And no, I'm not being a pirate for the day. That's a groaning sigh at being back in the office--as usual, getting less accomplished than I intended. For one thing, I seem to have been carrying around some kind of bad printer juju, as first I struggled with my printer at home for about an hour before I got it to work, then just went through a similar problem here at work. Argh. Then, a book I had promised to review by August 15 has not yet arrived from the publisher. I confess, this is partly my fault: I agreed to review the damned thing, then completely, utterly forgot (in my wild excitement over the trip to the Northwest): not only did I not look for it before I left, I didn't even think to look for it and to raise a red flag about the fact that it wasn't here. So the other day, I got home to a message from the review editor, explaining how to upload our completed reviews. Major oops. And major panic attack. She's being very sweet about it, however: if I get the book and think I can get it read and reviewd by September 1, it can still go in the fall edition of the journal (the inaugural edition: the page is under construction but can be found at http://www.ecozona.eu). If not, I have until January 1, and it will go in the spring issue. Whew.
Meanwhile, the other book I'm supposed to review is languishing, partly read, on my coffee table. I'm finding it a real slog, particularly for the kind of review I'm supposed to do. I reviewed for them before: It's a very interesting process, as it requires one to think not just about the book but more about personal/practical considerations of teaching with an environmentalist focus. That one is greentheoryandpraxis.org/. But the book is a very practical, how-to manual for setting up community-supported agriculture, and that doesn't work very well with my pedagogical slant. I wish now I had said "no" to it: after I agreed, others came along that would have been much more appropriate for me and my work. Ah well. It will be a good challenge for me (and a lesson in trusting that I can be more choosy about what I agree to take on).
I have started working through the new style guide I'll be using for 101, and I like it very much. The organization is a little different from my personal approach to beginning comp: it focuses on research way before I do, but even so, that helps me remember to talk to the students about the importance of gathering information from sources before starting to write, certainly before trying to formulate a thesis. It's also giving me some good ideas for pre-writing assignments--such as having students write a brief overview of what they think my essay assignment wants them to do, and what they need to ask questions about in order to feel confident beginning the task. There is an example of that kind of response to an assignment in the style guide, and I think it's a great idea. I'm also chipping away at the short-story collection I'll be using for the American Short Story class: haven't gotten very far, but the stories are getting more interesting. I still am waffling about how much structure to predetermine and how much to just let the students explore ideas with much more general guidelines from me. But the more serious, albeit subterranean, mulling and stewing has begun.
And as I do this work, and write about it here, of course I am also feeling the upsurge in anxiety levels. Argh again. This is a new project for me personally: how to build sufficient motivating energy without having to resort to wild anxiety and panic. I'm sure it can be done--but it certainly will be new to me.
I cleaned off a little patch of my desk but ran out of that particular kind of brain energy pretty rapidly. I expect I'll get the bug to clean up and organize eventually, but it hasn't blossomed just yet. In a little bit here I will embark on the first of a slew of instant scoring placement readings (we read while students are finishing up their other placement tests, so when they are through, they can find out exactly what their placements are and go register right away). It's not much different from the regular reading, except there is a certain amount of time pressure to get them read--and we don't leave until we've finished the batch from that testing session, no matter how long it takes. Usually, the first few sessions are not heavily attended and we're done pretty quickly. By the end of the process, students are showing up in panic-stricken mobs, not having gotten into any other schools and suddenly realizing that NCC may be their last option--and then we're often there for 3 hours plus. But tonight shouldn't be too hard.
And I realize that I'm still adjusting back into all this after my weeks away: it's a very abrupt and radical shift of gears to go from traveling through the incredible scenery of Montana, Idaho, and Washington with Ed, visiting family and beloved friends on occasion but often just off on our own, and being back here, caught up again in the mill-wheels of my "normal" life. But if you're interested in the trip--a break for you from the experience of reading this blog about work work work--I think you can access my photo album of it this way: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2051027&id=1073272194&l=cd0471b7bc).
And now, a little more work before I go read. Student blooper of the day (left over from last semester): "He became a drug attic."
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Um, what??
