Mid-day

In just a moment, I will turn my attention back to the stuff I want to get marked before Native American Lit meets this afternoon, but I won't have time to blog after class today (I'll be dashing home to get ready for tomorrow's flight to Arizona), so thought I'd dash off a post now. No classes next week, so I'm not anticipating any posts again until Feb. 27. Time is really whipping past.

I was delighted to see a student back in Nature in Lit today whom I thought we'd lost. That brings the attendees back up to seven. It was our first class in the conference room setting, and again, I like it. As I think I mentioned, on Monday they decided they'd like to workshop a couple of each other's papers, so we did that. I had to keep reminding them to talk to the author of the paper, not to me ("He's right there...")--and of course the students weren't picking up on some things that I see--but I think it was useful for them to have that experience of building objective distance. Certainly it was helpful for the two student authors. Wonder Student was particularly helpful in giving specific--and spot on--feedback. I particularly liked how he explained what an introductory paragraph should do. Interestingly enough, what he said is almost identical to how Paul said he talks about intros and theses to his students, yet I don't think Wonder Student had Paul as his professor (I'll have to ask). This may just be one of those "great minds think alike" moments--but I'm taking notes for the future.

The only thing I wasn't thrilled about is that it means we slighted the reading--but it was apparent that lot of them hadn't done the reading anyway. I hope to hell they read the Thoreau essay I've assigned for over the break--and that they remember they've got another mini-paper due the Monday we get back.

At the end of class, a couple of students talked to me about missing work, and for this class, at this point, I just want them to turn it in. I'm not going to fret too much about whether it's late. I want them doing the work, and I want them doing work of acceptable quality. And I want them in the class. Other than that, everything is flexible.

But now the Native American Lit assignments are calling to me. I do want to get them done before class--maybe even get some of the stuff I collected from Nature in Lit today marked--so I have as little as possible hanging over when I take off. I am not going to take any student work with me over the break: I'll return to it when we return to campus. Over the break, I have to finish reading the book I'm supposed to review and write the review: that's enough work for a week "off."

Signing off until end of the month....