Gadzooks, what weather we had for our first day back! I remember being all fetutzed when Hurricane Gloria came through NY: she ended up not doing much at all in the city, and in my recollection, anyway, was not any worse than what we had today. Ferocious wind, ungodly downpours--and all of us slogging around campus to and from classes, umbrella struts bending under the force of the gale. I felt particularly bad for a bunch of students who had the wrong room on their schedules: students for an ESL course were showing up to my classroom and students for my class showing up where the ESL class was meeting--and the two rooms are at opposite ends of this part of campus (for those of you who know NCC: My class meets in S, the 030 here in Bradley). So, as I was trying to get through first day of 265, I had to interrupt not only as students arrived but also to make sure they were arriving for the correct class. I suspect I'll have a few more days of that before all the ESL kids are sorted out. Oy.
And of course, because of the weather, I suspect a lot of students chose not to come--especially true of 265. Most of my 102 students were there, so the room was full--in fact, it's officially overfilled: apparently, a whole bunch of students signed up for a class they thought was at 9:30 a.m. but which is actually at 9:30 p.m., so the one administrative secretary who was in today had to find classes for them all--and two ended up in my section. This is the serious downside of self-registration, but also reveals a howling problem with Banner (which I kinda hate anyway, though it is nice to be able to do at least some things online). I won't go on about Banner right now, but ye gods, what a cluster fuck for poor Ethel to sort out. (She doesn't even drink, which would have been my thought: "As soon as I'm off work...") Of course even and hour later the students were grumpy and bitter and bitching right and left--and refusing to believe they might have missed the "p.m." thing. Ah well.
In any event, I'll be interested to see how this 102 shapes up. As I was going over the attendance and late paper policies, three girls were shaking their heads and doing the "what the...??" face and gestures: clearly my policies are insanely strict and I should be consigned directly to the loony bin. I'm not taking bets yet about whether they'll drop, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did, if not now then certainly before semester's end. Their attitude changed a bit, however, when I asked the entire class if they'd ever been in a group in which they had done the homework but others had not: a little look of surprise there ("oh, yeah, I guess if I don't have my books/homework it's annoying to other students, the way they annoy me when I'm prepared and they're not." Wow, whole new thought! Our behavior affects others!)
In any case, there is one student from last semester in the class--a real sweetheart and a good student--and a few others who look like they have possibilities, at least from the alert facial expressions. We'll see. Classes never turn out like we think they're going to (though we're often right about individual students).
And so far, 265 looks like it could be fun. To my delight, a student I had last spring in Nature in Lit turned up on my roster today, and everyone was at least paying attention and contributing to discussion--already, first day. We were missing a lot of students, so the dynamics will probably change, and change again, and again, as students appear--and, later, more frequently, disappear. The classroom is a bit of a disaster area (I have no idea what's going on the period before I get there, but I felt like I was in some sort of chaotic storeroom: furniture all akimbo, broken desks and a dismantled file cabinet...), plus it's one of those long, skinny rooms in which the kids in the back feel like they're in some distant state; I may need a telescope and perhaps a megaphone in order to keep them engaged. We'll do some group work for a while until I see how things go, but we may quickly switch over to sitting in a circle and going around, taking a question or comment from everyone. It was actually a pretty cool class, got into some interesting preliminary discussion--at the culmination of which I said that as far as I'm concerned, the best students are the ones with the best questions, not the best answers. I saw a couple of faces light up at that. Glad I could give them that idea right away.
I also am glad that I just happened to copy an e. e. cummings sonnet about the wind (on this windy day), which we read and talked about briefly, just to get them in the groove. To my infinite satisfaction, I have pulled together five poems for next week, loosely around the existential malaise/WWI shattering of faith in a reasonable world idea. At the moment I'm thinking to work partly chronologically but also partly thematically (shifting themes to reflect the zeitgeist of the times, but also some themes just as themes--like what is poetry for). I'm mulling about next week--and wondering how soon I can get to "Prufrock"--and how much other Eliot I can reasonably ask of them. But they know I'm tap-dancing these first few weeks, and they seem fine with that. Whew.
I should take these moments before I head out to come up with topics for 101 assignments (the in-class diagnostic essay, the first real essay assignment, etc.--since I've done the juggling my old assignments won't work)--or perhaps finding poetry for week three in 265. But instead I've just had a nice long catch-up with Paul and will just noodle around until it's time to go salsa. Mercifully, it has also stopped raining and the wind has died down to virtually nothing, so I can get back to the car without doing the Mary Poppins thing.
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