Fun day

Today's classes went well -- energetic activities, students invested in what we were learning/doing, jokes and happy faces. I need days like this!

The Engl 90 students were turning in their second polished essays -- and all the prep work they'd done to create those essays (at least a half-dozen pieces of writing). Because they're all such visual folks (they'd already drawn some pictures -- reading someone else's essay about a person of influence and then drawing a picture of that person), I had them do another visual thing with their words:

Wordle

I've talked about it before on this blog because it's just so cool: you paste in any amount of text or the URL for a website, and the software generates a visual image of the words. Bigger words means greater frequency. You can play around with the colors, fonts, sizes, orientations, backgrounds -- even the languages! I told students that I wouldn't be able to read anything other than English - dang!

Oh, and speaking of language translation, today is International Translators' Day [this link has Wordles!]. I learned this from an audience member at Maxine Hong Kingston's talk tonight. And one of my tech writing students decided to give his oral presentation on Monday in Pirate. Yep, it's been a good day.

Anyway, the Engl 90 students loved Wordle; some of them went to other websites and saw what happened. A couple of students realized that if the biggest word on their Wordle was "the," maybe they need to use some sentence variety. Yes!

And now: here's a Wordle of this blog post.

Allegedly Real

This answering machine recording is supposed to be the real message that parents hear when they call a high school in Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia.

Good writers

This semester, I'm teaching English 90 again, a course that's to help students get ready to write college-level writing (whatever that is). The students have so many different kinds of issues when it comes to getting their thoughts down in writing.

Issues range all over the place: from not having thoughts they can clearly articulate . . . to not quite understanding what a sentence is; from not knowing how to read . . . to never having used a computer before; from getting by writing the most banal things to "please the teacher". . . to sharing so much of their lives that I feel pity and awe toward them.

But this semester, I have a couple of the strongest writers I've ever had in that class. These young people are investigating their lives and experiences in a profound, real way. They're connecting what they read to their own lives. They're grappling with complex topics related to literacy, education, identity, and meaning -- topics I think some of my colleagues don't yet grasp!

It's a pleasure to read their work -- sure, it's a bit raggedy when it comes to things like comma use and consistent verb tense. Sure, they randomly veer from first person plural to second person singular back to third person plural. But so what: they're thinking and writing, writing and thinking. I'm lucky to have them in class.

Getting cheerier

I received a lot of feedback on my last post -- primarily on my Facebook page (I sort of forget that I have the two linked). Thanks to everyone who's been sympathizing, strategizing, and listening to me.

Now here's another piece to cheer me up: In a recent Inside Higher Education, the excellent scholar and professor Dennis Baron [ignore the IHE typo of his name in the URL] answers questions about his new book on teaching, writing, technology, and history. The book's called A Better Pencil.

Baron offers a perspective I know but often forget -- that people being what we are (and have been), there is (and has been) more good than bad when it comes to how people teach, learn, and communicate with each other.

I especially like these lines about online education because they reflect my reality:

"But I do see some significant downsides to distance education. . . . I fear that completion rates for many online courses are still disappointingly low, that the quality of much of the education is also lower than what happens in the classroom -- of course I’m thinking about the kinds of courses that I [and] my colleagues teach, ones which don’t require memorization of a body of knowledge but instead call for analysis, speculation, exploration. Courses where reading is intensive, where group discussion produces many insights, and where evaluation can’t be done by machine." (emphasis added)

These are the kinds of courses I value, too, full of the kinds of spontaneous insightful moments that can't be predicted but can only be recognized and cultivated organically by an instructor who's paying attention to all of the people in the room. This instructor knows that "knowledge is socially constructed" and that the room of people s/he's with is a social organism with knowledge-making potential.

The whole interview is good: read it!

Very discouraged

A few college situations are converging to make me feel like I don't belong at this institution any more:

-- continued student complaint about a borderline grade that I have absolutely no reason to cut student a break on: s/he got many, many breaks already during the semester -- my honest attempt to help -- but now I'm feeling as if I should never be "nice" to a student because it will bite me in the butt.

-- department discussion about online courses dominated by [insert adjective here] faculty who have a vested interest in increasing online offerings because the increase will line their own pocketbooks. These are faculty whose "pedagogy" consists of 1) worksheet-type exercises, mostly graded by the software, so they simply have to "design" a course and go the the cabin or of 2) lectures (called "discussions") about topics of interest to said faculty, never bothering to help students understand why such topics might be of interest to the students, who are simply a captive audience.