Was on campus today, doing placement reading, picking up the style guide I'll be using in the fall (in the vain hope that I'll actually look at it sometime before panic completely sets in at the end of August), that sort of thing. Just happened to check my mailbox, and there was a form asking for a recommendation for a student who is applying for a job. I couldn't remember her to save my life. Spent forever trying to find her on Banner, and to find out anything about her once I did. Turns out, she was in one of my classes last semester--until she withdrew. What on earth was she thinking to ask me for a recommendation? Surely she had other professors who provided her with grades, even potentially good ones? I don't get it. Very strange. I am being honest on the form, too: I said I don't know enough about her to recommend her or not, and that she withdrew from my class. If she asked for a recommendation from me just because she thinks I'm a nice person and she liked me, she may now change her mind. Ah well. But I really do wonder what the hell she was thinking. If she was thinking. The mind boggles.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Anxiety attack #1
This always happens in early July. Suddenly, it feels like summer is almost over (even though it's barely started), and I begin to panic about being ready for the fall semester. Not that I immediately launch into work, mind you. I noodle around with some ideas, kinda vaguely look at the books I need to teach, tell myself I really should read X, or revisit Y, open old files that need to be revamped and close them again. Apparently, my individual process is that the stress levels have to build to a certain intensity before I'll actually stop drifting vaguely through the days and accomplish anything of particular value.
I have, however, been thinking a lot about trust. Trust in the writing process. Trust that one has something to say that's worth saying. Trust that one will find the right way to say it. Trust that finding the right way to say it matters, and will feel good, be worth the hard work. I just found a lovely little online essay by Mark David Gerson called "Trust. Let Go. Leap." (You can read it at http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_David_Gerson.) I've printed it out, and intend to share it with students, along with Paul Roberts' "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" (a chestnut, from the days when students wrote on typewriters, for heaven's sake, but the ideas apply). And maybe "I Just Wanna Be Average," by Mike Rose. (Hmmm, am I leaving time for the stuff from the textbook I've actually assigned?) But, in terms of 101, I feel a deep need to address writing as writing, the actual, strange, mysterious, beautiful process of saying something worth saying and saying it well.
And that requires all that trust, which I think students lack. Most of them lack any of those kinds of trust; all of them lack trust in some portion of it.
So I've also been thinking about how to help them build trust in the writing process--and not by reading what others have to say but by writing themselves.... Long pause there, while I stared off into space, thinking. What came to me was this: what if I were to have students do the free-writes that I tried a while back (and ditched for reasons I don't now remember...?)--but with this difference. They'd identify themselves only by their student ID number. The free-write would happen on, say, Monday. Then on Wednesday, I'd randomly distribute them. Students would then have to identify at least five things about the writing that were good (identifying themselves as the commentator again only by ID number: that way I can use the assignments for grade points, too). If they got their own, they'd still have to treat it like it was someone else's.
I'm not sure. Maybe free-writes aren't the kind of work that should be subjected to that kind of scrutiny, but it needs to be something brief, low-stakes, and relaxed.
I also want to rework the way I've been trying to get students to identify a working thesis: it still tends to emphasize the notion of having a thesis before you start writing, which I don't want to do. I'm now mulling over the idea of a collaborative exercise, in which students work together to gather evidence to answer the question or make the argument as posed by the assignment. The idea would be to not only make note of the specific evidence, but to note what it would help them prove, why it might be important.
And--shifting gears rather radically--I just realized that A Forest of Voices, the textbook I use for 101, contains a Michael Pollan essay that I've never read (it's at the end of the book, and, I admit with some embarrassment, I never read the last four or five essays). I need to read it, but I have a sense it might be perfect to assign in the middle of the semester, instead of his NYTimes piece "Unhappy Meals," which I've been using the last several years.
But that's one of those "I should read" things. Heaven knows when I'll actually do it. Before September, I expect, but possibly not by much.
Anyway, so the thinking continues. And suddenly, the urge to play has become overwhelming, so I will post this without futher ado (or any proofreading or copy editing whatsoever).
I have, however, been thinking a lot about trust. Trust in the writing process. Trust that one has something to say that's worth saying. Trust that one will find the right way to say it. Trust that finding the right way to say it matters, and will feel good, be worth the hard work. I just found a lovely little online essay by Mark David Gerson called "Trust. Let Go. Leap." (You can read it at http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_David_Gerson.) I've printed it out, and intend to share it with students, along with Paul Roberts' "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" (a chestnut, from the days when students wrote on typewriters, for heaven's sake, but the ideas apply). And maybe "I Just Wanna Be Average," by Mike Rose. (Hmmm, am I leaving time for the stuff from the textbook I've actually assigned?) But, in terms of 101, I feel a deep need to address writing as writing, the actual, strange, mysterious, beautiful process of saying something worth saying and saying it well.
