9 more...

First, correction to yesterday's post: Pollan's essay was published in 2007, not 1997. (What millennium is this again?)

And the title of today's post refers to the papers yet to be graded for tomorrow's 101RB: I've got a zillion miscellaneous homework things piled up, but only 9 more actual papers to grade--until next week. Very sad today: one of my best students in RB--the young woman who first started following this blog--had to withdraw, not just from my class but from all her classes. There is a family crisis going on, so she has to leave school and move, probably upstate. I'm very sorry to lose her. When she appeared at the end of my class today with the withdrawal slip, I said, "Oh, Laura no! Oh, please no!" She started to cry; made me feel awful. I didn't want to add to her distress, as what she's going through is hard enough, but I genuinely am very sad to lose her--and I'd welcome her back into any class of mine, any time, should she return to NCC.

Oh, and speaking of papers for RB: remember Monkey Skulls? He wrote a lovely evaluation of my comments, in which he said he'd expected our conference to consist of me telling him to withdraw but that instead, he said, "All I got was positive re-assurance and a guideline of which [sic] I should follow." He ends his report saying, "I believe that I did infact [sic] improve upon my repertoire, making myself not sound like a high school boy, but a college man." And he turned in a paper that was appropriate on all levels. If he'd done that for his first draft, he'd have been able to get a fine grade in revision, I'm sure--and even with the flaws of his second attempt, I'm tremendously proud of him. He may not manage to do enough work and attend enough classes to pass, but he's learned something possibly more valuable, which is how to gain respect. I am thrilled to my socks--and, quite honestly, pretty damned proud of how I handled that whole situation.

But apparently it was a day for withdrawals: I lost a student from 229, too--again, he wasn't withdrawing just from my class but from everything. Family issues there, too, I believe. He's a sweetheart, so it's a shame--and he made a couple of buddies who hugged him goodbye, which I thought was lovely. I find it gratifying when students make friends in my class (and my classes are responsible for a couple of long-term and very close friendships. I don't think a class relationship has led to a marriage yet, but who knows.) The class itself went OK. We cranked through a bunch of poems, so we only have two more to do on Monday, plus starting in on Ceremony.

But there are two students in the class who are starting to get my goat. She is the one who, on Monday, suggested that my standards/assignments were responsible for the uniformly low level of papers on the first one. He is her boyfriend. They are patently in the class only because they need an English class to graduate and this one fit their schedules. They equally patently hate being there. He doodles or writes notes to her; she reads them and smirks. Monday was the first time she ever said a word (to complain, mind you, not to get clarification). Today was the first time he ever said anything: one student remarked that it was pretty ridiculous that Europeans thought they could claim someone else's land simply by planting a flag--and he flung his hand up in the air to say it wasn't ridiculous because it had been going on for thousands of years, ever since the Greeks and Romans. (I don't think the ancient Greeks and Romans did the whole flag thing, but never mind.) If we follow his logic, slavery is also OK because it has been going on for thousands of years, as has subjugation of women (though he'd probably agree with that one)....

He's of the "we [Euro-Americans] won, so they [indigenous peoples] don't have any thing to complain about" school. Not worth trying to argue with him. I did point out that just because something was ancient didn't prevent it from being ridiculous, and then I moved on. But her smirking is starting to crawl all over me. I have to think about how to handle it. The nasty bitch in me wants to call her on it: "What's funny? Do please share it with all of us." "You're smiling; what's occurring to you about the reading?" that sort of thing--every time I catch a smirk, ask her about it. Or I could tell them to sit on opposite sides of the room, but I suspect I'd encounter resistance, and the showdown would just make a bad situation worse. If their behavior were more egregious and affecting other students negatively, I'd take them aside after class and politely tell them that they would not be coming back. As is, the only person who is being bugged is me--and theoretically anyway, I'm adult enough to figure out a way not to be bugged. So, stewing about that one. I'll consult with Paul. Somehow we always find it easier to deal with each other's classroom problems than to handle our own.

101MB went great. I walked in with zero plan, no clue what to have them do. The homework didn't provide a clear focus, so I figured I'd let them decide, and if they decided they didn't want to do anything at all, I'd let them go. I asked if they'd had any problems with the homework: no takers. I said I'd help with the sentence-level stuff they were supposed to locate in their papers for in their homework: no takers. I finally reminded them that their second papers are due Monday, and said they know what they need: help with research, help with thesis statements: suddenly, enthusiasm. Yes, please, help with thesis statements. So, I put them in groups according to which topic they had chosen and had them work through a thesis, then an introductory paragraph, and from that, search terms to fill in the blanks they discovered. I told them that it's OK if all the students in a group used the same thesis/intro, as I know the rest of their papers will be unique. And I emphasized that even though they'd worked hard on coming up with something in class, they shouldn't consider them final: those statements are still works in progress. If the students write the paper and suddenly realize (as often happens to all writers), "Oh, that's what I'm really talking about," they need to be willing to go back and change the thesis. Or if their research turns up something. Or whatever. But they were very engaged in the work--and actually came up with pretty good theses, as far as I could tell on the fly. So, now I do know what I'm going to do with the 101s tomorrow--and we'll see if it goes as well.

But I don't have it in me to deal with any more papers tonight. I'll be a lot more productive after I've slept--and eaten something at least vaguely nourishing. I wish I could fax myself home: right now, walking to my car and then driving the 20 minutes home seems a journey of epic proportions. However, it is the only way to get home, so....