NaBloPoMo '08 #13: Algebra Exam and Other News

In about 30 minutes here, I'll be taking my second algebra exam. Just a bit nervous, but not too worried.

I did email my students this morning to tell them that we would not be working with the article, but instead I would give them some time to work on this big massive project from hell that is due at the end of the semester. However, being the slackers they are, most of them didn't take advantage of the time I gave them in class.

Then I got to have a conversation with the student who sits in my class with her angry face on all the time. Huh. Says she's not actually angry. Really? Then why do you look like you're going to pinch someone's head off, as my southern friends like to say?

Hmm?

NaBloPoMo '08 #12: Holy Crap, What a Day

Non-stop working is going to continue long into the night. Plus I'm feeling might sorry for both me AND my students after re-reading the chapter we'll be discussing tomorrow. What a piece of shit. Why the hell did I think it would be a good idea to read it?

I'm thinking of emailing them all and telling them we'll have a work session on the big assignment for the semester, and not to mess with the reading.

NaBloPoMo '08 #10: Script

In one of my courses, students write a variety of pieces throughout the semester, including keeping a writer's notebook that they must write in three times a week. The course focuses on writing pedagogy, and I use this set of assignments to model writing workshop, with the hope that having been involved in a writing workshop as a student will encourage them to use it in their own classrooms when they are teachers.

We've done a memoir, a set of poems, and now they are working on developing a third piece (their choice) that should spring from their writer's notebooks. I'm writing with them, and I've decided that my third piece will be a script... and the setting is my classroom. I'm going to take some of the quirky little things that my students do and push them to the nth degree, make them much wackier.

What do you think? Will this offend my students? And do I care?

NaBloPoMo '08 #2: Football (yes) and some musings about teaching

So yesterday, in spite of my good intentions, I ended up watching several football games. Our (which we won, finally!), our rivals (which they lost, yeah!), and my home doc university's (which we lost, boo). Two happies and one sad. I also did lots of grading, but not enough.

This morning, Slogger and I walked slowly downtown for our weekly ritual of coffee and bagels. Slowly, I say, because his ankle is still sore from falling off a bike a couple of weeks ago (and subsequent coumadin-inspired bleeding/bruising) and because I have little energy as a result of some chest congestion. (Though I should add that the chest congestion is responding well to the Mucinex my doctor suggested. Maybe that is also making me sleepy? Not sure. Anyhoo....)

As we were slowly walking I was thinking about this semester's classes, and the algebra class I am currently taking. I was wishing with part of my self that my courses could be more concrete than they are, that I could just give tests and feel certain that my students are getting everything I want them to get (before they go out and foist their lack of knowledge on the unsuspecting students in high school around the state!).

Well, the truth is, I could give tests. And perhaps I will. I used to give a take-home midterm examination, and I liked the way it helped students to study enough to make the information I gave them concrete, in a much more solid way than asking them to apply the information to a huge project, as I also do every semester. Or perhaps what I mean is that I have more certainty, from looking at the test results, that my students are thinking about the concepts I want them to think about outside of class.

That's probably the bottom line for me -- I want them to engage: in class, out of class, after they graduate.

So, next fall, I might give a mid-term and final. How will that change what I'm asking for in class? We'll see.

Enjoying The Freshmen

This morning it was my turn to guest-lecture in our department's 1000-level course, for incoming students in the variety of majors that make up the department. The course is a "topics" course and also serves to meet the university studies description of an Intellectual Community course.

The faculty member who teaches this course on a regular basis has an oddly arranged load, and he consistently asks for other department members to guest-lecture while he is away at conferences. So, that's ok, I don't mind doing it. I always take some aspect of my specialty in the department and has things out, usually with a powerpoint slide of some kind, discussion questions, group work, etc. The common theme I've seen across semesters with this course is the huge difficulty in getting students to have a conversation, to talk, to engage themselves with the content. Perhaps this is unavoidable and understandable, since I'm only a guest-lecturer and these students are (mostly) not in my major.

However. This semester I didn't have much time to prepare, so I just wrote a few notes and headed off to class. No powerpoint, no group work, no fanciness at all. In the hallway outside the room, I took a deep breath, murmured "I am the pack leader," walked into class, and took over. I introduced myself. I asked the students to do a quick-write on two questions, and then we talked about their answers for the remainder of class.

And boy did they talk! It was amazing. Every single student in the class said something. There was one girl in the back who was addictively texting during the whole class, but I could tell she was listening, so I let it go. There was another kid on the right with his feet up on the table, but I decided to interpret that as his casual nature rather than an attempt to be offensive.

I let them out of class five minutes early (in order to walk back across campus in time for my advising appointments) feeling absolutely positive about the class. Cool! I AM the pack leader!

Speaking of pack leaders, here are my current obsessions:
* The Dog Whisperer
* The Dog Whisperer
* The Dog Whispere
* Twilight
* The Dog Whisperer

That is all. Notice the absence of Harry Potter -- I've managed to stop obsessively rereading the series by reading one of the Dog Whisperer books and then moving on to Twilight.

Achieving (Some) Clarity

In the last couple of weeks, when I've been able to force myself to work, I have been getting lots of work done for my fall courses. I've been teaching these fall courses for the last six years and getting excellent teaching evaluations overall. There is, however, a clear pattern in the comments every fall of a couple of students saying that my assignments aren't clear. In the past, I've always written assignment descriptions in my course syllabi -- assuming that having everything in one document would be simplest for my students -- and handed out rubrics or other grading scales in class. Last year I started making samples of big assignments available to my students (with names removed, of course). I've tinkered around with the assignment descriptions over the years, trying to make them more clear, but this year I've decided to make a drastic change.