And that requires all that trust, which I think students lack. Most of them lack any of those kinds of trust; all of them lack trust in some portion of it.
So I've also been thinking about how to help them build trust in the writing process--and not by reading what others have to say but by writing themselves.... Long pause there, while I stared off into space, thinking. What came to me was this: what if I were to have students do the free-writes that I tried a while back (and ditched for reasons I don't now remember...?)--but with this difference. They'd identify themselves only by their student ID number. The free-write would happen on, say, Monday. Then on Wednesday, I'd randomly distribute them. Students would then have to identify at least five things about the writing that were good (identifying themselves as the commentator again only by ID number: that way I can use the assignments for grade points, too). If they got their own, they'd still have to treat it like it was someone else's.
I'm not sure. Maybe free-writes aren't the kind of work that should be subjected to that kind of scrutiny, but it needs to be something brief, low-stakes, and relaxed.
I also want to rework the way I've been trying to get students to identify a working thesis: it still tends to emphasize the notion of having a thesis before you start writing, which I don't want to do. I'm now mulling over the idea of a collaborative exercise, in which students work together to gather evidence to answer the question or make the argument as posed by the assignment. The idea would be to not only make note of the specific evidence, but to note what it would help them prove, why it might be important.
And--shifting gears rather radically--I just realized that A Forest of Voices, the textbook I use for 101, contains a Michael Pollan essay that I've never read (it's at the end of the book, and, I admit with some embarrassment, I never read the last four or five essays). I need to read it, but I have a sense it might be perfect to assign in the middle of the semester, instead of his NYTimes piece "Unhappy Meals," which I've been using the last several years.
But that's one of those "I should read" things. Heaven knows when I'll actually do it. Before September, I expect, but possibly not by much.
Anyway, so the thinking continues. And suddenly, the urge to play has become overwhelming, so I will post this without futher ado (or any proofreading or copy editing whatsoever).
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
quickly
Just wrote to the student who submitted her final paper last week: B+ on the paper, A in the class. Technically, she earned a B+ (89.15), but I gave her the bump. Perhaps shouldn't have, as I may have--once again--been overly generous on the paper, but, ah hell. She worked hard, she learned a lot, she's got the chops to do well. Let her have the gift.
Also had an emergency P&B meeting, finishing up some business that was left dangling at the end of the spring semester. Done. Whew.
I am almost done with the assessment project, hooray. I think I can finish up tomorrow. Then I have a three placement readings (two next week, one on July 12) and then I am off to Washington and a long-awaited road trip around the northwest. Ah, god I can't wait.
And I find I'm having monster anxiety attacks about being ready for the fall semester. This always happens. I say that and the response is always, "Summer just got started!" but I know it will disappear faster than I can possibly believe--especially given my trip (during which I hope I don't think about school for even a nanosecond, though I almost certainly will, at least some). Yikes, yikes, yikes. Breathing, Payne, deep, even breathing.
But now, I'm not going to fuss and flurry: I'm going to spend a little of the money I've been making and get some new summer wardrobe items. No brain required--and if I get overwhelmed (as I usually do, shopping), then I will retreat to somewhere with good iced tea and some quiet so I can read and relax before dance class.
And yes, all this qualifies as "summer off."
Also had an emergency P&B meeting, finishing up some business that was left dangling at the end of the spring semester. Done. Whew.
I am almost done with the assessment project, hooray. I think I can finish up tomorrow. Then I have a three placement readings (two next week, one on July 12) and then I am off to Washington and a long-awaited road trip around the northwest. Ah, god I can't wait.
And I find I'm having monster anxiety attacks about being ready for the fall semester. This always happens. I say that and the response is always, "Summer just got started!" but I know it will disappear faster than I can possibly believe--especially given my trip (during which I hope I don't think about school for even a nanosecond, though I almost certainly will, at least some). Yikes, yikes, yikes. Breathing, Payne, deep, even breathing.
But now, I'm not going to fuss and flurry: I'm going to spend a little of the money I've been making and get some new summer wardrobe items. No brain required--and if I get overwhelmed (as I usually do, shopping), then I will retreat to somewhere with good iced tea and some quiet so I can read and relax before dance class.
