Brief post

I'm posting rapidly while I wait for my new student assistant teacher to show up, so we can discuss her duties and how it will work for her to be with me in the classroom. Just today I realized she'll only be there one day each week--which is fine, but it does change both what I might ask her to do and how the class dynamics will work.

Nature in Lit went fine today. Two of the students were not participating (of the eight who were there: I hope we haven't lost one already); both said they'd been too sick to do the reading. OK. I told them I was glad they were there, getting what they could out of the class, and that I hoped to get their journals from them by Thursday. We covered things pretty well, only have a little bit more of John Smith in their readers, so I did give them an additional reading; I hope it provides enough for us to have a good discussion on Thursday.

I do find that I tend to toss out a lot of references to other readings, socio-historical background, thoughts and ideas, more than I do in any other class I teach. This is where I can feel the difference between teaching generic courses and teaching my stuff, my field. And I love it--and it frustrates me wildly, because I'm not keeping up with my field, dammit, and I want to be.

I was glad that--other than the two who hadn't done the reading--everyone participated. Some more than others, of course, but nice that even the more hesitant readers had something to say. It will be interesting to see their journals.

And today's 102 was--hooray!!--lively and fun. We did the little dopey ice-breaker that I do with bigger classes (so I can really start getting hold of their names), then they went into groups, and most of the groups took off. There were two students who missed all of last week--one who hadn't yet registered, one who just was AWOL--and they were more than a little bewildered, being thrown into the deep end, but they'll have to swim like mad to get caught up is all. Ship is sailing onward. They had fun in the ice-breaker, a fair amount of laughing and energy, which carried over into their group work. (It took me many semesters to understand that the segue from ice-breaker to group work was important: no group work before ice-breaker, and group-work immediately after ice-breaker, so the sense of camaraderie carries over. It works.)

And I think we've already lost about three students, maybe four. I'll know more next week.

I realize, too, that I take it as a good sign when students hover after class, wanting to ask questions and check things with me--and when they make a point of saying goodbye as they leave the room. Connections are being made. It makes me happy.

Of course, I'll be bitching as usual once their papers come in, but I'm pleased to report that most of the self-evaluations were pretty good, showed a reasonable level of skill on almost everyone's part. (I was pretty proud of myself that I got them back today, too, despite not having worked on them over the weekend: I'm grateful as hell that things were significantly more quiet in Advisement than last week, so I mostly chipped away at them then.) Now I have a batch of journals to look at, and again, I'll be interested to see how they did. I already know that one or two did a miserably bad job--but I'll let them revise the first two, as I did last semester. Once they get feedback from me, they should have a better handle on what I'm looking for. One hopes.

And I am, again, paralytically tired, body still trying to adjust to the early morning alarm. I have a strong suspicion that I won't be getting much work done during my evening office hour on Mondays: those will be my longest days by far, especially if one counts the hour I spend in the office pulling my socks up and combing the snarls out of my brain before I go to teach my first class. I am in awe of the fact that Paul not only commutes away to his other life each weekend but that he can roll in the office door fifteen minutes before class, grab a few things off his desk, and go teach. Man, I need that hour and I need it here, in this room, or I'm not in my "professor" head. (One might wonder, sometimes, how effective that professor head is--it is certainly absent-minded on many occasions--but I still need to put on that particular mental costume, and it takes time.)

Two pearls of wisdom to end this blog: one from Sir Francis Bacon, one from a student who shall remain nameless.

"One method of delivery alone remains to us; which is simply this: we must lead men to the particulars themselves, and their series and order; while men on their side must force themselves for awhile to lay their notions by and begin to familiarise themselves with facts."

"Reading and writing have been around for hundreds of years. [...] Back in the day, long ago, people even used them for entertainment."

I leave you to decide which was written by whom.