-- college-wide committee work that serves the programs relatively well but the general education (or "liberal arts") courses/programs very poorly. I've been sitting in meetings listening to colleagues say things like "why can't they think like us?" [okay, not exactly those words], and my [silent] response is, "because what you're doing isn't thinking."

I'm beginning to think our institution isn't about student learning -- defined by me as students actually grappling with the difficult developmental processes that go along with absorbing new information, figuring out how to solve problems that are new, attempting to think for themselves and then articulate that thinking in writing.

Given a new campus-wide initiative, we seem to be about "student retention" (make them happy by giving a good grade so they come back) or more simply "student tuition" (sign up for the classes, pay, and then you have a tiny window for changing your mind and getting your money back -- barely enough time to figure out what kind of class/experience you've entered).

When I first joined this faculty, the institution still had a bit of its old reputation as the premier liberal-arts two-year college, the premier transfer institution. That's gone.

When I first joined, I was eager to make this place a place I wanted to work: joined a ton of committees and initiatives; committed a bunch of psychic and emotional energy. I still do way too much, to a large degree. There's absolutely NO recognition of this kind of commitment by the faculty -- done almost exclusively by the female faculty for no extra monetary compensation of any kind (dollars or reduced course load). It's outrageous.

It's way too early in the semester to feel this way. But I'm about ready to let students pick their own grades, to let me classes out 20 minutes early every day and/or skip a day a week like many of my colleagues, to spend no time commenting on student writing (just slap a good grade), to quit the teaching part of my job. I can still do the entertaining, the one-on-one tutoring, the course design. But why do I really need to teach when it's not valued where I work.

Why?

Update

Well, the keys I lost turned up the next day in the lost-and-found. So I guess I must have lost them somewhere (how's that for an obvious statement). I'm glad my suspicion is unfounded. Now if I could just locate my annotated textbook!!

Klepto Class

I'm beginning to think I have a kleptomaniac in one of my classes. Two very strange things have happened.

Strange thing one:
On the very first day of writing class, Aug. 24, my textbook was missing at the end of class. That's pretty odd since I bring my texts to every class. I thought maybe a student took mine home by mistake, and the mistake would be realized quickly because my text had notes, post-its, bookmarks, paper clips stuck all through it.

No one had my book when I asked on Aug. 26. Two students had dropped the course in the interim, so I suppose one of them could have the book and not know it.

Strange thing two:
Today, my car key went missing from that same writing class. I wore unusual clothes today -- boy's jeans and a t-shirt -- because I was doing a "gender is performance" talk in my women-and-gender-studies course later in the day. I wanted students to notice how differently I was dressed for this class meeting: I've worn skirts every day so far.

As I was walking to my first class, the writing class, I had put my office keys and car key in my jeans pocket, but it felt weird. I remember thinking, "But the point is to carry your keys in your pocket if you're doing masculinity." But I don't remember what I did with the keys after that.

At the end of the first class, which was a wild workshop because students had so many questions about the first essay portfolio they were turning in, I looked for my keys on top of my books -- just my office keys. "Oh, I must have left the car key in the office," I thought, and ran to the restroom for a quick break between classes.

Taught the second class, went back to the office to grade and read, then finally at 7:30 got ready to leave: no keys. Looked everywhere I'd been: no keys. The car's still in the parking lot, so no one's stolen it (which would have been easy since the keyring has an electronic locking/unlocking device), but still I have no car keys.

Luckily, Laura came to get me. Luckily, I have a spare set of keys and a spare car so I can get to work tomorrow.

But it's extremely, extremely weird that two things have gone missing during the same class. What other explanation can there be?

Blogging is New

Many of my technical writing students -- mostly sophomores -- have never blogged, don't know what a blog is, are a bit leery of this thing called "blogging." We're using a blog, hosted by Blogger, to discuss "Technical Writing in the News," which they find out about by subscribing to Google Alerts (use "technical writing" as the Search Term and "News" as the Type).

This casual, audience-centered forum lets students try out some conversation about information we might be able to chat about if we were in a residential-campus setting: we'd perhaps read similar news items, looking for stories about technical writing, and then chat about them in the cafeteria, hallway, student lounge.

