I need better shoes...

As I'm schlepping my wheelie-pack all over campus and up and down stairs, my body is beginning to protest (ouchy back in particular). I am not a woman who is wild about shoes, but I have tended to opt for style over comfort. No longer. I draw the line at wearing running shoes with my skirts (or anything that's too clunky: a modicum of elegance is still important to me), but I really do have to go on a quest for shoes that are more congenial to the demands on my bones and cartilage.

That aside.

Both classes today went pretty well. I was a trifle annoyed that a number of students did not have the homework ready for today--many because they couldn't get the book (this despite my having said and written on the syllabus and all but tattooed on their foreheads that the book is available in the library). I gave them a one-time-only offer of submitting the homework late. I'm going to be pretty fierce about that from here on, however: if anyone comes to class without the homework on Wednesday, it will be "Thank you for coming in, and I'll see you next class; that's one of your allowed absences for the semester." (Freaking out and wild-eyed panic ensue.) But the ones who had done the homework were ready to talk about what they'd read with intelligence, even in the 5:00 class, which seemed more inert the first day.

I also got through exactly everything I had planned to do today. That isn't always a foregone conclusion, and there was a lot on the slate today, so having gotten it all done was a good thing.

However (and there seems to always be a "however"), a number of students are utterly, completely confused about the fact that some assignments are submitted in class and some happen online--and a number don't understand where and how to locate discussion boards despite 1. Written directions in a handout (OK, that's hopeless: they can't read complex instructions. After two sentences, they stop paying attention) and 2. A live demonstration in class today. Yes, it's a little complicated. It's also spelled out very carefully in the assignment schedule. I also went over it slowly, clearly, step by step, in class today. It's also in handouts. If there are any other bases I need to cover, I'd be grateful if someone would show me where they are and demonstrate how to cover them.

Clearly I will need to go over assignments very carefully for a while (repetition, repetition, repetition)--but I also need to continue to remind them that they need to be detail oriented, and read. And be detail oriented. And read. (Repeat ad infinitum.)

But circling back to the homework thing: I am again confronted with the downside of actually using written work as an evaluative measure of how students are doing in the class--because once I assign it, I have to mark it. I grant you, what I collected today was pretty teensy in the comparison to the deluges of work I'll be dealing with further down the line, but still: I collected assignments. Now I have to read them and at very least assign a point value. Bugger bugger bugger.

A couple of students were new to class today. One will make it. The others, probably not. This is a crash course in letting go of the high school mentality. And I haven't even shown them the "backward brain bicycle" video yet (something I take great delight in doing).

Yes, ladies and gents, I'm going to mess with your heads--on purpose, but not because I'm a sadist. I'm going to do it because you need to be shaken up like a snow globe.

One student in the 2:00 class is terrific in terms of making sure she has what she needs to do the work she has to do. She's keeping careful track of what I have handed out and what I have not--and I think it was reassuring to her to see that she can locate handouts on  Blackboard, if I haven't given her something she wants to get rolling on. I know her name (though I haven't come up with a blog moniker for her yet). I'm starting to learn names, at least of the ones who are contributing to class. It will take me about another week or so to learn everyone: thank god for photo rosters. We'll see who turns out to be of enough interest to become a blog character as well as a student in class.

And now it's a hell of a lot later than I wanted to be here tonight--but I'm not entirely unhappy about it, as Paul and I actually got to have a bit of a talk. I will see William less frequently: he's gone 50% online, so his days on campus are reduced, as are the number of hours in any given day that he's around when he is on campus. We'll have to make the best of the moments when all three of us are here together. Tomorrow may provide brief opportunity for that: we have a department meeting, and Cathy made a point of reminding us that attendance is mandatory, contractual.

I'm sure there are other things I could say and do before leaving, but I want to get home and put in at least a little time doing my own homework of fiddle practice. It's appropriately humbling--and uses parts of my brain that otherwise don't get much exercise. So, off I go.