And yes, all this qualifies as "summer off."
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Cleaning up
Just got the final paper from one of the students who is finishing off an incomplete. She wants it back with comments. Sigh. I was going to try to chip away at it while I'm here in the office, killing time before my evening date with Sara, but nope, no can do, brains not working sufficiently. I will take it home with me--not expecting to work on it over the weekend, you understand (I'm beginning to know myself better than that), but because I can work on it on the train to an appointment in Manhattan on Monday morning, and finish it up on the train back out this way. Since I bailed on the assessment project on Tuesday (bad girl!), I need to make up the time, so I'll go in for a while on Monday, as long as I have to be out and about anyway.
That will mean I will spend part of three days next week in OAPR (the Office of Assessment and Program Review)--bleagh--but if I can get the project finished up, or close to it, that would be great. We just got contracts today for a few more hours, so we can do what needs to be done without having to rush and get half-assed about it. I don't remember what I've said, but I had to do about three reports before I started to get the hang of the thing, so if I can, I want to go back and re-do the first two I did--this time actually understanding as well as attempting to use the guidelines.
I'm doing a fair amount of placement reading, too. My favorite blooper from today: "Parents who have children need to teach them about the problems of the internet." Obviously, parents who do not have children are in the clear.
And now I'm going to haul a recycling bucket into the office and start tossing out tons of paper from old and no longer useful files. Since I'll be using a different style guide in the fall, all those assignments, which I've been hanging on to, can get dumped. It will be interesting to see what else can go. The bookshelves will have to wait for another day before I can tackle organizing them: that will require something approaching mental acumen, which I am decidedly lacking at this particular juncture.
But let the tossing begin!
That will mean I will spend part of three days next week in OAPR (the Office of Assessment and Program Review)--bleagh--but if I can get the project finished up, or close to it, that would be great. We just got contracts today for a few more hours, so we can do what needs to be done without having to rush and get half-assed about it. I don't remember what I've said, but I had to do about three reports before I started to get the hang of the thing, so if I can, I want to go back and re-do the first two I did--this time actually understanding as well as attempting to use the guidelines.
I'm doing a fair amount of placement reading, too. My favorite blooper from today: "Parents who have children need to teach them about the problems of the internet." Obviously, parents who do not have children are in the clear.
And now I'm going to haul a recycling bucket into the office and start tossing out tons of paper from old and no longer useful files. Since I'll be using a different style guide in the fall, all those assignments, which I've been hanging on to, can get dumped. It will be interesting to see what else can go. The bookshelves will have to wait for another day before I can tackle organizing them: that will require something approaching mental acumen, which I am decidedly lacking at this particular juncture.
But let the tossing begin!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Two down...
I'd say I'm proud of myself, but it's pretty ridiculously late for that. Let's say I'm relieved: I finally have marked those two papers for students who wanted the feedback. I was talking with Kristin about it earlier this week and realized I was completely within my rights to tell them no: I did specifically say that students needed to let me know when they submitted their papers if they wanted them back marked, and neither of these students did (they let me know a day--or several days--later). Still, I made this into a much bigger production than I needed to by letting it drag on so long. But it's done now, at long last.
I also must say, in re-reading one of the papers, I realize I was wildly generous in the grade. The ideas are good, but the paper is a mess: disorganized, lacking in connections, lacking in evidence. I guess in the end-of-semester flurry (and in comparison to some of the papers I got) it seemed better to me than a more sober examination supports. Ah well. I wrote a note to go with it, so when the student picks it up, she will be told that I'd have been harder on the paper if I'd gotten it earlier in the semester. She'd also have had a chance to revise it if I'd gotten it earlier; that lack of chance for her to go back and fix may have weighed into my generosity with the grade. Or I may just have not been paying very much attention: I was so frantic to be fucking done with it all....
The student who was supposed to drop off her final paper to fulfill an incomplete today didn't show (a health crisis with her daughter). I'm not unhappy. I wouldn't have been grading the thing over the weekend anyway. We'll see how next week shapes up.
One of the other students who got an incomplete did meet with me to discuss when she'll be getting missing assignments to me. I'm thinking I may draw up a little contract, so we both have it in writing: I want everything in enough time that I can get it all marked and out of my hair before the last week in August--and since I will not be marking anything while I'm away in July, well, she'll need to time things out accordingly.
