First big "oops" of the term

So, in writing yesterday about the time crunch in the 102 class assignments, I forgot that I had scheduled a homework assignment that I needed to hand out today--and that I didn't have. In order to give the students some experience with handling (and recognizing) critical material, I have a couple of critical essays included in their readers. Usually, I give them a series of study questions on each essay, intended to help them understand how to use the critical material as support for their arguments. I have to admit, the exercise has never worked very well. I have yet to figure out how to make clear when/where/how/why to use secondary sources. When students asked me about it in class today, I said for them not to worry about it for next class, and I'd figure out what to do.

What I decided is to scrap the requirement to use critical material in their second papers. I'm still recommending it, but it's not required--and between now and when I give them the assignment, I eliminate even the suggestion of it from the assignment. I realize it's one too many things to toss into the mix right now. It's going to be enough of a challenge for them to juggle revising their papers and logging about the poems--and hard enough for them to leap immediately from paper 1 to paper 2--without adding the essays and study questions into the mix.

This does, however, point to a problem with this new system of revision: this time crunch is not a good thing, and I'm unhappy about it. Somehow, when I made up the schedule of assignments, it didn't seem so terrible: we'd just switch from one to the next. But I realize we're going to miss a lot of time talking about the poetry as we work in class on their revisions--plus there's just the difficulty of compartmentalizing, and the fact that students are all too easily overwhelmed. The aim was to help them, not to make them feel that the work is impossible to manage. (Difficult, ok, but impossible, not good.)

I just went back to the schedule of assignments and took another look. It's all tight, but removing the critical essays from the mix will help--and I did leave room for discussion of the poems we're reading this week to spill into next week. I truly do think that the in-class work on revision is going to be helpful: I will be there to answer questions, make suggestions, whatever the students need to get rolling. And, as I think about it, I am persuading myself that I need to let it roll exactly as I'd structured it (sans the critical stuff) so I can see how it goes. If I start making changes before I've tried it out, I won't be able to accurately assess whether the process works.

So, tomorrow I leap into reading/marking those papers. Of course, I'll get some late, and there is some foo-raw over the submission to TurnItIn stuff--apparently my instructions about deadlines were not clear, but I've clarified them, I hope, for the second essay. Since I'm feeling my way, I'm willing to take responsibility for misunderstandings and make an adjustment so the students don't suffer.

I know that part of why I'm madly second-guessing myself is that I'm tired. I gambled this morning and sort of lost: I thought an extra hour of sleep would increase my efficiency sufficiently that it would be a wash--and that wasn't the case. Part of the problem was that I'd blissfully forgotten about the P&B meeting. I came close to bailing on it--and I kept hoping it would end early (and it could have, but for a very long-winded answer to a random question about something not on the agenda, and a few other digressions). But in the event, I had to finish reading the stories for tomorrow after the Mystery class--and didn't finish until almost 8 p.m. So I'm still here (it's 8:22 as I write this sentence). I need to get home, as I truly do need to take a running leap at that stack of papers tomorrow. I am wildly hoping that the new process works, but I don't know yet, won't until I try it--and don't want to get caught so short of time that I have to come in at 5 a.m. on Thursday or some ungodly thing.

Therefore, this is yet another post that I'm going to fling up onto the blog, unread, unrevised, just as raw as raw gets. Well, I never guaranteed polish, I reckon.