all that energy nagging your kid, why isn't it important enough to you to play yourself?

At what point do you let the kid decide not to play the piano (or whatever) anymore? 

(I think getting an opportunity to learn an instrument is great, and certainly learning to read music is good in all sorts of ways.  Even better is the subtler learning that focused practice leads to improvement.)

(Disclosure:  My parents took me to community music stuffs from the time I was little, and I wanted to learn an instrument, so I was given lots of opportunity.  But my parents didn't much consider it their job to tell me to practice, nor was I a great practicer, nor a great musician.  But I did enjoy a lot of my experiences in high school band, which made the whole high school horror a bit less horrible.)


Meanwhile, break is over.  Back to classes!  I got a lot of stuff done, though not everything.  I did relax a lot and rode my bike, even (outside!).

If Our Minds Be So

Last night, I was sort of in a panic about how fast break has gone by, and how little I've gotten done.

This morning, things look brighter.

I've finished all the grading, and entered grades.
I've done my taxes.
My bike has had its spring tune up and is ready to go.
My car's in the shop for its 100K tune up stuffs, and to fix a small oil leak (before it gets bad).  But I have a loaner.
I'm about half way through rereading Hamlet (which I don't teach often, because it's so darned huge), and thinking about how I want to teach it in class this semester.  (I'm using the Arden 3 edition, and it's masterful, very smart, very interesting and well-explained.)

Still to do:  errands: hair cut, etc

Choose texts for fall courses.  Holy cow, how can that be?

I'm teaching an Ecocriticism based early modern seminar next fall (at least, that's what I'm thinking), but still have to choose texts.  What texts would you teach?  (It can be anything early modern.  This is going to be a challenging seminar for me!)

I also have to figure out my theme for the composition course.  I'm thinking maybe "liberal arts."  Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Other ideas?


I went birding a tad while I was away for a couple days, hoping to see a gyrfalcon reported.  But I've examined my pictures, and the bird I was hoping might just be the gyrfalcon is a rather beautiful Northern Harrier.  I saw a bunch of Northern Harriers, and it's good, because I've got a much better idea of what to look for beyond the white rump.


Four more days (including today) of break!  Off to get stuffs done and ready!

Nearly Perfect

So far, it's a great start to the break.

I went for the first outside bike ride of the season, and it was great.  I was slow as molasses, but it was great because I was outside, and pedaling.  It was just about freezing, so with good clothes, I was pretty much warm enough.  And did I mention, it was GREAT!

(You'd have to try hard not to be aware that riding a road bike in biking gear is a pretty privileged thing, but it's especially noticeable in colder weather when the homeless folks are out during the day trudging, wearing many layers, and I'm out in the cold for fun.)

I tried to take a nap, but didn't fall asleep.  Still, being able to take a nap is pretty luxurious.

And now I've just about finished grading a set of midterms.  That means I won't have to grade this set of midterms later in the break!  I still have a makeup set to grade (some students needed to take it earlier), but that's only three exams.  That means, yes, I have almost no grading to do for the rest of the break!  For once, procrastination didn't win!

A nearly perfect start to spring break today!

The Place of Shakespeare

Some of the responses to the last post got me thinking about how different departments organize curriculum, and how differently we Shakespeare folks teach in response.  And that got me thinking about Shakespeare in the curriculum.

When I was interviewing for this job, one of the interviewers asked me if I thought that Shakespeare should be a required course for English lit majors.  Now there was a time when the vast majority of English phuds would probably have answered with a certain and sure "yes, of course!"  But that time is not now, and that time was not even then.  At least not for me.

I answered that I didn't think it should be a requirement because there were lots of good literatures and texts, and that what we should focus on was helping students learn to really read and analyze texts, and understand them, and that students could learn those skills well with Shakespeare, certainly, but also through lots of other texts and literatures.  I still feel that very strongly.

I can't speak to the situation at very elite schools, but for our situation, we really aren't preparing our majors to be graduate students in English literature.  And we shouldn't be.  What we're preparing them for is a lifetime of being able to read critically, to analyze, to solve problems, and so forth, and hopefully, also, yes, to find joy and pleasure in literature.  Our majors graduate relatively poorly prepared to take on graduate work in earlier British lit.  We just don't have many opportunities for them to take earlier British lit courses; a lit major might, with real care and luck, be able to fit three earlier British lit courses in a curriculum here, but it wouldn't be easy.

Partly, this is a matter of curricular design.  We don't require many specific courses, and those we do are skills and theory focused rather than focused on geography, chronology, or specific authors.


When I got here, I learned that the department had made two hires in Shakespeare/early modern, to replace two retiring faculty members.  Those to faculty members had pretty much divided up Shakespeare (which was required of all lit majors) into two courses based solely on which plays each person like to teach most.  (Evidently they'd gone through the canon together and chosen their "teams" and that was that.)

Among the first votes taken when we got here was a curricular question about whether we should require Shakespeare, and that requirement went away with overwhelming support.  (I sometimes felt, when I'd see one of the retired folks, that they were both very disappointed that we new Shakespeare faculty hadn't fought tooth and nail to keep the requirement.)

We two set about revising the Shakespeare courses, and made one a sophomore level surveyish course, where we agreed to teach across genres, 8 or so texts, and another junior level topics course, where we would teach some topic in Shakespeare.  That was almost 15 years ago now, and I've taught the topics course I think twice, once Roman Shakespeare and once Shakespeare's and history.  (I thought I'd get to teach it more, but things haven't shaken out that way; my colleague has taught it maybe one or two more times, but certainly neither of us teaches it very often.)

At about the same time, the department as a whole worked through a massive curricular change. 

And now we're thinking about some new changes.

And as a Shakespeare person, I'm thinking about how Shakespeare and earlier British lit might fit into those new changes.  So I'd love to hear from others about how Shakespeare fits in their curriculum.  Is it required?  Do most students take it if not required?  Is it mostly thought of as a general education course or a strictly majors course?

And broadly speaking, how do you think of a literature major?  What's the point of a lit major?  And how does Shakespeare fit that point?