The final "incomplete" is more worrying. I sent the student an e-mail and sent a letter to her home, asking her to let me know when she thought she'd finish up the missing assignments. I haven't heard from her. I did let her know that if she doesn't finish the incomplete by the end of next semester, it reverts to an F and there is nothing I can do about it. My fear is that she'll turn up in the fall, wanting to do it all then, when I will be dealing with a whole new bunch of classes and students and papers. The other possibility, of course, is that she will vanish and get the F. (That's happened frequently in the past, sadly enough.) I was thinking I'd call her, but on consideration, I think I won't. It's her grade: she needs to take responsibility for it.
Sigh.
The office is still an ungodly wreck and probably will remain in that state for some time--unless I get a very unexpected burst of energy on one of the days when I'm in doing work on the assessment project. (Hah.) Ah well. I'll get it sorted out before the first day of fall semester--maybe just before, but before.
Or not.
Gack. I can't think about this any more: I need to let my brain go out to pasture for a while. I'll take a quick look through what's on my desk to see if there is anything there that is personal that I want to take home, and then I am out of here... until Tuesday.
I also must say, in re-reading one of the papers, I realize I was wildly generous in the grade. The ideas are good, but the paper is a mess: disorganized, lacking in connections, lacking in evidence. I guess in the end-of-semester flurry (and in comparison to some of the papers I got) it seemed better to me than a more sober examination supports. Ah well. I wrote a note to go with it, so when the student picks it up, she will be told that I'd have been harder on the paper if I'd gotten it earlier in the semester. She'd also have had a chance to revise it if I'd gotten it earlier; that lack of chance for her to go back and fix may have weighed into my generosity with the grade. Or I may just have not been paying very much attention: I was so frantic to be fucking done with it all....
The student who was supposed to drop off her final paper to fulfill an incomplete today didn't show (a health crisis with her daughter). I'm not unhappy. I wouldn't have been grading the thing over the weekend anyway. We'll see how next week shapes up.
One of the other students who got an incomplete did meet with me to discuss when she'll be getting missing assignments to me. I'm thinking I may draw up a little contract, so we both have it in writing: I want everything in enough time that I can get it all marked and out of my hair before the last week in August--and since I will not be marking anything while I'm away in July, well, she'll need to time things out accordingly.
The final "incomplete" is more worrying. I sent the student an e-mail and sent a letter to her home, asking her to let me know when she thought she'd finish up the missing assignments. I haven't heard from her. I did let her know that if she doesn't finish the incomplete by the end of next semester, it reverts to an F and there is nothing I can do about it. My fear is that she'll turn up in the fall, wanting to do it all then, when I will be dealing with a whole new bunch of classes and students and papers. The other possibility, of course, is that she will vanish and get the F. (That's happened frequently in the past, sadly enough.) I was thinking I'd call her, but on consideration, I think I won't. It's her grade: she needs to take responsibility for it.
Sigh.
The office is still an ungodly wreck and probably will remain in that state for some time--unless I get a very unexpected burst of energy on one of the days when I'm in doing work on the assessment project. (Hah.) Ah well. I'll get it sorted out before the first day of fall semester--maybe just before, but before.
Or not.
Gack. I can't think about this any more: I need to let my brain go out to pasture for a while. I'll take a quick look through what's on my desk to see if there is anything there that is personal that I want to take home, and then I am out of here... until Tuesday.
Friday, June 11, 2010
It ain't over...
Dear blog followers, sorry about the long silence on this end. Many of you may have given up, not anticipating more until fall--and I do suspect that postings will be relatively few and far between until things start to ramp up again in late August. But here's the state of things as of now:
I'm still not completely finished with the semester, though I submitted final grades on May 20. Two students belatedly asked to get their papers back marked, and I have been carrying them around with me since. I spent some time saying, "I should have it done early next week." I've given up trying to project when I'll have them marked and ready for pick up. I am always happy to provide yet another teaching moment to any student who wants it, so I don't feel any resentment about having to mark the papers, but I do feel a ferocious resistance. I just don't want to haul my brain back into that place: the battery has not begun to recharge yet; I'm still scraping off the burned bits (in a toast metaphor); I just am feeling petulant and whiny about it. However, next week I am supposed to get at least one paper that finishes up a student's incomplete, so I'll have to get my brain back into the right posture for that in any event: maybe that will create the impetus to get the other two marked.