I'm creating an assignment sheet for each assignment, in a separate document. In the process of doing this (I'm almost finished) I realized that there was a lot of ambiguity in my syllabi. Lots. Because I had to make all kinds of decisions as I was writing them.

I don't know if anyone is interested in the structure of the thing, but I set each information sheet up in this format:

Purpose:
Assignment Description:
Method:
Evaluation:

When I told Slogger what I was doing, he said, "Sounds like hand-holding to me." Well, this is true. However, in defense of my hand-holding, this is the kind of thing I ask my students to prepare for their (future) junior high and high school students. So I can think of it as a) making my life easier, b) modeling good teaching practice for preservice teachers, and c) having something concrete to point to when complaints arise.

But anyway, I've been so focused on getting this job done that I've neglected to blog. Sorry about that.

P.S. I found out last week that my proposal for a small conference in my field was accepted. This makes me so happy! I attended this conference when I was in grad school, and I am looking forward to getting back into it.

Um, no.

Yesterday I got an email from a student in my online class. "I had a really busy week," this student states, "and I didn't realize that the online discussion and quiz wouldn't be available on Sunday. Could you open them for me so I could access them?"

Um, no. See the previous post containing the "F" word.

Evening Blogging

Slogger is already in bed -- he fades fast, as soon as afternoon wears into evening -- and I'm all up by my lonesome, so I thought I'd blog a bit. I spent today cooking and working on my summer online course. The last couple of times I've made bread in my bread machine it fell flat, so I did some reading on the subject and decided to start a little bread-making experiment. Basically, because I am at high altitude, the idea is that the yeast will rise faster and higher than the gluten can stretch, which will cause the whole structure to collapse. Recommendations include reducing the amount of yeast by 1/4 of a teaspoon, and reducing the amount of water by 1-2 teaspoons. I did both today (and kept a record) and found that the bread ended up a bit higher than last time, but still fell a bit. I know, I should have only changed one thing at a time. I did notice, as the dough was rising for the first time, that it was a bit stickier than I would have liked if I were making it by hand. Soooo...... I think the next time I make bread with the machine, I'll reduce the water a bit more, keep the yeast at the same amount, and/or perhaps increase the flour just a bit. I'm pretty sure I'll get it eventually.

The word "recommendation" there reminds me of the email I just got from a student who is student teaching currently. He had asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him, which I did and mailed to him. Apparently, though, I left in a "she" instead of a "he" in the last paragraph of the letter, which led him to ask this, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way:

"Does my long hair make me seem more feminine to you?"

So, I'll be rewriting and remailing that one!

The registration for my summer online class is getting crazy -- that class is almost full, and I know there are still students out there who are just able to register on Monday. I hope I don't end up with a waiting list, as I'm not keen on having to grade jillions of papers all summer!

I can't think of anything else, really, so I'll close and head for bed with a glass of water and Harry Potter.

Awarded

On Friday, I received a phone call from my dean, asking me if I would be willing to facilitate a small-group discussion during Monday's college faculty meeting. "About what?" I asked. Turns out the college is working on its contributions to a university-wide planning document, so faculty members are beginning the discussion about what our foci and action items should be. (But that's beside the point.) Of course, I agreed, though I was secretly thinking that there were other people (hello! faculty with tenure! or maybe administrators!) who would be more likely to be asked to do this than me. But whatever, I'm in for the good of the order, etc.

So I showed up at the faculty meeting on Monday, a little nervous and really unsure about the process, or even the topic. Turns out I needn't have worried, because here's what really happened.

Two university bigwigs showed up and said that they had an announcement. For Dr. Bad Ass (well, they didn't say that, but they said, you know, my real name). I was shocked and I'm sure turned red. Then the two bigwigs proceeded to read out a letter stating that Dr. Bad Ass had won a highly prestigious (at least at our uni), university-wide teaching award.

Knock me over with a feather. The dean lied to make sure I would be at the meeting.

Registration Woes

Now that I've been at home for most of the last week, coughing up a lung or two, I've had some time to devote to my online courses. I'm teaching a graduate course this semester, with a fairly small enrollment. The course was originally designed for a combination of intensive weekends (Friday evenings/Saturday all day) and online discussion, but I switched it to online because of the low enrollment, after which point the enrollment tripled. Interesting dynamic there. I'm having to put it together on the fly, which means I'm just about two weeks ahead of the class.

One of the techniques I'm using for this course is mini-lectures (voice over on powerpoint) that I record using Camtasia. The process of designing those has been interesting. Usually, I choose a topic that is related to the material in the assigned texts, or one that is only given a small amount of play in those chapters, and provide information on those topics. Only about 15-20 minutes per mini-lecture. I create a powerpoint, write notes underneath, and then record the lecture. Easy.

So now I've had a bit more time -- because of the coughing -- to work on my summer online course, which is on Literature for Young Adults. I teach this course regularly during the school year; this will be my first time teaching it online and my first time teaching it in the summer. It's a lot of work getting the course online, but I think I'll be getting some extra money for the course development (!).

So my beef is that -- because this course is also offered as a graduate course for teachers in the state who are in our literacy endorsement program -- registration is done through our off-campus enrichment program. That's fine, I have no problem with them doing the registration. But. The course doesn't show up in our registration system until the around-the-state folks (who register as graduate students) can register -- not until the end of next month. This makes sense, I guess, because we don't want the class to fill up with undergraduate students before the graduate students get a chance to register.

But the bottom line is that undergraduates are calling me and emailing me, all panicked because the course doesn't show up! And they can't enroll! Is it full? Would I please let them add the class? Because they are graduating in May and this is their only chance for an upper-division course, and if they can't take it the world will end!

Sheesh.