This morning's Writer's Almanac

In Praise of a Teacher

by Nikki Giovanni

The reason Miss Delaney was my favorite teacher, not just my
favorite English teacher, is that she would let me read any book I 
wanted and would allow me to report on it. I had the pleasure of 
reading The Scapegoat as well as We the Living as well as Silver
Spoon (which was about a whole bunch of rich folk who were 
unhappy), and Defender of the Damned, which was about 
Clarence Darrow, which led me into Native Son because the real
case was defended by Darrow though in Native Son he got the
chair despite the fact that Darrow never lost a client to the chair
including Leopold and Loeb who killed Bobby Frank. Native Son
led me to Eight Men and all the rest of Richard Wright but I 
preferred Langston Hughes at that time and Gwendolyn Brooks
and I did reports on both of them. I always loved English because
whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories
that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a 
history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we 
think we are; English is much more a story of who we really are.
It was, after all, Miss Delaney who introduced the class to My
candle burns at both ends; /It will not last the night; /But, ah, my
foes, and, oh, my friends— /It gives a lovely light. And I thought
YES. Poetry is the main line. English is the train.

"In Praise of a Teacher" by Nikki Giovanni, from Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea. © Harper Perennial, 2002. 

Too much good stuff

Class discussion is one of my favorite things: students coming to some realizations about the readings because they listen to what their colleagues have to say.

Tonight, lots of students changed their minds about "which genre [poem, short story, essay] is most powerful when it comes to expressing the theme[s] for tonight."

We'd read a poem, "The Cross and the Pagan," by Elaine Goodale Eastman; an essay, "The Great Mystery," by Charles Eastman; and three short stories: Steven Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," Alice Dunbar-Nelson's "Sister Josepha," and Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Mr. Cornelius Johnson, Office Seeker."

Lots of "tensions" to talk about: between religions, between races, between cultures. Or maybe the preposition should be "across": across religions, races, cultures. Or maybe "among"!

Mary Astell

For my British/Colonial women Writers class, I'm reading a biography by Ruth Perry called The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist.

An early footnote lists "[a] selection of classics of early scholarship on learned women and women writers and the conditions that shaped their lives" (p. 471, emphasis added). These "classics" go back quite a ways - historical scholarship about literary women is not a modern invention.

I'm listing the dates here and hope to get the titles of the articles/chapters/books at a later time:

• Two from the 19th century: 1861 and 1862
• Two from the second decade of the 20th century: 1913 and 1919
• Six from the third decade: 1920, 1925, three published in 1929, one in 1929-30
• Five in the fourth decade: 1931, two in 1933, 1935-36, 1936
• Four in the fifth decade: two in 1942, 1946, 1947
• Five in the sixth decade: 1954, 1956, two in 1957, 1958-59
• One in the seventh decade: a volume spanning 1965-67

Overall, Perry claims 25 *classics* re. women and creativity: where have all these classics gone?

Join Us!

Community colleges are the thin, leading edge

Now we learn that the shooter went to community college, which is the first thing I thought when I read the strange syllogisms on his YouTube videos about "conscience dreaming," currency, and grammar (which he used erroneously): his YouTube channel has now had over 2 million views.

Technology glitch

To Save

As I clean out my email inbox, I find tons of good links to nature writing websites (that's the beauty of Google Alerts, which I can't always read when they come).  I'm going to start a list below, in no particular order, so I don't lose the info:

• Poefrika: A green weblog of creative, Africa-inspired writing (blog)
• The Gift of Good Land (blog)
• Nature Writing Roundup (British: the Guardian's review article)
• Nature Writer (Australian: blog)
• Black Nature (review of University of Georgia anthology)
• GreenFire (promo for Leopold film)
• From Woods to Wetlands: Nature writing with a personal perspective (blog)
• Favorites of 2010 (blog best-of list)
• Natural Comfort (personal essay)
• Ecology without Nature (blog)
• Great Auk (blog)
• Good Heart Extreme Science (blog reviews two books)
• Bartram's Living Legacy (book preview)
• National Geographic article (Sandra Postel)
• Not Your Grandfather's Nature Writing (review essay)
• reading list request (informal)
• bio of David Gessner (writer of Sick of Nature)

