All College Day

I suppose I'm a bit weird, but I kind of like getting all the folks from my college together for a day of thought-provoking conversations and presentations (today's wasn't that thought-provoking, disappointingly: it just repeated what we already know because community colleges are like canaries in the coal mines -- we see all the stuff research institutions eventually get around to observing . . . we see it at least five years earlier). My conversations with colleagues were good, though.

Although I like these days, I do wish that it wasn't the only way we heard about important initiatives at my college. We have the *worst* communication I've ever seen, anywhere, ever.

Personally, I think it's because we've doubled in size since I've been there, but we haven't figured out how to keep up with the infrastructure. We still operate with the "Mary is the person who does that" mentality, when it's tough to know who "Mary" is or what her position is . . . we still operate as if we all saw each other in the "lunch room" once a day.

The simplest things are impossible to find because our college website is rotten: just try to search for an org chart so you can know who answers to whom, who might be responsible for something if you have a question: impossible to find, or if you do, the information is out of date. (We even have courses listed on our class schedule that do not even exist at our college!)

So for me, it's important to go to these all-day events to see people and hear what the administration has in mind. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that our communication is rotten *on purpose* to force us to go to the all-day retreats!

Finally Booked It

The flight to India for spring break . . . that is. I had to contend with too many variables, which always slows me down, but tonight I got all the parts right, I think.

• Fly out of Chicago and back into Minneapolis -- why didn't I think of that a month ago?
• Josh as substitute teacher should I get waylaid -- why didn't I think of him a month ago?
• Delta's partner KLM for the frequent flyer miles -- why didn't I think of that a month ago?

I did toy with a flight that left me in Rome for 14.35 hours . . . looked around online to see how easy it would be to get from the airport to the city center (just 30 minutes for 11 euro on a high-speed train). For about 15 minutes, that scenario looked attractive . . . but I'd have to carry around my bag (but I do travel light . . .), so Rome will have to wait for another trip.

Yay - I'll be able to celebrate Padmini's 50th with her in Delhi!

Good work

I'm in the middle of the kind of work I love: editing a document that will be used at our all-campus development day. I get to compile a bunch of people's contributions, make them uniform, and then them into "user friendly" (does anyone even use that phrase any more?) break-out session activities.

At the moment, I'm having the most fun developing gender-neutral names and constructing sentences to avoid personal pronouns. Rosalie Maggio's 1987 classic, The Nonsexist Word Finder: A Dictionary of Gender-Free Language, would come in handy -- if my copy was at home instead of on my office bookshelf.

So far, here are a few of the gender-neutral names I've come across in my teaching: Adrian, Alex, Aubrey, Cameron, Casey, Chris, Dana, Devin, Jamie, Jess, Kim, Lee, Merritt, Morgan, Pat, Quinn, Reese, Remy, Robin, Rylish, Sandy, Shane, Shannon, Shawn, Terry, Tracy.

Anyone else have any others?

Doing the math

I've just added up the number of students I'm teaching this semester: 144.

Yikes.

That's 28 and 26 in my two sections of FYC. That's 30 and 31 in my two American literature courses. That's 29 in my WGST course.

All of them will be writing a lot for me, so I will be reading a LOT of student work. Not to mention all the reading I've assigned them: I re-read every semester, especially for the literature courses, because 1) I need the refresher and 2) it's fun!

I have *such* a great job, really -- I get to READ great literature (okay, and mediocre student essays) and then talk about what it might mean . . . with and to human beings who might not have a chance to talk about literature anywhere else but my class.

Yay.

Memorizing

So I'm working on memorizing an Emily Dickinson poem for my American Women Writers class tomorrow. I've assigned the task to students, so of course I have to do it myself. We're going to sit in a circle, with everyone reciting their poem. Some students have already emailed me about "alternate assignments" because they're so nervous.

I get it: it's tough! I memorized one poem a few years ago, the last time I taught this course, but I can't even remember which poem I chose! Just goes to show how weak my memorization powers are . . . as if this is news.

