That was fun

I just spent about two hours talking to the Bright Light of the Native American Lit course. She has a class after mine but it was canceled today, and since I'd written "see me" on several of her assignments, she thought she'd grab the opportunity. We went over her work pretty quickly, but then we ended up in one of those amazing, free-wheeling conversations I sometimes have with students, a conversation that covered everything from her former marriage to a Peruvian, to students texting in class, to Borat. Turns out she'd ferociously wanted to take Nature in Literature--and one of the reasons the enrollment kept going up and down was that she'd sign up, reconsider and drop it from her schedule, then, motivated by desire, sign up again. But she simply couldn't take the class and accommodate her work schedule. She told me she'd even have switched her work days from Monday/Wednesday to Tuesday/Thursday so she could attend, if it had been offered Monday/Wednesday--but the damned thing meets on Monday/Thursday, and she couldn't swing it. She'd have been a real delight to have in that class--but she's also a delight in Native American Lit, so I win either way.

I think there were four students in Nature in Lit today. I'm pretty sure one of the absentees will be back, but the others may be permanently gone. One is a bit of a loss; the rest, not so much. They did a fine job of going over the poems today (not so easy), and most of them had their journal/logs ready (minor triumph)--but only one was prepared with her big paper. Ah, fuck it. I gave everyone until Monday--and let the one who had the paper ready take it back to keep working on, as she wasn't entirely happy with it yet. I'm simply not going to be a monster about deadlines. It's not like I need to be in order to keep the work load under control, and that's why I'm usually strict about deadlines: it's self-preservation, not a sense that it's an important lesson for the students to learn. That's not to say that submitting work on time is unimportant (try being late with a project at your job); it's just not a lesson I'm deeply engaged in teaching. They'll learn that one other ways, and I have lessons to offer that are more uniquely mine.

I ended up in a brief conversation with Wonder Student after the class. He's falling down on submitting work, but he has good reasons (his health, primarily). I'm choosing to trust that he'll get caught up and back on track soon. If not, a more stern conversation may be warranted, but today I felt comfortable being forgiving and flexible. He did tell me that he probably should drop the class, because it takes time and energy he doesn't have this semester (he's taking a challenging math class and a science class that is largely about math--not his forte--but he needs both for the program he wants to transfer into, so they require the lion's share of his time and attention). However, he loves my class too much to withdraw; he said he simply refuses to do it. Good. He'd better stick until the end. I may simply refuse to let him to leave.

Speaking of which, one of the young women from Native American Lit showed up with a withdrawal slip today. I tried very hard to talk her into staying in the class--I even blurted out, "No! You can't withdraw; I won't let you"--but I could tell that she is drowning, not in school work but in her life outside of school, and I don't want to hold her head under. I told her she's welcome to join us as if she were still enrolled, come to class and discuss the readings, even if she doesn't do the written work. She wants to be in the class; she loves the reading, loves what we're talking about, but the work load is more than she can handle. Understood. It will be interesting to see if she does continue to come; I've made the same offer to students in the past and they've simply vanished. I hope she does; she's a lovely addition to the discussions.

I don't much want to talk about the department meeting we had today. The latest from the administration is that we have to prove our "productivity," that we need to show what we're "producing" with our time--as if we're manufacturing widgets--and that we should be required to have a 35 hour work week. That's actually laughable: if someone were to tally up how much time we spend, the vast majority of us are putting in a hell of a lot more than 35 hours (it would be awfully sweet to get paid for "overtime" above and beyond 35). Of course the question came up of how that time would be measured and monitored--and by whom--but the real debate amongst us was whether to answer their corporate argument in similar language, fighting the war on their turf, as it were, or instead to simply reject the entire premise, refuse to engage on their terms. I don't know which I think makes more sense, but as Bruce pointed out, we keep acting as if we can educate them, and we can't. Probably the best idea to come out of the meeting was that we need to get our own attorney--not the specialist in K-12 education who has been provided by our parent union--and make sure that attorney is a Rottweiler who will scare the shit out of them. I don't think they'll understand any argument other than legal force, I truly don't.

It is hateful to work in this atmosphere. Both Paul and I left the meeting early. I'd simply gotten to the point where I couldn't listen to the cross-arguments and in-fighting and the same people heatedly saying the same thing about what "someone" needs to do (happens to me every department meeting; I can't stomach any more and I split before I blow up). Paul left because I'd inadvertently given him an anxiety attack, telling him that the "Ad Hoc Work Load Committee" (which I'm on) needs his planned presentation on why grading papers qualifies as contact hours--not just hours, but specifically contact hours, which is the beef against us: faculty contractual time is measured in how many hours we spend standing in a room with students, and the English department faculty are contractually obligated to spend fewer hours doing that than other faculty. But Paul's idea is correct: what we do in evaluating papers is a far more intimate interaction than simply being in a room with students--and that's what we need to argue. Everyone spends hours outside the classroom, even the ones who use Scantron tests (bubble forms that simply get run through a machine, which calculates the grade), even the ones who give the students a series of 500-word assignments and don't give them much in the way of feedback. But we need to argue that our "contact" with students is the same as everyone else's.

That latter example is true-life, by the way. My former student now cat sitter was telling me that her HONORS section of comp 2--which she has to take because of a glitch in her transfer credits--told me that is exactly what is happening in her class. That section is taught, I must add, by the head of the honors program. Five-hundred word essays. Minimal feedback. (As in, "Oh, don't worry about the B+: just fix these two little things and I'll give you the A.") Honors, and that's what they're doing. I despair.

But I don't want to end on a negative note. Part of the function of this blog is to help me reframe at the end of the day (and week, and term), to remind myself of what I love about this job, what works, what matters. And the kind of interaction I had with Bright Light is indeed something I adore about what I do. She described herself as a nerd, and I said, "Yes, but we nerds are the ones who do the thinking for the world." I believe it's true. And it feels good to remember that, and to see it reflected in the face of a woman who has seen a lot of the world (for all that she's a couple of decades younger than I am) and is still invested in learning more. Yeah.