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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Thursday, March 3, 2011

Stick a fork in me...

...I'm done. I'm very proud of myself that I managed to return all the old homework I'd collected over the past few weeks (mostly by not commenting on it at all: reading journals about the short stories no longer matter, as that paper is done and gone, so why point out the problems with interpretation?). Of course, I now have enormous, steaming piles of revisions to mark, plus the reading journals and other homework I collected this week, but I'm going to do my damndest to stick to my plan to mark less, less, less. My obsessive paper marking is doing no good to anyone, so I'm taking myself very firmly to task about giving them as much as they can assimilate--and no more.

Well, anyway.

We had fun in Native American lit today: I brought in some poems for us to work through on the fly, and they did a nice job. The best part was when response to a poem led to talking about larger issues: how we see our place in the world, the environmental destruction we know we're causing and yet how we can't seem to really change how we see the world so that we'll behave differently (this is precisely what my paper was about, one of those rare but fascinating moments when something that's popping in my head spontaneously arises for the students as well, with no prompting from me). I was aware that the niggling headache I've been fighting for the last three days--and the fact that it's Thursday--didn't lead to terrific teaching on my part (my intellect feels like it's got a flat tire), but the students did most of the heavy lifting and did it well.

I had a similar feeling about this afternoon's 102. As was the case on Tuesday, most of them were highly engaged in analyzing the poetry and did a great job of it. One group were completely useless lunks--so I was happy that they were grouped together; that way they didn't drag down any of the other groups. The lunks are so utterly certain that they cannot "get" poetry that they won't even make the teeniest attempt, despite my encouragement and support. So, their loss. If they won't try to engage in the process, I'm not going to try to reach in there to save them. When it comes time to write their next papers, they'll simply implode and that will be that.

Both the other 102s (the one I met yesterday and today's morning section) certainly did better on the second go-round than they had the first day. I also was intrigued to observe a colleague yesterday and to notice how completely different her approach is--and yet that we end up saying many of the same things (almost word for word) and eventually get our students to the same place. She starts by asking, "What is this poem about?" I never do. I say, "Just observe. Notice anything: individual words or phrases, what you feel, how it looks on the page. Then start to ask questions to make connections. Don't try to interpret yet." But we both end up pointing out how compact and dense poetry is, how important it is to pay attention to specific, individual words, that misinterpretations are possible, but so are multiple interpretations (and they're valid as long as the words of the text support them), and so on.

And we have the same experience of some students being willing to speak even when their ideas are idiotic, others offering interpretations that are a lot more valuable, and a lot not speaking at all.

Shifting gears, I'm looking at the calendar and am struck all over again by what a weird semester this is. There are six more weeks to get through before spring break--but once we're back, we've got three weeks and we're done. This long, looooooong stretch in the middle is in some ways good: we can get a head of steam going and roll from one assignment to the next without interruption. On the other hand, the exhaustion factor is going to build exponentially, especially for them. I have very cleverly arranged that my students have to write their final paper proposals over spring break, so I don't have to deal with them. I will, however, almost certainly have other stuff piled up that I should (but probably won't) mark. And once the break is over, Jesus, what a wild ride that will be.

Still, that's projecting awfully far into the future. I know I will have far fewer students by the end (the lunks, for instance, will very likely drop away as the assignments get progressively more challenging). I know I'll ride waves of energy and exhaustion, as I always do. And for now, all I really need to do is figure out what I want for dinner. I already watered the office plants and packed up the assignments I'm taking home for the weekend (in the foolish and no doubt delusional expectation that I'll actually get around to marking them); I've checked student e-mail and put the things I need to tend to on Monday front and center on the desk. I've got fifteen more minutes of my evening office hour, and then I am so out of here I may break the sound barrier. Feels good to cross off another week.

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