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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Plan ... what letter are we up to now?

So, rebooting:

I did get up at 6 this morning, but it didn't gain me much of anything, as I had some things I had to do around the house this morning, then I opted to vote on my way to work, as I know I'll be too staggeringly tired to do anything when I can finally go home except, well, go home. I'm starting this blog post early, before I've finished seeing students for conferences today, as I really do want to be out of here as early as humanly possible. I'm so tired it hurts.

The reboot, to plan Q or whatever, stems from the fact that I realized I could not possibly get all the essays for tomorrow's conferences graded today. I got through four of them, which was more than I thought I was going to do; the remaining four I'll have to do tomorrow when I get in. The decision to reboot instead of trying to crank through more today was made despite the fact that we had an unbelievably short P&B meeting. Between the slightly later than anticipated start this morning, class, today's conferences, P&B, and the exhaustion factor, it just got very clear that it makes more sense for me to reschedule Advisement to another day and use tomorrow morning to grade. I'm not entirely thrilled that I now have to make up two days of advising--that means two Tuesdays in which I have to go in at 9:30 a.m. (so I can finish and feed before I go to teach the SF class). I'm also not entirely thrilled that four essays are still hanging over my head and have to be finished tomorrow. But I will be much more capable of working intelligently tomorrow morning than later tonight, so the lack of thrill is compensated for by the increase in sanity.

The conferences have been going well--and I'm very glad that three students from the SF class took me up on the offer of a conference this week. I did give that class their second essay assignment and sort of went over using critical material. The two students who are turning out to be the best (and who are buddies as well) both got it right away. Some of the shakier students? Not so much--but I've told them to read everything over carefully and bring questions to class, so if they don't, it's their own too bad. (Of course I'll also go over it all again; incorporating critical material is a big hurdle, and I want to try to help them over it.)

Speaking of the SF class, the only real problem I'm having in there is the lack of a critical mass of students who are willing to talk in whole-class discussion. The Budding Literary Critic has been uncharacteristically quiet for some time--a reticence that could have any number of causes--and one of the students who is willing to talk up in class has been missing lately (which she told me would be the case). So, it all falls to Gaston and Alphonse, the pair of intelligent young men.

And they are intelligent. I haven't talked about them much to this point, but they're definitely two of the three stars of the class. They're both getting a little weary with being the ones who have to start the conversation in their groups (and there may come a time when I put them with the other really good student, the young woman, together in a group and let them have that wonderful experience--and leave the other groups to flounder along as best they can). But they write excellent notes, and they're seeing a lot, and they both are curious and interested and love to read in general. They have no reticence about bringing up all their points in the whole class discussion, largely because they relish the opportunity to share their ideas with me; they don't really care whether their classmates are comatose at that point, as talking with me is enough; it's just in the small groups that they get understandably disgruntled by working with students who won't share, talk, reciprocate--think.

I'm meeting with one of them (I'll call him Alphonse) tomorrow to conference about revising his essay. I think I mentioned Gaston some time ago, when I talked about the experience of handing back their essays to them; he wasn't alarmed by the B he got, as he said he knew it wasn't his best work. I confidently expect that he'll revise, and I equally confidently expect that the revision will be an improvement over his first attempt.

As for the other students in the whole class discussions, well, I'm not sure what to do. Putting them in a circle was, as I mentioned last week, a disaster. They all do well enough in their groups, even the students who rarely if ever participate in the class discussion--but when I shift them to talking with the class as a whole, things don't go as well. I wonder if it's a proximity thing: if they'd do better if they were all clustered together in the middle of the room, the groups practically in each other's laps instead of surrounded by little moats of empty desks. I don't think the circle will work well even if I were to put them in groups first; something about facing each other across that gap apparently is daunting. But when they're close together...

I'm now curious about the physical grouping idea. I may try to get to class early on Thursday, to put the desks in groups before the students arrive. There are fifteen students still officially attending, though one of them--the slightly older student I suspect has TBI--hasn't been around of late and is probably going to withdraw (or simply disappear). So call it fourteen students: that's two groups of three and two groups of four. I've been selecting the groupings of late, instead of allowing things to shake out from the count around the room, but I may micromanage further, looking at the roster to make sure I've got at least one strong--or talkative--student in each group. I'll stop short of providing place cards... I think. (It might be worth the giggle factor just for me; I doubt they'd be amused.)

Well, we'll see.

Now, I'm just waiting for Street Smart to show up for his conference; he'll be my last victim of the day, and we'll have quite a bit to discuss, trying to turn the train-wreck of his essay into a clear somethingorother. I've already notified the students whose essays I won't have ready until tomorrow that they have to wait. (Some of them probably wouldn't check before I get the essay to them in any event, but I didn't want anyone to worry, just in case.) And after those four essays are marked, I'll be able to turn my attention to preparing to sub for Scott on Thursday (I need to read Fences and go over Scott's set-up for the class). With whatever remaining time I have tomorrow and/or Thursday, I'll probably write up last week's observation, focus on reading promotion applications--and eventually turn my attention to marking the bolus of homework I'm accumulating. (Oh, yeah, and I have some copying I have to do, too.)

The fun and frolic continue unabated. And now that the weather has turned autumnal (especially on a chilly, rainy night like tonight), all I want to do is read Dickens, drink tea, and eat bon-bons. I'm rereading Our Mutual Friend, as of the Dickens volumes on my personal bookshelves, it called most loudly to me--but I may make a trip to Barnes and Nobel to buy Martin Chuzzlewit and maybe Little Dorrit, the first because I haven't read it in a very long while (it not being one of my favorites) and the latter because it is one of my favorites. Not tonight, though. Tonight, home, James, and don't spare the horses.

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