It is remarkable to me how many ways I can find to avoid grading essays when it certainly would be better to simply do it and get it over with. I meant to grade four yesterday, four today, and four tomorrow and be done with it.
I graded zero yesterday, four today--so now I have eight still to do, and I highly doubt I'll be able to get them all done tomorrow. I'll be pretty danged happy if I manage to get four done and finish the remaining four on Saturday.
Meanwhile, there is at least one quiz and several discussion boards I could/should be grading, but am I? Hell no.
But I think about the fact that for me, this is all pretty much "situation normal"--except I'm physically far from campus--whereas for many of my colleagues, this is a time of crumbling crisis: quickly switching to FTF classes to online, which even for teachers versed in online teaching would be a nightmare, while coping with all the psychological, social, and pragmatic problems of life during a pandemic: grocery stores empty of basic necessities, medical facilities already strained close to breaking point and the numbers of confirmed cases still climbing, people trying to balance maintaining lives while remaining as isolated or "distanced" as possible.... Out here in the sticks, we are in a much better situation: not very many people and a whole lot of space, and we started putting all the precautions in place before things were already getting ahead of us. And apart from the need to get to a store from time to time, and the absolute lack of toilet paper anywhere in the state, it seems, I can toodle along just fine for a good long while just me in my little house, bitching about my students as if life were normal.
I have to remind myself how challenging things are for everyone back "home." Today, for instance, I started to feel impatient that I haven't gotten an answer about a payroll issue--but then I thought, "I have no idea what kind of insanity they're dealing with that's a whole lot more important than my question; I can follow up in a week or so. This is not 'house on fire' urgent." Ditto an issue with my vision coverage; it seems I've been paying COBRA payments but my coverage won't work out here. I've asked my Human Resources contact about it, but I don't expect an answer any time soon.
This is such a completely weird time in history--as one friend said, living it is a bear. Things to be grateful for: that the internet still works, that my computer and internet connection still work, that most of my friends and relatives are accessible through the internet one way or another. Strange, strange days.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Kinda-sorta caught up
I believe I have caught up with all the stuff I didn't grade from last week. I don't know why I resisted doing it for so long (and several times started, graded one or two, and then thought "I can't do this right now" and stopped). It really wasn't onerous, and it's nice to have my feet clear so I can focus on grading revisions of essays in the week to come.
There has been a whole lot of silence on the freelance front, which is OK by me at the moment. I may have mentioned that at one point I was contacted by some book designers who wanted to include an estimate for my services in a proposal they were making to a west-coast museum. I heard from them that they didn't get the job, so that won't be landing on my desk over the summer.
I really don't have a whole lot else to say at the moment--other than noting that I did create overall posts on two discussion board fora, correcting misunderstandings and pointing out realities that the students tend not to consider in their responses to the readings (about U.S. industrialized agricultural practices). I have stopped commenting on most individual posts, as most students aren't reading my comments anyway, but I specifically informed students that those threads now exist and that, well, they should read them.
I don't know how much work I'll do on the class tomorrow; I imagine I'll at least check Turnitin to see how many essays were submitted on time. Apart from that, it will be a day mostly about life maintenance--and simply doing personal stuff that I want to do (transferring compost from one bin that is not bear-resistant to another that is, for instance; it should be warm enough for such shenanigans after the brief arctic snap we just endured).
Life goes on. Life is, generally speaking, just hunky dory.
There has been a whole lot of silence on the freelance front, which is OK by me at the moment. I may have mentioned that at one point I was contacted by some book designers who wanted to include an estimate for my services in a proposal they were making to a west-coast museum. I heard from them that they didn't get the job, so that won't be landing on my desk over the summer.
I really don't have a whole lot else to say at the moment--other than noting that I did create overall posts on two discussion board fora, correcting misunderstandings and pointing out realities that the students tend not to consider in their responses to the readings (about U.S. industrialized agricultural practices). I have stopped commenting on most individual posts, as most students aren't reading my comments anyway, but I specifically informed students that those threads now exist and that, well, they should read them.
