The Monday Report

The sense of that broken strand of pearls is building: little precious bits are bouncing around and I know some are falling through the cracks, despite my lists and reminders and determination not to be a bozo. For instance, I keep blissfully forgetting that I have to check the personnel files for my promotion mentees, and that I have to do a stealth observation of a potentially problematic adjunct. (I could have done that tonight, but I want to talk to Bruce first, get a sense of how to manage potential body-blocks the guy could throw. Metaphorically speaking of course.) And Friday morning I fly off for the ASLE Executive Council "retreat" at Biosphere 2 (completely cool: check it out at http://www.b2science.org/It's also fun to look it up on Google Maps: do the satellite view and you see nothing but desert for quite a ways around...). I'm looking forward to the trip (not so much to the 3 a.m. alarm), but it's also one more damned thing to juggle (when to clean, when to pack, what to take in the way of work).

I was a bit worried about the juggling act over the weekend, in fact: Sunday I had blazingly good intentions to get all the assignments for all three classes marked--and I simply couldn't do it. Not because I ran out of time, but because I was so frustrated. However, in looking for ways to distract myself, I checked my e-mail--only to find that my report to ASLE is pretty much the first thing on the agenda: I've been asked to give an update on Friday night. Felt a big yikes about that--but then I realized, this was the perfect "displacement activity": I could get the report done and out of my hair while simultaneously avoiding marking assignments, assuaging the guilt I'd otherwise have felt not to be "working." I was working, just not on grading. And in fact, it took a couple of hours to comb through everything--and see what pearls had already been rolling into cracks and under the fridge.

But of course, even though that was a good task to have accomplished, part of me was worried that I wouldn't be ready for today--and yet (thanks to a very dull day in Advisement), I was. I still have to do the mini-papers for Native American Lit, but I'll do those in the morning ("tomorrow, when I'm stronger") before I launch into grading first versions of papers for 102.

Now, in terms of actual classroom stuff: Nature in Lit is an interesting challenge. The students are not taking as much responsibility for their work as I'd like ("I wasn't sure if we were going to read this in class..." Bullshit. What do you think "Reading Due" means?), and although their papers were not terrible (except the plagiarist), they also weren't good. So, I clarified: yes, from now until the end of forever, I expect you to do the reading at home and come in to class prepared to talk about it, no matter when your journal/log is due (today, the journal/log was due, well, TODAY, and still I'm getting the excuse about maybe we were going to read it in class. Argh.). And yes, I understand that you're used to getting a specific question to answer when you write your papers--but that's not how it works when you get to four-year colleges. You must learn to develop your own thesis out of a big, vague topic. And you actually have a relatively specific topic; you're just being required to break it down into segments for the mini-papers.

I was very sympathetic about the struggle to come up with a narrow focus on one's own, to write a short paper (I confessed--and it's true--that the hardest writing I ever had to do was for a course in which I had to produce a 1 to 1-1/2 page paper every other class, and was penalized fiercely if it went on to the third page). But given their worries, I floated an idea I'd come up with over the weekend: "would you like to workshop a couple of mini-papers in class, so you have a better sense of what's needed for your next ones?" Unanimous "yes, " plus two volunteers willing to have their papers workshopped--one of them being the plagiarist. Speaking of which, I didn't catch how he did it--I suspect someone is offering too much"help." There were other huge, systemic problems, so I didn't grade it; I just told him to revise and resubmit, and suggested he make regular use of the Writing Center. After class he was trying to explain why what he did was correct. Um, no. And he wanted to extend that conversation after class. Again, no. If he wants my feedback, we need more time, and he needs to make an appointment. But it will be interesting to see how the rest of the class responds. The other student who volunteered had a decent paper to start with--but it can be better. I don't remember if I've talked about him: he's in the college production of Spring Awakening right now, and he's so obsessed with it that he can hardly talk about anything without bringing it up. I understand his enthusiasm (been there, just like that), but it is a little tedious. However, he may induce me to finally break through my resistance and see one of NCC's productions. I have a profound intolerance for amateur theatricals, no matter how "good" they may be, but he's specifically asked me to go, and I'd like to support his aspirations, so, yeah, I probably will. Maybe I'll make Paul go with me, and we can go out and drink heavily after.

Well, returning from that little digression, I will be very interested to see how the workshop goes. If it goes well, and the students think it's useful, I may offer to do it again--but on the proviso that other students volunteer their papers. It might be interesting for everyone to get one workshop session--and there are so few of them that's possible.

The 102 class went well, I think, as students began the revising process. Most of the students were very engaged, including the young man who'd started the semester with a big chip on his shoulder. Suddenly, he's smiling, asking questions, alert--and today was working hard. Two of the young women took my instruction to take notes a little too seriously: they were so busy writing notes they weren't getting to the actual feedback part (were still reading the second page of each other's papers when most groups were already talking). Note to self: the instruction needs to be "jot down things you want to remember to bring up in your feedback." But once I steered them out of that water, they did a terrific job of helping each other.

A couple of the students were not really digging in to the actual process of writing by hand on their papers to make changes--and I'm glad Kayla encouraged me to show them my own writing process, in which I show them my hand corrections to a typed version of a book review I wrote. They could see the extent of writing that I want to see on their papers, too; good tool. I need to remember that this is how to use it: not just to hold up, but to show them so they can compare the quantity of their hand-corrections to mine. I mean, if I do that to my own writing....

I'll know more once I start grading them. I'm disappointed that two of the potentially better students didn't show up today, and haven't (as yet) e-mailed to ask about what to do, now that they're late. One student showed up at the very end of class to submit her paper; she's going to have to do the hand-written work on it herself (I hope she understands that; I was a bit rushed in giving her the instruction); with any luck she'll be there on Wednesday ready to work.

They still don't understand the value of these various processes. To them, these steps are just so many idiotic hoops they have to jump through because I want to be entertained (I guess). But the only way to get them to understand the value is to jump them through the hoops until they realize that they're actually learning to get over a very important bar.

On the way back to the office, Kayla and I discussed how we might pair them up differently next class--but we can't do much of that in advance, as it depends on who's there. I did realize that two students who have seemed pretty disengaged in their group work to date are actually just very shy: they ended up working together, and I think it went well. Kayla and I were trying to strategize what to do with a student who was way too defensive about his work: his (rather timid) partner just stopped trying to help him, in the face of his rejection of her suggestions, so we want to pair him with someone who can stand up to him. One student was resisting madly; who'd make a good partner for him? Do we put him with a piece of dead wood so neither of them sinks anyone else? Or do we try to find someone who can help him past the resistance? We'll just have to see how it goes.

Enh. I can feel my brains shutting down as I write--and I'm almost at the end of my mandated evening office hour (which I thought I was going to bail on tonight: see what a good girl I am?). I'm pretty much going to leave everything in the current disorganized mess and head home. Home. Mmmmmm. I can't wait for next week, when I can do my best banana slug impression around the house.