I'm also meeting with another of the students who received an incomplete on Monday: she's coming over to the house, as she will also be cat-sitting for me, so we'll do a combination of professor-student interacting and changing the footing as she becomes an ex-student. I'll be meeting next week with another former student (from the dream Nature in Lit of spring 2009); very much looking forward to that--and thinking of her makes me think of the young man from that class with whom I exchanged a flurry of e-mails over the spring, trying to set up a time to meet, never with any success. I reckon I'll float him a message and see what his summer looks like.
But back to this just-finished semester, one task I put off for a long while and finally finished off last week was contacting the students who had e-mailed about grade "problems." One young woman corrected some pretty shabby record-keeping on my part, so I did submit a grade change for her. The outcome was still not great: she was capable of getting a B, had she turned in all the work and turned it in on time. Instead, unfortunately, she got a D+. If she wants to transfer, she'll have to take the course over, but it's not as big a hit to her GPA as the F I originally--and incorrectly--gave her. Another student tried to persuade me that his D+ was really a C (NCC doesn't give minus grades, which drives me bats: if we can give a plus, we need to be able to give a minus as well--or neither). He simply needed to check the math: I didn't make any mistakes on that one. A third had written shocked to have received an F, but he will have since received a letter from me in the mail, explaining that having been warned about plagiarism in his proposal, when he continued to plagiarize in his final paper ... blah blah blah. Yet one more had been very unhappy about her final grade in the class and especially about her final grade on the in-class presentation. I sent her the detail of why she got the grade she did, explained again why she got the grade she did on the presentation, and told her that even if she'd gotten a better grade on that, her other grades would have kept her from getting the B she wanted. And the final e-mailing student was understandably distraught that he did not get the grade he needed in order to avoid being disenrolled for having failed the conditions of his academic probation. I empathized, reminded him that my class alone was not the reason he was in trouble, showed him why he got the grade he did, and suggested he petition to be re-enrolled. I've known students to do that successfully in the past--including one student who shouldn't have been allowed to, as he is sweet as pie but simply not (or not yet) college material--so I think this young man has a pretty good chance of a successful petition. If not, there are other schools that will surely be willing to take a chance on him.
But all traffic on those fronts seems to have ceased (touch wood: one never knows when something will belatedly boomerang). Funny thing: Ed was with me in the office as I was finishing up the grading and saw one student come in, be told she'd gotten a D, and become so happy that she had to give me a hug. She'd been petrified she'd fail, so the fact that she hadn't was manna and roses to her. He was charmed by her reaction, and it was indeed pretty sweet.
So, now I'm trying to keep my time on campus focused to two or thee days only. I've been hired to read annual departmental assessment reports and to provide feedback: it's very interesting work, but requires a kind of deep, careful attention. I usually also do placement readings on the same days I'm in the assessment office, and if I am meeting with students, I try to coordinate that as well. Eventually the assessment work will be complete, and then I'll use some of the days when I'm in for placement readings to clean out files, organize my bookshelves (which apparently were arranged by tornado), and start reading/prepping for fall. Yep, already. Since I'm teaching a whole new course and using a whole new style guide, I need to have read things enough in advance that when it's time to start constructing syllabi, I know what the heck I want to assign.
And some of the "Oh, yes, and I'm a scholar, too" stuff can finally be tended to. I was tapped to do another book review for Green Theory and Praxis, a very cool online journal (check it out at http://greentheoryandpraxis.org/journal/index.php/journal), so I'm chipping away at reading the book, which sat on my shelves for months. And, in the "wow, super cool" category, I wrote to Ursula Le Guin about an idea for a publication and heard back from her, expressing interest in and support for the project, so now I get to start moving forward with that (forthcoming sabbatical application? you betcha).
Now, what was all that about teachers having the summer "off"? I grant you, however, that it is complete and utter bliss, and genuinely enviable, and something to be deeply grateful for, that I have many days now in which I don't have to follow any schedule at all but can get up in the morning and wonder what to do with myself for the day. Deep, contented sigh.
I'm still not completely finished with the semester, though I submitted final grades on May 20. Two students belatedly asked to get their papers back marked, and I have been carrying them around with me since. I spent some time saying, "I should have it done early next week." I've given up trying to project when I'll have them marked and ready for pick up. I am always happy to provide yet another teaching moment to any student who wants it, so I don't feel any resentment about having to mark the papers, but I do feel a ferocious resistance. I just don't want to haul my brain back into that place: the battery has not begun to recharge yet; I'm still scraping off the burned bits (in a toast metaphor); I just am feeling petulant and whiny about it. However, next week I am supposed to get at least one paper that finishes up a student's incomplete, so I'll have to get my brain back into the right posture for that in any event: maybe that will create the impetus to get the other two marked.