Since we're a commuter campus, I try to make the blog an online space for such chatter: you get a news alert that has "technical writing" in it -- perhaps a job post, a human-interest story, a "jobs going to India" story -- and then post what you think about it on the blog. Classmates can read the same alert and concur/disagree/expand. Students learn about audience, diction, technology, purpose: all technical writing concepts.

I like this assignment, and even though many students are completely new to blogging, they end up liking it, too.

High School Stars

Tonight, I helped out a pal of mine who teaches English at North High in Minneapolis: she set aside time for her AP students to come by -- in the evening! -- to get some specialized information to help them get prepared for their AP courses this fall. She asked me to talk about literary analysis in particular, so this afternoon I created a handout, not knowing if I'd be talking with 2 students or 20.

In fact, six young men showed up -- and one young woman about 30 minutes into the session -- who were eager, intelligent, highly energetic and accomplished athletes. They listened, asked and answered questions, offered interpretations that showed they'd had practice thinking of alternatives.

I was impressed with the truly beautiful combination of rowdy joshing with each other and respectful listening with me (and the other teachers present, who were all known to them).

Ideally, they'll all attend college and earn degrees, but the demographics do work against them: ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic class matter. Here's hoping that these seven engaged young people defy the odds.

MIA!

The Voki avatar I made the other day for my online course "welcome" message took me about 45 minutes to create. I wasn't familiar with the software, and then the uploading to the course management system took more steps than were obvious.

But now, that work has disappeared! As I'm double/triple-checking the course websites for the semester that starts tomorrow, I do NOT find the avatar! I don't see the facsimile of myself saying "Welcome to this class" in the voice of Kate. :-(

Dang! What happened!

*UPDATE!* The issue is Firefox. With Safari as my browser, I can see the avatars. Yea!
*DOUBLE UPDATE* But I can't edit the html in D2L when I use my MacBook. Boo!

Does she look like me?

Revving Up

The new semester begins in three weeks (just less than that, actually), and I'm wondering where my summer went! Of course, I was teaching (both a f2f and an online course), driving around the country on great road trips (Bemidji, Madison, Chicago, New York, Montreal -- not always in that order), and next week I'll fly to San Antonio for a visit.

But I'm beginning to pull together ideas for my fall classes, and I found this new multi-authored blog: Ecology of Education | Exploring the Ecosystems of Learning.

Although the site seems primarily addressed to K-12 educators (the most amazing and under-appreciated public servants in our country), I'm finding some great information there, too. Just the metaphor alone needs to be more widely understood: Ecology, indeed!

Check it out.

P.S. Here's one more resource: a delicious.com list of sites for classroom ideas from Active Learning Carnival. I found it via the MnSCU CTL blog (see at right).

On another note

I have been considering whether or not to post the YouTube video of a bunch of boys (some quite young) harrassing a man after Sunday's Pride festival. Now that MPR has written a news story about it, I'll pass it along.

If you check out the original YouTube video, you'll see that some of the commenters just turn their hatred on the Somali boys: as if two wrongs make a right.

And one comment confirms Suzanne Pharr's assertion that homophobia is a weapon of sexism: the comment reads "you have to feel sorry for the guy, but in the few times you see him speak, he's handling himself like a 14-year old girl." Clearly, acting like a 14-year-old girl is NOT a good thing. Right.

Wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world where acting like a 14-year-old girl was a COMPLIMENT? Something to aspire to? To admire?

No Dumb Questions

This weekend I "worked" (it was just as much fun as it was work) for the college at the Twin Cities Pride Festival. Although I was pretty frustrated on Thursday (schlepping boxes, a tent, a table drape -- all at three different locations on the campus, all involving parking in weird and even prohibited spaces, all while in a long skirt on a hot-and-humid day), by Sunday evening with the re-packing of my car I was happy and energized, reminded why I do this important work.

I probably talked with nearly a hundred people: some current students, some alums and former students, some really interested prospective students, a few faculty members, and many random interesting folks.

The stories I heard made me think about this good website, "No Dumb Questions," which provides video clips of LGBTQA folks -- stories we all need to hear. Here's a good example:

Woolf

Virginia Woolf's brilliance still shines out through the Hollywood hype that's become her life story: a testament to her genius. Although students wanted to know if I thought Woolf was bi-polar (why does it matter, I asked back), they also wanted to wrestle with her formidable imagination and intellect.

We talked about "A Room of One's Own" today, and despite the students' insistence on talking *way* too much about the title's significance (yeah, duh), the conversation did turn around to her important honoring of the legacy of women who wrote despite *not* having that room (Austen, Bronte, Bronte, Eliot, Cavendish, Behn).