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

Contraindications

This week has been a short work week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  I started my week with the usual full Monday: I have three classes that day plus office hours, so I'm working from 9:45-3:45, pretty much non-stop.  This past Monday, I had asked a student to come by my office hours to chat.  Here's why:

A couple of weeks ago, two technical writing students (I'll call them Mo and Jeff) stopped by my office to express themselves, wondering where their most recent assignment was because they "needed feedback" so that they "wouldn't mess up" the next assignment.  Never mind that I had devoted half a class period to providing feedback to the whole class based on what I noticed on all their assignments.  On the board, I'd listed the things that had been done well and things that needed to be improved.  I had given individual feedback to about half the class, but not yet personally to Mo and Jeff.

Jeff also complained that I "didn't lecture enough" and so he didn't ever know what to do in class: if I talked individually to another student during workshop (after giving the whole class a task), he didn't know what he was supposed to do.  So the next class period, I "lectured" and then gave the students an exercise to apply that lecture.  Unfortunately, Jeff spent most of the lecture browsing through his grades on our course website instead of listening.

The biggest shock came that evening: my dean called me at home to say that Mo and Jeff had come by her office to complain that I didn't get their work back to them in time.  Mo in particular said that she thought I had "too much to do" and couldn't get my work done.  (I guess I should be impressed that Mo would take this strategy: it shows she's listened when I've talked about audience analysis and technical writing.  When my students have asked whether or not they have to remind me what projects they're working on, I answer with the fact that I am teaching 120 students this semester, and it's entirely possible that I would not remember their exact project.  Mo took this information and concluded that I had "too much to do.")

Anyway, the call from the dean was a shock.  I asked about contacting the students individually to say that I'd talked with the dean; she said okay.  I asked Mo to come to my office because I must have misunderstood something since our face-to-face conversation in my office the previous week had seemed to have ended well.

This Monday, Mo came by and said, "We talked with the dean because after we talked with you, nothing changed."  (Timeline update: they talked in my office on a Wednesday after class; the next class meeting was Monday, the day they expected to see some type of change.)

When I mentioned about the class "lecture" that Monday, she responded that she gets nothing out of class and it doesn't matter to her what happens in class.  When I mentioned that I also had returned her assignment *and* given her extra time to turn in the next assignment, she said that I should have done that for everyone because "probably other people have the same issue" (they don't).  She then spent quite a bit of time saying that 1) she was a bad writer 2) she was only taking the class because it was required and 3) she didn't get anything out of coming to class - it was a waste.

Hmmm.  So I flat-out said something like "You'll have to help me understand what seems to be a contradiction here: you say that you are a bad writer, you don't get anything out of class, yet you seem to want a good grade: how do you think that is going to happen?"  She didn't know.  She didn't think I could do anything in class, and she didn't think she could do anything.

I'm extremely puzzled: did she just want to vent?  Who, exactly, would she be mad at, and why?   She's told me that she's already earned her nursing certificate (but she can't find a job - I wonder why).  So I'm not sure why she's saying that this course is required for her program.  Maybe she just needs to get a B and sees that it might not be possible?

She also complained to the dean that she was active military and that I didn't give her the accommodations required.  First time I heard she was active military is when the dean told me.

So I'm a bit pissed off at Mo and Jeff: they're team.  He makes fun of her every chance he gets - he fancies himself the class clown - and she seems to need his large bulk as protection somehow.  The two of them will get through the course, but I can't imagine a grade higher than a C for either of them, given how they write and how they contribute to class discussion (two primary ways of earning grades in our class).

It's that time of the semester

This week, my tech writers have been unhappy with their workload (even though they have chosen their tasks and their timelines) and thus with me.

Two came into my office last week to tell me how to teach the class: you should lecture more to the whole class; don't talk to people individually in the classroom because "then I don't know what to do: should I start reading something else?"

This comment came after I had given students an activity (to support that day's "educational objective," which I had written on the board and which I had introduced with some talking to the class that evidently the student did not find sufficient as a "lecture").  While students were doing the activity, I circulated around the classroom, commenting on their work, asking if anyone had questions.  A couple of students had questions, so I stopped to talk and answer.

