In a minute

I'll get back to work soon, but I wanted to blog now. I'm finding it very difficult to focus--or make any sense. Students in 101 were working in their groups today; I interrupted to talk to them a little about works cited pages (which they struggle with, understandably) and about the different ways a source can appear--and I would be astonished to hear that they understood what I meant at all. They also don't care much (again, understandably), particularly when they are mostly concerned about getting their projects pulled together. I, on the other hand, apparently can't focus on anything other than the popcorn reading I did over the weekend, and which I would very much like to continue, work be damned.

I did get a few of the papers for 229 done yesterday, and have promised to return them on Wednesday, so that will make me get them off my desk. I hope to also have homework for the 101s done as each class comes up Wednesday and Thursday, so I can go into the weekend with no student assignments following me around. It's not terribly likely, but it's a good goal to have. I don't collect anything else until next week; gawd, what a blessed relief.

Instead of focusing on anything (especially student papers), my brains are ping-ponging around among all the flotsam that litters the shore of my life. I'm thinking about all the little niggly bits I need to pull together for my promo folder, wondering what committee work I may be letting slide (inadvertently), thinking about next semester, thinking about the break and the work I have to do then--some of it paid placement readings, but a week of scheduling. (We construct the schedules for the full-timers in the department--and right at the moment, that's an even 100 faculty members. Making sure everyone has a schedule that is as close as possible to what he/she wants is a remarkably complex puzzle, but it's cool when we get it to work--or almost work, as we always make mistakes.) I'm thinking about bills, Christmas shopping (what little I'll do: I'm going to tell the nephews that their present from me is my presence, which is costing me a chunk), I have no idea what else. Just flotsam.

But it's easier to think about that than to face the papers for 229. The first two I graded were OK (though one was 14 pages, or some absurd thing, when I asked for 5-7--and a great deal of it just the student blathering on about how wonderful Native cultures are and how we "should" this that and the other, very little in the way of poetry analysis). I have a couple more that I know will be somewhat painful--and a couple that should be good, which I'm saving for last. I generally have to read a few bad ones, a good one, a few more bad ones, gradually zig-zagging my way up to the best (in this case, James's paper). There are mercifully few to read because there are, sadly, so few students left. I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose another two because of excessive absence. One is an athlete: I know because we get a request for a mid-term progress report for any athletes in our classes. I believe he's hanging on because he wants to continue to play, not because he really cares about the class--but he's getting himself into a hole I don't think he can get out of. Ah well.

But that just made me think about the "early warning" system that NCC is going to institute: it's been approved by the Academic Senate (argh), so the only question is what form it will take. I HATE what the administration proposed (a condescending, hand-holding, "I'm worried about poor little baby you" letter). I want to suggest instead that we institute something like what is done at Adelphi: for each student, a simple check-list on homework, major assignments, attendance, class participation, tick-tick-tick-done. Even that annoys hell out of me: shouldn't they know how they're doing? They get their assignments back with marks/grades, and they should know how many times they've missed class, so why do we have to tell them in some other form? (I believe it is a part of the ripple-effect from the helicopter parent generation--and last week's Time magazine did a cover story on the detrimental effects of over-protecting and micro-managing kids' lives, which I think every educator and parent in the U.S. should be required to accept as credo.) But as long as we're going to have to let them know what they should know already, let's at least do it in some way that suggests they have a trace of adult comprehension and responsibility. I wonder to whom I should express this particular opinion--and whether it will make a damned bit of good?

But now it truly is time to get off the hobby horse (fun as it is to gallop around on it) and turn my weary eyes and brain back to those papers. I'd give a lot to figure out how to get student assignments to grade themselves. Barring that, I wish I could turn everything into a brightly colored rubber stamp. I say the same thing over and over anyway....