I don't know how much work I'll do on the class tomorrow; I imagine I'll at least check Turnitin to see how many essays were submitted on time. Apart from that, it will be a day mostly about life maintenance--and simply doing personal stuff that I want to do (transferring compost from one bin that is not bear-resistant to another that is, for instance; it should be warm enough for such shenanigans after the brief arctic snap we just endured).
Life goes on. Life is, generally speaking, just hunky dory.
Friday, March 13, 2020
A little grading, a whole lot of fiddling
I've been futzing around with things like grade sheets and emailing students who are AWOL--mostly because I can't quite bear to read any more student work but feel as if I should be doing something that has something to do with class.
Regarding grade sheets: this may seem like a ridiculous expenditure of energy, since I'm teaching, and therefore grading, online, but since NCC insists on the need for paper rosters--and those paper rosters have to have a break-down of how the grade was determined--it's helpful for me to have an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate specific categories of grades in ways that Blackboard's Grade Center doesn't seem to like. Or, really, that I don't want to have to figure out.
But in putting together the Excel spreadsheet, I realized I wasn't sure exactly how many sheets I'd actually need. I only need them for the students who have submitted enough work that calculating their grade requires more than adding two or three numbers. And I realize that there are a few students who might still return--at least for a while--though they seem at the moment to be among the missing.
As for the emails I've been sending, I doubt they'll have any particular effect, but I've now done all I intend to do. We haven't yet gotten the Academic Progress thingy that we are required to do every semester; I imagine that in all the upheaval over the pandemic, "suspended" classes, attempts to transition as much as possible to online modalities, and hoarding of toilet paper, that little detail has slipped through the cracks. If it ever happens this semester, it will happen too late to be of any use to much of anyone (especially students whose grades are in danger)--but I will, of course, dutifully fill it out.
And in all this pother, I had rather blissfully forgotten that students are supposed to submit their revised essays by end of day Sunday--which means more substantive grading for me next week. So I really "should" have tried to hang in there a little longer getting discussion board fora graded, but ... nah. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Sunday. There will be time....
Regarding grade sheets: this may seem like a ridiculous expenditure of energy, since I'm teaching, and therefore grading, online, but since NCC insists on the need for paper rosters--and those paper rosters have to have a break-down of how the grade was determined--it's helpful for me to have an Excel spreadsheet that will calculate specific categories of grades in ways that Blackboard's Grade Center doesn't seem to like. Or, really, that I don't want to have to figure out.
But in putting together the Excel spreadsheet, I realized I wasn't sure exactly how many sheets I'd actually need. I only need them for the students who have submitted enough work that calculating their grade requires more than adding two or three numbers. And I realize that there are a few students who might still return--at least for a while--though they seem at the moment to be among the missing.
As for the emails I've been sending, I doubt they'll have any particular effect, but I've now done all I intend to do. We haven't yet gotten the Academic Progress thingy that we are required to do every semester; I imagine that in all the upheaval over the pandemic, "suspended" classes, attempts to transition as much as possible to online modalities, and hoarding of toilet paper, that little detail has slipped through the cracks. If it ever happens this semester, it will happen too late to be of any use to much of anyone (especially students whose grades are in danger)--but I will, of course, dutifully fill it out.
And in all this pother, I had rather blissfully forgotten that students are supposed to submit their revised essays by end of day Sunday--which means more substantive grading for me next week. So I really "should" have tried to hang in there a little longer getting discussion board fora graded, but ... nah. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Sunday. There will be time....