Takes me back to the first time I had to recite a memorized poem to a professor: it was Toni McNaron at the U of M who required this assignment. We would meet in her office and recite to her *personally*, which was scary. I chose Adrienne Rich's "Power," which begins something like this: "Buried, in the earth deposits of our history" but then I lose it: I know a bottle was buried: one bottle? brown I think?

The poem ends with "She died, not knowing her wounds came from the same source as her power" or something like that. It's about Marie Curie.

So of course now I've had to google the poem, to find out what it really says. Here it is:

Power

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.

It's interesting that I lost the "crumbling flank of earth" and the backhoe -- and that my memory changed the ending from Curie's denial to her lack of knowledge. None of the middle details remained, either -- the damaged body so concretely described.

The Dickinson poem I've chosen is also about death (but of course so many of her poems are!). I've known the first line of "1773" for a long while, but now I have the whole thing. I'll try type it here as an exercise:

"My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality reveal
A third event to me
As hard and hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven
And all we need of hell."

Okay, I got a couple of parts wrong: Immortality unveils, it doesn't reveal -- an important, Dickinsonian distinction; the events are "so huge" not "as hard" -- another important Dickinson metaphor. But overall, not that bad!

I'll have to work on getting another poem, since I have some opening lines in my head: "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant / Success in circuit lies" and "I felt a funeral in my Brain" and "Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me" and "I dwell in possibility / A fairer house than prose / [Something] for windows, / Superior for doors" (that first line the title of McNaron's memoir).

I should send Toni a "thank you" email. She started this.

She's teachable, I think

Dessa's music should impress students of all musical tastes: this MPR profile grabs me!

Time Flies

Prepping for the new semester is energizing, but I get in the weirdest time-warp. I'm just seeing the time, and it seems I have been at the computer, updating my course websites, for hours: the last time I really noticed the time was 4 hours ago.

Sheesh! Get to sleep! A big day tomorrow!

Starting up again

The holidays are almost past -- and I'm thinking about the new semester ahead of me. It'll be *so* great, with two comp 1 courses (I haven't taught that in a year), two literature courses (American women writers and American lit after 1865), and one intro women/gender studies course.

I should be able to read interesting work, talk about interesting ideas, and engage with interesting students.

The Dojka-Davis Brown Bag Series is starting up again, too: I have five volunteers and need to find three more. We're doing Tuesdays this semester, noon to 1 p.m. I think we'll alternate like that: Mondays and Tuesdays, 12-1 and 1-2. I hope it can keep going.

Officially Break

That's right: it's officially semester break for me. Of course, I have to do a bunch of class prep for Spring Semester (odd how spring starts in January), but for a few days I will be celebrating the winter holidays with friends and family. No grading. Amazing.

All but One

That's what's left for me to grade: just one class. I've submitted final grades for all my other classes. The class that had its final yesterday will have to wait until after the weekend.

Yay!

Too busy grading to blog

But I've finished two classes completely. That's good news. Still need to submit grades, though.

The other classes are in various states of uncompleteness: final essays/projects and final exams to read. Why do I ask for both, do you suppose?

End-of-semester Intimidation

I'm still reeling with suppressed anger/shock at an occurrance in my classroom over two hours ago -- here's what happened:

My WGST course ends at 5:15 on Wednesdays, and then another class is in the same room at 6:00. One student from my class stays in the classroom because she's in the 6:00 class -- it's comp 1, with an adjunct who I know a little bit -- so I don't lock the classroom for the 45 minutes between the classes like the college asks us to do (some things have been stolen from computer classrooms). The student who waits is responsible, and sometimes I'm not even out of the room until 5:30. Sometimes other students from the 6:00 class have come in as we're leaving.

Today, I was still talking with students at 5:30 (it's the end of the semester, lots of questions about individual papers/performance/etc.) when a student from the 6:00 class walked in and up to the table where I and about six other students were standing. It occurred to me to ask him to leave and wait outside for his class to start so that I could talk in relative privacy with my students.

He rudely refused.

I was stunned.

I asked again, tried to reason by explaining that we weren't done, his class didn't start until 6:00, so could he please just wait outside. No.