I'm also meeting with another of the students who received an incomplete on Monday: she's coming over to the house, as she will also be cat-sitting for me, so we'll do a combination of professor-student interacting and changing the footing as she becomes an ex-student. I'll be meeting next week with another former student (from the dream Nature in Lit of spring 2009); very much looking forward to that--and thinking of her makes me think of the young man from that class with whom I exchanged a flurry of e-mails over the spring, trying to set up a time to meet, never with any success. I reckon I'll float him a message and see what his summer looks like.
But back to this just-finished semester, one task I put off for a long while and finally finished off last week was contacting the students who had e-mailed about grade "problems." One young woman corrected some pretty shabby record-keeping on my part, so I did submit a grade change for her. The outcome was still not great: she was capable of getting a B, had she turned in all the work and turned it in on time. Instead, unfortunately, she got a D+. If she wants to transfer, she'll have to take the course over, but it's not as big a hit to her GPA as the F I originally--and incorrectly--gave her. Another student tried to persuade me that his D+ was really a C (NCC doesn't give minus grades, which drives me bats: if we can give a plus, we need to be able to give a minus as well--or neither). He simply needed to check the math: I didn't make any mistakes on that one. A third had written shocked to have received an F, but he will have since received a letter from me in the mail, explaining that having been warned about plagiarism in his proposal, when he continued to plagiarize in his final paper ... blah blah blah. Yet one more had been very unhappy about her final grade in the class and especially about her final grade on the in-class presentation. I sent her the detail of why she got the grade she did, explained again why she got the grade she did on the presentation, and told her that even if she'd gotten a better grade on that, her other grades would have kept her from getting the B she wanted. And the final e-mailing student was understandably distraught that he did not get the grade he needed in order to avoid being disenrolled for having failed the conditions of his academic probation. I empathized, reminded him that my class alone was not the reason he was in trouble, showed him why he got the grade he did, and suggested he petition to be re-enrolled. I've known students to do that successfully in the past--including one student who shouldn't have been allowed to, as he is sweet as pie but simply not (or not yet) college material--so I think this young man has a pretty good chance of a successful petition. If not, there are other schools that will surely be willing to take a chance on him.
But all traffic on those fronts seems to have ceased (touch wood: one never knows when something will belatedly boomerang). Funny thing: Ed was with me in the office as I was finishing up the grading and saw one student come in, be told she'd gotten a D, and become so happy that she had to give me a hug. She'd been petrified she'd fail, so the fact that she hadn't was manna and roses to her. He was charmed by her reaction, and it was indeed pretty sweet.
So, now I'm trying to keep my time on campus focused to two or thee days only. I've been hired to read annual departmental assessment reports and to provide feedback: it's very interesting work, but requires a kind of deep, careful attention. I usually also do placement readings on the same days I'm in the assessment office, and if I am meeting with students, I try to coordinate that as well. Eventually the assessment work will be complete, and then I'll use some of the days when I'm in for placement readings to clean out files, organize my bookshelves (which apparently were arranged by tornado), and start reading/prepping for fall. Yep, already. Since I'm teaching a whole new course and using a whole new style guide, I need to have read things enough in advance that when it's time to start constructing syllabi, I know what the heck I want to assign.
And some of the "Oh, yes, and I'm a scholar, too" stuff can finally be tended to. I was tapped to do another book review for Green Theory and Praxis, a very cool online journal (check it out at http://greentheoryandpraxis.org/journal/index.php/journal), so I'm chipping away at reading the book, which sat on my shelves for months. And, in the "wow, super cool" category, I wrote to Ursula Le Guin about an idea for a publication and heard back from her, expressing interest in and support for the project, so now I get to start moving forward with that (forthcoming sabbatical application? you betcha).
Now, what was all that about teachers having the summer "off"? I grant you, however, that it is complete and utter bliss, and genuinely enviable, and something to be deeply grateful for, that I have many days now in which I don't have to follow any schedule at all but can get up in the morning and wonder what to do with myself for the day. Deep, contented sigh.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