Her work gets better every time I read it: at 20, I didn't understand much but knew I liked her non-fiction more than her fiction. Now I think Mrs. Dalloway is one of the most *true* novels I've read.

What a great opening line: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

Data!

I've just found out about a couple of pretty amazing websites:
"City-Data.com" -- type in your zip code to find out TONS of information about where you live
"Wolfram/Alpha" -- type in names, dates, equations, you name it

The web is becoming a space/place where we can find out almost any countable thing . . . which means we have to remind ourselves of a sign hanging in Alfred Einstein's office: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

This sentence is reversed at a terrific website: Philanthropy Potluck, the blog of the Minnesota Council on Foundations.

MIA

This morning's class meeting held some surprises for me: the good one was the *excellent* activity our facilitators devised for discussing Jane Austen's "Love and Freindship" (a parody Austen wrote at age 15!). They had pairs of students write *response* letters to Laura, imagining what Marianne might write. Most of the young women students were *really accurate* in their Marianne voices: a pleasure.

The not-so-good surprise had to do with the presence of three students who haven't been to class in a l...o...n...g time:

• One had only attended the first day, May 26, and has missed the last five class meetings (out of 17 total meetings).
• One emailed me yesterday to say she'd had strep throat AND had just moved (ahem) to explain why she's missed the last three classes. I read and responded to that email yesterday afternoon.
• One emailed me last night at 1:00 a.m. to say she'd been in Chicago (her brother was injured and her parents, who are on vacation in France, asked her to go check on him) to explain why she's missed the last four classes. I read that email after class this morning.

Now I'm not quite sure what to do. I thought they'd all dropped! None of them has posted on the class discussion board. They don't seem to have read the attendance policy for our course, and when they asked about it, I couldn't remember the nitty-gritty details myself (I tweak my policies for every course, depending upon the time-frame and subject matter, but the overall idea is that I allow a certain number of absences for any reason before consequences kick in).

Evidently, my attendance policy this summer semester (for a six-week course that's supposed to be the equivalent of a sixteen-week semester) isn't clear -- here's what the syllabus says [emphasis in original]:

"You can earn up to ten (10) attendance points per face-to-face class period, which I determine based on your attendance and participation, for a total of 170 possible points. If you must miss a face-to-face class meeting, you can recoup some of those lost points by contributing a substantial discussion board posting within 24 hours for the class period you missed (by 8:00 a.m. on the day after the missed class). This posting can earn you up to five (5) points. Missing two class periods without posting to the discussion board will cause your final grade for the course to drop by one whole grade. Missing four or more classes without posting to the discussion board will result in an automatic F grade for the course. Missing four or more classes even with posting to the discussion board will cause your final grade for the course to drop one whole grade."

I suppose all that is confusing when you look at it in a big block of prose like that -- I should format the information in a box/chart/table or something. But the numbers seem pretty clear to me, and we note this paragraph on our first day of class when we review the course policies.

Also, I guess it's just fine for students to attend a course that they've already earned an F in . . . some learning can still take place (not that taking a class has anything to do with learning for most summer students -- ouch, I'm cynical!). But most of the students said they were taking this summer literature course because it "was cheaper" (two students are earning master's degrees at two of our local private colleges, and this 200-level community college literature course somehow fulfills requirements for them!).

Hmmm. Thoughts?

Frankenstein

Video clip of the 1994 Kenneth Branagh movie: much more faithful to Mary Shelley's novel than the Boris Karloff versions! Although the relationship between Robert and Victor isn't quite right, at least Robert Walton shows up -- as does the icy North Pole!

Really Great Workshop

I'd been nervous about giving a three-hour workshop on our college's Common Book (The Latehomecomer) to my colleagues: what if I bomb? What if they've just signed up to criticize? But all went well.

My partner was easy to work with: professional and approachable, sincere in her willingness to share what she's done with the Common Book. My colleagues were colleagial, sharing what had worked for them and inventing new ideas right on the spot.

We received compliments all around: one person even said she admired the way I demonstrated the techniques I was teaching about. All in all, a nice afternoon.

How I hate

Hate, hate, hate our governor's attitude: in today's press conference, he called us higher education folks "whiny" and "complainers"! He *consistently* disrespects us public servants -- especially in public, in the media.