Monday, March 9, 2020
Working with an aspiring writer
Using the online tutoring platform Wyzant, I just met with a student who wants to become a better writer and who is working on a "fantasy" novel. Really, what he wants to write is a tragedy; the "medieval" trappings are simply a device--and honestly, I'm not quite sure why he wanted them, but whatever. He does, so we'll work from there. I talked to him a tiny bit about fantasy as a genre, what it is and what it does, but mostly I talked more concretely about things like having the personas of the main characters more vividly present in the first chapter, having the emotional stakes higher (and more clear), and making sure he knows enough about the characters to know how and why the main plot points could happen. I found out toward the end of the lesson that he feels like, once he puts something on paper, it's therefore and forever after immutable, so my first assignment for him was to write five pages of anything, then make a copy of the file and make deep, systemic changes to what he's written. This is a bit of "do as I say, not as I do," but he really needs to know that revising is not only possible but necessary. I also wanted him to do a detailed character sketch of one character, one he doesn't know very well yet but who will ultimately be an important part of the overall plot.
It was interesting--and it's going to work in a very catch-as-catch-can way going forward; he's not sure when he'll have time to write, and I'm not sure how this is going to work generally speaking. But we'll see how it goes.
Meanwhile, the students in my online class are turning into idiots, all of them, asking questions about things I just explained--one student asking a question in reply to the email that answered precisely that question. I'm getting a bit testy with them. They're also emailing assignments to me when I've specifically told them not to--but they're doing that because they're experiencing glitches with Blackboard. They probably need to clear their computer cache and cookies, but if I tell them that, their brains will explode. I was hoping to get an email from the help desk about how to do that, so I could mail instructions to my students, but I haven't gotten that yet. The Blackboard glitches are annoying to me and anxiety-producing for the students. Not happy about any of that either.
In fact, I'm sort of systemically grumpy. But I think I was helpful/encouraging to the aspiring novelist. I reckon I'll find out in a while whether he liked what I did well enough to want to use me again.
I'm too tired for more tonight. But it is fun working with the potential novelist. I wish we could work together more often and at greater length. Much more fun than teaching comp.
It was interesting--and it's going to work in a very catch-as-catch-can way going forward; he's not sure when he'll have time to write, and I'm not sure how this is going to work generally speaking. But we'll see how it goes.
Meanwhile, the students in my online class are turning into idiots, all of them, asking questions about things I just explained--one student asking a question in reply to the email that answered precisely that question. I'm getting a bit testy with them. They're also emailing assignments to me when I've specifically told them not to--but they're doing that because they're experiencing glitches with Blackboard. They probably need to clear their computer cache and cookies, but if I tell them that, their brains will explode. I was hoping to get an email from the help desk about how to do that, so I could mail instructions to my students, but I haven't gotten that yet. The Blackboard glitches are annoying to me and anxiety-producing for the students. Not happy about any of that either.
In fact, I'm sort of systemically grumpy. But I think I was helpful/encouraging to the aspiring novelist. I reckon I'll find out in a while whether he liked what I did well enough to want to use me again.
I'm too tired for more tonight. But it is fun working with the potential novelist. I wish we could work together more often and at greater length. Much more fun than teaching comp.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Must dash...
...but wanted to vent just a trifle here first.
One particular student was hounding me all day today about the fact that there's some kind of glitch with an extra credit discussion board forum, so she hasn't been able to post to it. I fixed what we thought was the problem, but it didn't work, which means I have to contact the help desk to figure it out--and she was all over my email about it. She also was all over my email asking about her essay grade--even after I returned the essay, which has the grade on it. Calm the hell down and be patient--and recognize that the world doesn't run to your schedule, dammit.
And Boopsie did respond to my email, to my astonishment, and she said she has been falling down on the work but thinks she can pass the class--so she and I will talk during my office hour on Monday. That will be interesting, to say the least.
Oh, yes: and there's the student who said he got his essay back, and was there anything he could do for extra credit. I referred him to the syllabus:
So, answer your own question, young man.
But I got the essays all marked--including Boopsie's--and got the Met project done (turned out to be tiny, thank God), and even wrote a letter of recommendation for a student from my last semester in the classroom, and I am now, by god, stick-a-fork-in-me done for today. I'm going to meet my mother and go out for dinner. Not a steak blow-out with Paul and the gang, but it will do nicely, thank you.
