Surprise! Friday post!

I bailed on my riding lesson today, as my back is kicking up a fuss (and bouncing around on a horse is not great for my back even when it's being quiet)--and I very nearly bailed on getting any work done, as I was sucked into several vortices along the way: the vortex of life maintenance, the Facebook vortex (to my shame, but it is true), the vortex of other work calls ("Oh, shit; I forgot I agreed to review that manuscript...").

But I did get the Blackboard SNAFU cleared up (and it was a "my bad" moment, though the kind and patient woman at the help desk did, ultimately, agree that something weird was going on and was as mystified as I by how students could end up in the wrong place). And I did at least get the first of the required set of discussions read and evaluated. I only have six more to do... (Oh, Christ, why do I set myself up for this madness?)

As I was responding to students' posts, I realized that it's probably a good idea for me to read them all first and see if there's a comment that rightfully needs to be made to a majority of the students, then make such a comment in a discrete thread that I start, instead of finding myself repeating variations on the same comment in response to each individual student's post. That will take some discipline, but it's probably worth the effort, as I think it will save time in the long run.

I also realize that I cannot respond to every post. I just can't. Even as fast as I type--and as tossed off and casual as the responses may be--it's simply prohibitively time consuming. I made that overall comment on one of the forums (fora? boards? whatever). I'll have to remember to say something about it in class, too.

Circling back to the repeated comment: most students completely misread a sentence in the "quotation for consideration." They assumed the author was talking about routes to becoming a good citizen and missed that he was talking about the value of various kinds of education, specifically connecting education in critical thinking to the development of citizenship. But even that's better than the ones whose response was so vague and general, they could have been responding to a prompt that read "Write two inane sentences of cliche-ridden, grammatically incorrect comment on education."

Sigh. Well, the quotation does emphasize that teachers who insist on accuracy of thought inculcate that habit of mind in their students, so I pointed out that my insistence that they say something specific was simply doing what W. G. Sumner says a good educator does.

I did start reading the self-evaluations (before I hit the wall and turned to blogging instead), and the first one I read broke my heart. The student is from Nigeria, and relates that he has only spoken English at school, never at home. His written English is riddled with errors: I'm not sure at all how he ended up in my classroom when he clearly should be in an ESL-dedicated class--but if he didn't self-identify as a non-native speaker of the language, current testing might well have missed the clear pointers. I just sent an email to the ESL coordinator, asking for her guidance in what to do about the ESL issue, but what broke my heart is this:

"The whole situation [of English class in America] was different from what I was used to. I discovered we are all strange to one another; the whole class was calm like grave yard. Most of the student were busy fumbling with their phones. I look around to see may be I would see someone to chat with but nobody seemed care to realize that. I felt like a lost animal in a jungle."

He then goes on to say that he realized that because he knows "British English," and because American English is so different, he feels lost most of the time. I'm not sure what's so confusingly different--but the fact that he felt so lost and alone, and that he got so little response from his classmates, made me sad. However, I did notice that he glommed on to a young woman in the class, asking her for help and clarification--which she's been happy to provide (and she's a smart cookie, so he made a good choice there). Further, and even more heart-warming, another of his classmates responded to his post with great kindness, understanding, and the offer to be helpful. That student is also very smart--one of the best minds in the class--so I hope between all of us, the poor lost man feels less lost and alone.

So that's the state of things. When I sent the email to the ESL coordinator, I saw that I have a number of emails from students with various minor questions, so I'll answer those (and otherwise clear out my work email inbox), then I will put my professor brain into hibernate mode and get on with Friday evening.