Vanishing students....

I'm concerned about the 102 class. Quite a few students were not there today--and they had revisions due. One of the missing students at least has her revision up on TurnItIn, but the rest are, as of now, completely AWOL. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: the new system makes things easier for me, but the process of revision is dauntingly difficult, and it seems as long as I insist that students actually engage in it, a great number of them will give up with the first paper. Two students never even collected the first versions with my comments, so they're truly hosed. The rest? Well, they have until 6 p.m. tomorrow, so maybe I'll get a lot of late submissions. I hope that's the case: I'd hate to have lost so many students so soon.

Interestingly enough, the student who was OK with having completely missed the first paper assignment was in class today, logs done, ready to go. Good for her. Her final grade has taken a hell of a hit, but I'm very happy she's persevering. The student I bent over backward for, in order to let her continue with the revision even though she didn't get the printed copy to me on time? She picked up the marked first version yesterday, all right, but... nothing.

I hate losing them. It is wildly frustrating. But I also flat refuse to pretend that what they're learning is easy. I'll help them in every way I possibly can, but I will not lower the hurdle. They've got to clear it.

On the other hand, it was lovely to see the ones who were there in class today working their way through the poetry. I keep telling them that they don't need to be "right"; they simply need to try, to ask questions and (here's the key) try to answer their questions using other evidence in the text. The challenge with poetry, of course, is that it needs to be read on two levels simultaneously: individual words, tiny details, are utterly crucial--but one can't lose sight of the entire sentence, the complete thought the poet is expressing. The details create the thought: they only make sense as part of the whole, the whole only makes sense because of the details. Students have a tendency to focus on a detail and try to come up with an interpretation without looking at the context. So, for example, in Mary Oliver's "Lonely, White Fields," they'll latch onto "whoever dreams of holding his / life in his fist" (lines 14-15) and riff on taking charge of our lives, completely missing the next part: "year after year into the hundreds of years" (line 16)--which changes the sense of what is being held onto--and they'll forget that the sentence begins "I don't know / what death's ultimate / purpose is" (lines 11-13), which should be a clue, too....

OK, maybe that doesn't make sense, unless you know the poem--so, o my faithful readers, I refer you to the text: see what you think is going on in lines 11-36 (and those lines, dear students, are all one sentence). The text can be found in a blog post by LoraKim Joyner: http://yearsrisingmaryoliver.blogspot.com/2010/05/lonely-white-fields-may-19-2010.html.

It's a process, of course. Literary analysis, especially of poetry, comes more naturally to some than to others, but on whatever level, we all have to learn how to see poetry, how to read it on all its many levels, how to pull it apart and put it back together again. All we can do is keep doing it, next with the three poems by Native poets I've selected: Joy Harjo's "I Give You Back," Paula Gunn Allen's "Molly Brant, Iroquois Matron, Speaks," and Cheryl Savageau's "Bones--A City Poem."

And while they read and log those poems, I'll be reading their revisions and giving them editorial feedback. I told them in class today that if we had the time, we'd go through that revision process over and over and over--and told them that I will revise even something small at least five times. (True, that. Witness that little book review.) But now, we focus on the next stage, the technical nuts and bolts.

Oh, and I've discovered a bit of a problem with TurnItIn--or at least with how I've configured the settings: the originality reports are coming back with 60, 70, 80 percent red-flagged as not original on some papers--but only because of matches with the student's original submission. I need to look at those settings again. It is interesting to see who's done the most changing (and, not surprisingly, it's usually the best students), but I need to figure out how to get the program not to compare papers against themselves. If I can.

Shifting gears, the Mystery class was great fun, as always. We'll finish up The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for next class--and I can't wait to hear their responses. I'm expecting hullabaloo. Cool beans. I hadn't reread all the chapters we were talking about today, so I was in some cases relying on rather shaky memory. Note to self: finish rereading the damned thing. That will be my popcorn reading for the next two nights.

On other fronts, Taskstream has reared its ugly head again: we've been fiercely warned by the Office of Assessment and Program Review that we need to have our "operational plan" on Taskstream by Oct. 31--but none of us has the least clue what an "operational plan" is. And, being not only academics but English professors, we can't do anything in language without hours of discussion and milliard revisions (see "revision, endless," above). I've asked the Queen of Assessment for clarification of the Ass-speak term "operational plan"--but even once we know, it will surely take a lot of foo-raw to get something pulled together we're all content with. I've also suggested that those of us responsible for Taskstreaming all our data try to meet before the next committee meeting. It's all a pain in the patoot to say the least, but once we get the language hammered out, getting it online will be a lead-pipe cinch. (The term just struck me: why a "lead-pipe" cinch? http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-lea2.htm.)

Yes: thinking about where words and expressions come from is infinitely more fun than thinking about Taskstream, so I'll go back to hullabaloo (which I didn't know how to spell) and other possible tracings of "lead-pipe cinch." Always good to leave a post on a positive note.