One particular student was hounding me all day today about the fact that there's some kind of glitch with an extra credit discussion board forum, so she hasn't been able to post to it. I fixed what we thought was the problem, but it didn't work, which means I have to contact the help desk to figure it out--and she was all over my email about it. She also was all over my email asking about her essay grade--even after I returned the essay, which has the grade on it. Calm the hell down and be patient--and recognize that the world doesn't run to your schedule, dammit.
And Boopsie did respond to my email, to my astonishment, and she said she has been falling down on the work but thinks she can pass the class--so she and I will talk during my office hour on Monday. That will be interesting, to say the least.
Oh, yes: and there's the student who said he got his essay back, and was there anything he could do for extra credit. I referred him to the syllabus:
Some
extra credit is built into the regular assignments: if you do all the
assignments and get top marks, you can earn more than 2,000 points—and that
would be the equivalent of getting 100% on every single assignment. I have also
included a few extra credit assignments to help if you should fall behind. That’s enough extra credit. Your
task is to do the work assigned. Do not ask for additional assignments to boost
your cumulative score.
But I got the essays all marked--including Boopsie's--and got the Met project done (turned out to be tiny, thank God), and even wrote a letter of recommendation for a student from my last semester in the classroom, and I am now, by god, stick-a-fork-in-me done for today. I'm going to meet my mother and go out for dinner. Not a steak blow-out with Paul and the gang, but it will do nicely, thank you.
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Might as well revert to the old blog title
Seems like, for the foreseeable future anyway, this is going to be a blog that is 99.9% about students. Which is OK, of course; it just isn't what the title might lead a new reader to expect.
But about the students:
Imagine my utter astonishment when Little Boopsie--the one who tried to join the online office hour, gave up; submitted a quiz and started another, gave up, otherwise has been AWOL--submitted her essay, two days late, and sent me two very chipper emails, one saying, "Oh, oops, I forgot my works cited page!" and the next saying "Oh, sorry, sent you the wrong works cited page; here's the right one!"
OK, so clearly she understands at least that emails work in one direction, but I emailed back saying the professorial equivalent of "What the fuck??" and of course have heard absolutely nothing back. The letter that was mailed should arrive at her house any day now--assuming she still lives at the address she has on file, which may be a huge assumption.
I'll give her some feedback on her essay--once I finish with everyone else. I got another late submission, too, from a student who emailed on Sunday to ask where he could find the article for the essay (and to whom the answer was, "You need to do research; I suggest you read the essay assignment"). So now I've gotten submissions from ten of thirteen, but not from one of the students who I thought was among the best.
And what with one thing and another, I haven't gotten everything marked--and I'm going to send everything back all at once, to sort of level the playing field as it were: no one gets extra days to work on the revision--so even though there are only two more (and Boopsie's), I have to really get rolling tomorrow morning and crank fast, so I can at least start on the Met project and see how long that will take.
Of course, while I focus on grading essays, I'm falling way the hell behind on everything else I need to mark for them, so even when I finish grading essays and get the Met project returned, I'm still going to have a bolus of work that needs doing.
Meanwhile, Cathy offered me a summer section of Native American Lit. Online courses in the summer run ten weeks, not four like the FTF versions, so that removed one objection, and I confess I'm kinda tempted--that whole "I need money" thing--but I'd have to start over from zero, as the textbook I used to use is insanely expensive new, and there are problems with students getting it on time if they get it used, and I used to use a lot of handouts, so I'd have to think of something else to do ... and I think I just talked myself out of it. I do love the course, but I haven't taught it in seven years, and there's just an awful lot to convey if I'm going to teach it right. The problems go way beyond the textbook. I'll think about it over night (the idea of the money really is appealing), but it would be an astronomical amount of work to get it up and rolling. I don't think an online version of the class has ever existed, either, so I couldn't even raid what someone else has done (and actually, full-time faculty get paid a stipend to put together an online course when it's never been taught online before, so I'd kinda be giving NCC my work for free, which I don't much want to do).