He escalated the situation, making many defensive claims (he pays tuition! he has a right to be there! my class is over! -- these are just a few of the things he said). Other students are watching, listening, and say things like, "Hey, dude, she's just asking you to wait -- we're still talking" which only eggs him on.

Did I mention that the door to the classroom was closed this whole time? That the student had to let himself into a classroom that had its door closed, a classroom that "technically" is not "his class" until 6:00. Can you say "privilege"?

Anyway, the thing is, this kid knows that our class is a women and gender studies course. The student who waits between my class and his even wrote an essay about her experience trying to educate some of the "vulgar" young males (her word) in her class about what she's studying. She'd been harassed for having our textbook on the table. To this woman's credit she impressively decided to turn that harassment into a "teachable moment" by interviewing four male classmates to find out if they might change their behavior if they knew more about the subject she was studying. I don't know if he's one the students she "interviewed," but she did say to me as she was leaving, "Now you know what I'm talking about in my paper."

So what could I do? I ignored this boy, asked my other students to ignore him ("No, we don't need to talk with him any more") and turned back to the students I was talking with. Another young man enters.

I ask him if he could wait outside until we're done. He starts turning around to leave but then looks to his friend -- who's sitting at a table right behind me getting out his laptop cord, plugging things in, making his presence known. The new boy turns back to me and says simply "No."

The two of them then sit behind me -- the second boy just six inches from my back -- while I continue talking with a student who was having a particularly hard time with an essay revision. The boys don't talk much, but they shuffle papers, pushing them into my field of vision, as they get out their [exceedingly ugly] laptops.

I'm shaking through all of this -- reeling, really -- while trying to listen and advise. Finally, about 5:45, I walk out with the last student. I bring my files back to my office. I realize I've left my textbook and keys back in the classroom. I go back: glare, glare, glare. I then to go the office of my colleague who teaches the 6:00 class, telling him what happened, asking him if he'd be willing to come back to talk with the students. He's surprised, dismayed, and agrees.

Here's the thing: I wanted my colleague to tell these students that I had told him about the experience and then to ask them what happened, perhaps asking them to apologize to me. I wanted the students to see a united professional front to demonstrate that their behavior was exceedingly disrespectful. I wanted to give the students an opportunity to do the right thing.

Of course that didn't happen. The boys got *really* defensive, saying things like, "Oh, so were your feelings hurt? You were rude to me!" My colleague tried to talk with them, even going so far as to say that the classroom space was mine until 6:00 when his class started (they had been insisting that there were there early because " We're responsible, coming to class early because we're prepared" -- other bullshit like that). The boys also got really buddy-buddy with their teacher, using his first name to say, "We've been coming in here early all semester and on the last day she tells us to leave?"

Finally, I turned to my colleague and said, "I guess you're seeing an example of exactly what I was talking about -- here's the evidence." That *really* got one boy incensed: he kept saying things like "Don't talk about me like I'm not here; talk to me if you got something to say; I'm an adult!" Uh huh.

I turned so my colleague and I could leave the room, thanking him again for coming. He was apologetic, sincere, saying he'd email me with the names of the students. I hope so because I talked later with my department chair who thought I handled things well -- but perhaps might want to fill out a form for the Dean of Student Life to put in the students' files. I'm going to do that -- the first student just seemed like he was on such a short fuse. I would imagine he's been intimidating and disrespectful in the past. Our Dean has asked us to report incidents like this one because it provides evidence needed if (or when!) a student needs to be disciplined in some way.

Whew - it's cathartic to write all this, but it also makes me realize how much of the incident I'm forgetting. I need to remember some more specific phrases, things the boys said like "You don't have this room, what time is your class over anyway? You can't tell me to leave. I'm not leaving. You're causing this problem. There was no problem when I came in until you escalated things. You're the one who's making a big deal out of this. You're not telling me what to do." This turning of responsibility is classic abuser behavior -- perfect.

Phrases from the conversation when the other instructor was present: "She was all in my face. There were only a few students in the room so I thought it was over. Only one student was in here. She waits until the last day of the class to tell us this stuff?"

Okay, that's enough now -- wow, police reports must be pretty tough to write! I'm leaving out so many details that contributed to the harassing, intimidating, almost violent atmosphere. And I'm usually a pretty good at noticing details! Tone matters, though, and posture (standing close to me, taller than me).

