Thinking ahead

The new semester starts much sooner than I'd like to contemplate (Jan. 10!).  I am teaching familiar courses, so I don't feel much pressure - yet - to finalize my syllabi.  I do wish the new edition of my American Lit texts would arrive . . . I'm going to have to make a few changes to the reading list.

Mostly, I am thinking ahead to Fall 2011, when I've agreed to teach a night Shakespeare course.  Shakespeare!  I've only ever taken a course in college, although I have some vague memory of grad school Shakespeare . . . perhaps just the sonnets.

My pal Ray just sent his annual invitation to a Shakespeare play - the Guthrie has The Winter's Tale this year.  (If you click on the play-title link, you'll go to SparkNotes, which I am going to use as a main text for my course next fall - why not use the resources that my students would turn to, anyway?  And SparkNotes has "No Fear Shakespeare," which has side-by-side translation into "modern" English.  Yay.)

Proof?

Here's a passage copied exactly from a student's end-of-semester portfolio reflection:

"Another thing that I have really improved in my writing is being too wordy. This is another problem that I did not realize before coming to my English class.  Throughout the class time in English I have became better at not being too wordy.  This is also why I chose to write my first [assignment] on the reason why I chose the video Nine Steps to Writing a Good Essay.  This piece is an opinion piece, and I knew that this could be an easy piece to be wordy in.  This is the reason why I chose to write an opinion piece, to challenge myself.  When reading this [assignment], I believe that you will notice that I am not as wordy as I use to be."

Well, I hope so - whew!

Maybe I'll use this passage in the future as an example of irony . . . it wouldn't be contradiction or hypocrisy, would it?

Of course

Because grades are due tonight, the email system at Metro State seems to have gone down - and I need to check my email to find the obscure password that I need twice a year to submit my grades.  I've been trying for a few hours.

Sheesh.

On another note: I've finished all the grading for that class!  I had 25 essays, 12 reading journals, and 14 final exams.

I've also finished creating the exam for my Intro to GLBT Studies course (and graded eight reading journals and six fifteen essays for that class - about a third of almost all the students).

I've also graded 10 of 36 portfolios for my writing students (five or six essays in each!).  A few students stopped by my office today to pick up their portfolios: naturally, the students who stopped by are not the students whose portfolios I've finished.

My tech writers are still working on the final exam (three submitted - two are definitely A exams), so I won't grade them all until they're all in.

The end is in sight.

Typos

Sometimes the student reliance on spell check results in funny sentences:

• "Actually, from these strengths and weaknesses I learned valuable lesions for myself."

Grading

I have tons and tons of grading to do (38 portfolios, 5 essays in each, some with final exams too; 45 final lit essays, 12 exams too; 14 tech writing projects and final exams), but all I want to do is read some Shakespeare.

Decisions, decisions!

*Update*
I use blogging in my courses so that students can practice low-stakes writing for their peers (and also to teach a bit about technology: many of my students have never heard of blogs or blogging).  This semester, students blogged about our college's common book The Good Soldiers.  Here's one student's final post (I post it here as evidence of the level of student I'm teaching this semester -- is she ready for FYC?  I don't think so, but we'll see . . .):

My last time.

For my last blog post I would like to put my final words about how I feel about the book we have been reading this second half of the semester. I feel that at first the book was really boring. I felt this way because I am not into reading and if I need to read something I need to read something that interests me. So I knew I had to suck it up and read parts of the book. The first two chapters I was very confused I didn't even know what they where talking about so I decide to just skip into the middle of the book and see if I could pick up what Finkel was talking about. I started to read maybe five pages and I was understanding what he was talking about and so I just kept reading. After just reading about three chapters in the book I understood what was somewhat going on in the war. I kept giving more and more respect to the solders that were over in war and what they were going through. I still get confused though when they use the privates numbers and say numbers with letters in the book because I still don't understand what they are talking about. I do want to say though I think Julie made a good choice of a book to pick for the English class.

Stretch

What *real* active learning space might look like - not what we have at Century.

Need This!

I just received an email from a student who took Tech Writing with me about five years ago (or maybe seven!).  He went to the U of M from Century, double-majoring in Computer Science and Asian Languages & Literature.  His message here a good antidote to the grumpy tech writers who are finishing the semester with me right now:

Hey there Julie! I was just thinking about you the other day!


I've been doing some tech writing at my new job, trying to fix some awful grammar meshing 30 'styles' that a designer thought would 'go together' well on a website.


I've been living it up China for the past year and a half since graduating from the U; last year I was a teacher in Suzhou, and since this fall I've been working for an website dev company in Shanghai. I miss beauty of our great state and I wish I could be around for it's changing seasons. I hope all is going well with you in MN! I'm glad you're still teaching, the world needs more teachers like you!


Just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks again for your help and support when I was at Century and afterwards. You made such a great impact on me and surely countless others!


Sincerely yours,
Nathan