But now, even though the sun is still up, as far as I'm concerned, the curtain has descended on the day, and I'm packing it in. I thought I might do a little research into possible textbooks for the Native American Lit class, just to see how possible it might be to throw something together, but if I start on that, the wind-down process will be delayed even further, and I would like to try to make an early night of it. I expect I'll touch base tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if I get any more late essays (tonight midnight is the absolute deadline), and to see if I hear from Boopsie. We'll see.
But about the students:
Imagine my utter astonishment when Little Boopsie--the one who tried to join the online office hour, gave up; submitted a quiz and started another, gave up, otherwise has been AWOL--submitted her essay, two days late, and sent me two very chipper emails, one saying, "Oh, oops, I forgot my works cited page!" and the next saying "Oh, sorry, sent you the wrong works cited page; here's the right one!"
OK, so clearly she understands at least that emails work in one direction, but I emailed back saying the professorial equivalent of "What the fuck??" and of course have heard absolutely nothing back. The letter that was mailed should arrive at her house any day now--assuming she still lives at the address she has on file, which may be a huge assumption.
I'll give her some feedback on her essay--once I finish with everyone else. I got another late submission, too, from a student who emailed on Sunday to ask where he could find the article for the essay (and to whom the answer was, "You need to do research; I suggest you read the essay assignment"). So now I've gotten submissions from ten of thirteen, but not from one of the students who I thought was among the best.
And what with one thing and another, I haven't gotten everything marked--and I'm going to send everything back all at once, to sort of level the playing field as it were: no one gets extra days to work on the revision--so even though there are only two more (and Boopsie's), I have to really get rolling tomorrow morning and crank fast, so I can at least start on the Met project and see how long that will take.
Of course, while I focus on grading essays, I'm falling way the hell behind on everything else I need to mark for them, so even when I finish grading essays and get the Met project returned, I'm still going to have a bolus of work that needs doing.
Meanwhile, Cathy offered me a summer section of Native American Lit. Online courses in the summer run ten weeks, not four like the FTF versions, so that removed one objection, and I confess I'm kinda tempted--that whole "I need money" thing--but I'd have to start over from zero, as the textbook I used to use is insanely expensive new, and there are problems with students getting it on time if they get it used, and I used to use a lot of handouts, so I'd have to think of something else to do ... and I think I just talked myself out of it. I do love the course, but I haven't taught it in seven years, and there's just an awful lot to convey if I'm going to teach it right. The problems go way beyond the textbook. I'll think about it over night (the idea of the money really is appealing), but it would be an astronomical amount of work to get it up and rolling. I don't think an online version of the class has ever existed, either, so I couldn't even raid what someone else has done (and actually, full-time faculty get paid a stipend to put together an online course when it's never been taught online before, so I'd kinda be giving NCC my work for free, which I don't much want to do).
But now, even though the sun is still up, as far as I'm concerned, the curtain has descended on the day, and I'm packing it in. I thought I might do a little research into possible textbooks for the Native American Lit class, just to see how possible it might be to throw something together, but if I start on that, the wind-down process will be delayed even further, and I would like to try to make an early night of it. I expect I'll touch base tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if I get any more late essays (tonight midnight is the absolute deadline), and to see if I hear from Boopsie. We'll see.
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Mostly students
I did get another little freelance gig for the Met, but I'm going to make myself finish the student essays first.
And it's a damned good thing I'm only teaching the one class, or I'd be utterly, completely sunk. It's that whole keyboard/spend-too-long-on-comments thing. But then again, I have only received eight essays--and I rather think at least one of those (Working Dad) won't make it to the end.
Working Dad plagiarized, by the way. According to Turnitin, 39% of his essay was plagiarized. And his "argument" was about which college his son should attend. (The plagiarized stuff was from a website about the values of a Catholic university education.) I hardly knew what to say to him. I do wonder what's going on with his mind: there are things he misunderstands that simply baffle me. Is he not reading? Not comprehending? Too distracted to know what the hell he's doing? All of the above?
One student tried to cover all four possible topics. {{buzzer sounds}} Thanks for playing, but you lose.
