One miss, one hit

First, never mind that whole "I'll have lots of time before class to find dropped pearls" thing. I had a crappy night so let myself sleep in, which meant I got here much later than I had planned; then when I finally did arrive, I had to do an Assisting Bruce thingy, administrative paperwork--which was not difficult but took more time than I anticipated, so I was in a bit of a scramble to get to class on time. Bruce, by the way, was on a flight home today--hasn't been in this whole week. Thank God the office staff were on top of the adjunct scheduling stuff, as I had turned my attention to being a teacher and forgot about being an administrator. Kathy handled a few remaining hairballs (as well as could be done), but I am going to have several issues to talk about with Bruce come Monday. I'll need to be in a bit early so I have a chance to see him before my back-to-back class-Advisement day begins; he may be gone by the time I finish and return to the old homestead. Among the Bruce-related pearls in danger of being dropped are some Assessment shit (yuck, ptewy), a potential P&B issue, and two problematic adjuncts. Keeping track of this kind of thing is why I get paid the big bucks.

Back to the teaching part: as per the title of this post, the 102s were a mixed bag today. It's rare that my presentation of something will work equally well with all the sections of that particular course: usually I'll do a great job with the first go round and then forget something that worked with later attempt(s), or the first time screw-ups will teach me how to do better. That was the case today.

My idea was to have students write detailed instructions for how to write a paper. (Note to self: next semester, specify an argument essay, or a paper about literature; there are too many different kinds of papers students might write. I didn't learn that lesson until after the second pitch of the exercise.) I considered stealing a demonstration devised by one of the math teachers at the high school where I worked eons ago: to teach the necessity of the order of operations in math, she pretended to be an alien and had the students tell her how to make a PB&J sandwich. (Students started with "Put the peanut butter on the bread," for instance, so she put the entire, still sealed jar on top of the entire, still sealed loaf.... You get the idea.) I decided that would take too much time (wisely, as it turned out), but I did tell the students to think as if they were explaining the process to an alien. In the first class, I got my own order of operations wrong: I didn't specify the alien thing until they were already working on instructions, so they weren't giving much detail. More problematic, in the first class, the way I responded when I started collecting their answers shut them down: they started to feel they were "wrong" and stopped tossing out ideas. (They did, however, very carefully write down everything I put on the board: I have no idea whether it will mean anything to them later, but at least they're well trained.) Nevertheless, I got the main stuff covered--and led into using their idea logs, which was the point of the exercise. ("Write down your ideas." About what? "The stories." How do you get ideas from the stories? "You read them and take notes." Oh, OK, so that's really where we need to start, right? Read the stories and take notes? Hence, the idea log.)

With the second class, I put the alien idea front and center--and got almost more detail than I wanted. Then I was more likely to say "Does anyone want to add to this?" or "What do the rest of you think?" rather than "Is that really where we start?" So they were more willing to keep tossing ideas into the mix. Also, while they were still in their groups, before the whole-class discussion, when I saw that a few of the groups had decided they were finished, and I went to them and said, "Do you think your instructions are the best in the room?" When they said "No," which they all did, I said, "Make yours the best in the room"--and lo and behold, they dove back in again. Competition: it's a wonderful thing.

Curiously enough, however, when I started gathering their responses on the board, the second group asked, "Should we be writing this down?" I said, "I don't know: if you think it's valuable to you, then sure. What you put in your notes is up to you." Some did write the stuff down, some didn't. Their responses also got their first "cocktail party" word: "explicate." Some of them knew what had to be done with quotations and paraphrases, so I gave them the technical term. (And two of them immediately turned to their dictionaries to look it up--and didn't find it. "Ah," I said, "This is why I suggest you also have a larger, hard-cover dictionary at home." But man, I'm thrilled to bits that they had their dictionaries with them.)

Interesting, too, that in the first class, there were only two students who had been absent Tuesday, and there were five in the second class (three who had been absent and two new recruits)--and yet the second class seemed more friendly, gelled better, at least today. It will be interesting to see how they shake out as the semester goes along. I'm not taking any bets about which class will ultimately pull together better. I'm also hoping that, in a truly rare occurrence, both are equally terrific. Wouldn't that be nice.

Speaking of how things shake out, as a brief follow-up to yesterday's post regarding the Short Story class, Snotty Miss Text-in-Class did indeed drop (can you tell how I feel about that?), and was instantly replaced by someone new. I sent an e-mail to Miss New Student, telling her I'd left the syllabus and Monday's homework on my office door. We'll see if she's the kind of student to check her school e-mail; if not, she'll start out behind. Also thinking back to that class, I realize I didn't say that there were two young women who were much more busy talking to each other than listening to me. After class I said, "I can tell you two are good friends, but sometimes I'm going to have to separate you." One said, "We were talking about the idea log," and I gave the "No you weren't and you're not fooling me" look, which she had the good grace to sheepishly recognize. Then the other said, "We won't talk no more." Both eyebrows raised: "You won't talk no more?" "Yeah." "So you're telling me you won't talk any more?" "Yeah." I don't think she got it. Ah well.

I'm already putting little X's beside the names of students I suspect are not going to be with me long, making small bets with myself. Some of my colleagues would no doubt huff about the prejudicial attitude, but I am happy to be proven wrong. It's rare, but it does happen.

I'm sure there's more I could natter on about, but I'll spare my faithful readers--and take a little time to get prepped for Monday (to facilitate having time to talk with Bruce before class). Then I'll head for the hills. Literally, the geography of Long Island being what it is.

Over and out.