The fellow with this complaint is someone whose only contributions to class discussion come in the form of jokes, often at the expense of his friend, the woman who came into the office with him to "discuss" my teaching.  This young man also spends less than 30 minutes composing his most recent assignments (I ask all students to complete a "cover sheet" with assignments, recording what they did to complete the writing task; most students spend two to four hours creating these current memos.)

So I understand this guy as a lazy, below-average student (he's in law enforcement), and I recognize the type (blame someone else for my own faults).  The young woman, on the other hand, she's a puzzle to me.  After a call from the dean yesterday (yes, after the students talked to me, evidently they were still pissed enough to talk with the dean), I found out that the student is active-duty military.  She's never mentioned that to me before (except in my office to tell me that I had "not given her" extra time to complete a quiz about a month ago when she was at Camp Ripley).

This student is mad at me because she hasn't received a grade for a September assignment: that's true - only two students have received grades because these assignments came in the same time as my grandma's death and funeral, and I had computer problems with the assignments, so I got behind.  I've been up-to-speed with other assignments instead of going back to those -- a problem, to be sure, but one I've explained to students and asked for their patience, something I would appreciate as I continually tweak the course to meet their needs: moving due dates, moving online class dates, adding another hour of "chat" even though it's a huge struggle for me to attend, giving them more chances to do open-book online quizzes.

*Sigh*.  I'm just so tired of trying to teach students to write -- it means I have to read and comment on what they write, such a time-consuming activity.  I have at least one colleague who assigns two papers in a 16-week semester (I have many, many more), the first of which is due week 9 of the semester.  These students are not learning to write: they are just writing anything (I worked with two of them in the writing center, and their "research papers" consisted of a pastiche from Wikipedia and other sources, a cut-and-paste that would cause an F in my course).

I am struggling with knowing how to be a good, ethical teacher in an environment that doesn't support those kinds of teachers.  What do I sacrifice?  How do I compromise?

The Serial Comma

So using the Oxford Commas (as it's also known) is really important, I tell my students. Click on this news clipping to make it bigger (and to see the joke).

Thanks, Dave Beard.

Meetings

I suppose it's good that I go to meetings . . . they're opportunities to share, tell stories, learn about other people's problems so that I don't feel alone with our IT shenanigans (no, that's not the right word: not negative enough - it's IT irresponsibility or arrogance or ineptness or all of the above).

The worst story I heard today was an instructor whose course -- a course teaching students how to use MS Outlook -- could not / would not have said software loaded on to the classroom machines (or the instructor computer).  The head of IT (AKA our CIO and Assistant Vice President for Technology) said that he didn't think it was "pedagogically sound" to teach Outlook skills in a hands-on lab setting.

Right.

Sure, I think it's unethical to charge our students college tuition to learn a software package, but our college has two programs that basically do just that (Office Technology and Computer Applications - these are programs left over from the "merger" when a community college and a technical school merged to form Century).

The things you learn . . .

Midterms

Here's the list so far since Sunday:

• created two exams based on student input (ENGL 90: Introduction to Writing and WGST 1071: Intro to GLBT Studies) = 6 hours
• graded ENGL 90 student portfolios (three pieces of writing, the exam, and two blog posts; wrote individual letters to each student, including their point percentage at this point in the semester) = 9 hours so far for the first 28
• scored discussion posts and quizzes for ENGL 1025: Technical Writing = 1 hour
• conducted 27 conferences in my office (had to clean up office a bit first) = 6 hours (have 10 left; 5 missed, one because she had a baby!)
• chose my courses for summer at a "blood-letting" meeting today = 1 hour
• worked half of my Writing Center shift = 1.5 hours
• met with two of my classes = 2 hours

To do before tomorrow:

• finish grading WGST 1071 exams (18 half-done)
• finish ENGL 90 portfolios (11)
• eat supper

My eyes are bleary!

Images of teachers

I missed UNESCO World Teachers' Day (Oct. 5). 

But here are a bunch of pictures of teachers around the world.