One student wrote two pages of random thoughts with no focus.
Those were the three I graded today--and I was unbelievably nice to the non-plagiarizers. The grades I give on the first version of the first essay are usually what I would consider very generous and students still receive them as horrifically insulting and demeaning. Well, sorry, but if you don't actually do what you need to do, failing grades would probably be appropriate, so anything above that is a gift, don't you think?
But I recognize that they are learning--and we're at the "they don't know what they don't know" stage: most of them simply have zero clue what a college paper should look like and have even less of an idea how to approach creating one. So, yes: I'm generous. Once they get my feedback, one hopes they'll have a better sense of what to do. But I just realized that I could have--and should have--provided a sample essay so they can see what a good, solid B looks like. I'm sure I've got one somewhere....
I'm also a bit concerned about one of the students who has not yet submitted her (I think her) essay. She's a pretty good student, so the fact that her essay hasn't been submitted yet is a real concern. I sent her an email--but then I decided to send a group email to the students who are not as good but who still have been hanging on up to this point but haven't submitted essays. It's my compulsion to keep them from drowning--if nothing else by pointing out where the lifeboats are. I doubt I'll get more submissions--and if I do, I might be kicking myself for making more work for myself--but I really do have a vested interest in teaching them, even when they don't do their part.
Well, whatever. If they don't submit by midnight tomorrow, they're out of luck on this one--and even if they do, I'll still devote Thursday to the Met project. My policy says I don't give comments on anything that's submitted more than 24 hours late, but if they at least make the attempt, I'll give them something; I'll just try not to devote quite as much time and attention to them as I have given to their peers who submitted on time.
And it's a damned good thing I'm only teaching the one class, or I'd be utterly, completely sunk. It's that whole keyboard/spend-too-long-on-comments thing. But then again, I have only received eight essays--and I rather think at least one of those (Working Dad) won't make it to the end.
Working Dad plagiarized, by the way. According to Turnitin, 39% of his essay was plagiarized. And his "argument" was about which college his son should attend. (The plagiarized stuff was from a website about the values of a Catholic university education.) I hardly knew what to say to him. I do wonder what's going on with his mind: there are things he misunderstands that simply baffle me. Is he not reading? Not comprehending? Too distracted to know what the hell he's doing? All of the above?
One student tried to cover all four possible topics. {{buzzer sounds}} Thanks for playing, but you lose.
One student wrote two pages of random thoughts with no focus.
Those were the three I graded today--and I was unbelievably nice to the non-plagiarizers. The grades I give on the first version of the first essay are usually what I would consider very generous and students still receive them as horrifically insulting and demeaning. Well, sorry, but if you don't actually do what you need to do, failing grades would probably be appropriate, so anything above that is a gift, don't you think?
But I recognize that they are learning--and we're at the "they don't know what they don't know" stage: most of them simply have zero clue what a college paper should look like and have even less of an idea how to approach creating one. So, yes: I'm generous. Once they get my feedback, one hopes they'll have a better sense of what to do. But I just realized that I could have--and should have--provided a sample essay so they can see what a good, solid B looks like. I'm sure I've got one somewhere....
I'm also a bit concerned about one of the students who has not yet submitted her (I think her) essay. She's a pretty good student, so the fact that her essay hasn't been submitted yet is a real concern. I sent her an email--but then I decided to send a group email to the students who are not as good but who still have been hanging on up to this point but haven't submitted essays. It's my compulsion to keep them from drowning--if nothing else by pointing out where the lifeboats are. I doubt I'll get more submissions--and if I do, I might be kicking myself for making more work for myself--but I really do have a vested interest in teaching them, even when they don't do their part.
Well, whatever. If they don't submit by midnight tomorrow, they're out of luck on this one--and even if they do, I'll still devote Thursday to the Met project. My policy says I don't give comments on anything that's submitted more than 24 hours late, but if they at least make the attempt, I'll give them something; I'll just try not to devote quite as much time and attention to them as I have given to their peers who submitted on time.
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