What a way to wind up the semester -- it's not simply end-of-semester stress. It's a powerful illustration of the power of the patriarchy, of the sexist culture in which we all live.

"This game is well known."

This weekend at an antique mall, I bought a book from 1923 called Four Hundred Games for School, Home, and Playground (Ethel F. Acker, F.A. Owen Publishing Company, Dansville, N.Y.).

I bought it because 1) it was $3.00 and 2) I opened it to page 159 to find a language game called "Composition Relay" that began like this:

"This game is well known. Besides furnishing an exercise in grammatical construction, capitals, and punctuation, it is a good drill in spelling and penmanship."

Hmm, I thought, to whom would this game be well known? What would teaching be like if this game was still well known? Here it is:

"Each row of players forms a team. The last player in each row at a given signal runs forward, writes the first word of a sentence on the blackboard, runs to his seat, and hands the chalk to the next player, who writes the next word. The last player writes a word to complete the sentence and adds the necessary punctuation. The points are usually scored as follows: Speed 25 points, grammatical construction 25, spelling 25, and writing 25. If played during the grammar drill period the score should be: Speed 50, analysis 50. No badly written sentences should be considered."

So I love almost everything about this paragraph:

• the second sentence's parallel structure, which mitigates the overload of prepositional phrases
• the way points are "usually" awarded (imagine having to write legibly in chalk when you're rushing, your teammates are hurrying you)
• the assumption that a "grammar drill period" is usual, well known, common
• the last sentence! It's passive verb is so great
• the fact that students are *moving* in the classroom while they're learning language skills (can you say "kinetic learners"? Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences didn't appear until 60 years later!)
  

How I wish we could reintroduce these physical movements in our classrooms -- at all levels. I like my students to move . . . rearranging them to create sentences ("you're an independent clause, you're a dependent clause, you're a comma -- rearrange yourselves!")

But moving requires space. With federal constraints on education professionals, we end up dropping out these kinds of activities . . . phy ed classes get cut! That's simply unjust, not to mention unwise. Students find a way to move -- often inappropriately.

It should be "well known" that physical activity is essential for learning. Ethel F. Acker says it this way:

"Probably no other single theory in the field of education has made greater progress in the minds of educators and laymen in the past few years than that of the importance of organized play" (11 emphasis added).

Analogies

Or perhaps I should say "metaphors"? These "Internet Vices" make sense to me!

Dojka-Davis Brown Bag Series

This semester, I've organized a little "intellectual conversation" on our campus. I've called it the "Dojka-Davis Brown Bag Series" after two fierce, crotchety faculty colleagues who died in 2009.

Both Stefanie and Mark cared a lot about maintaining the academic integrity of the college; both cared a lot about ideas and their clear expression; both insisted on making intellectual inquiry accessible to students, not as watered-down worksheets but as a serious enterprise.

I'd talked with Stefanie many times over the years about having some kind of faculty sessions where we could share our research interests. In fact, the first time I met Stefanie was when she discussed her dissertation research on Jane Austen at a faculty brown bag session back in about 1992.

Stef wasn't the only one who wanted to share more than teaching techniques with her colleagues. As my colleague Judith Roy wrote, "Mark Davis pursued his research and scholarly activities right to the end, submitting another article for publication just a few months before he died."

Many of us do this academic work, work that is so often hidden or overwhelmed by the demands of teaching at an open-admission community college. But we have few venues for sharing that work. So I organized these sessions -- just did it. We have a Center for Teaching and Learning at our college, but it focuses on teaching tips and techniques.

Anyway, the sessions have been terrific: today was the last one, a lecture about Russian intelligensia after Stalin. We've heard about disability rights in Korea, theories of comics, and just war theory. Every session has had at least four participants, with the largest session drawing nine. Sure, these numbers might be small, but I look forward to increasing them next semester. (I've switched the day/time to every other TUESDAY, noon-1:00 p.m.)

So I guess you could say I'm feeling proud about what I've been able to accomplish . . . work that's not rewarded or even recognized by the institution. But work that's central to the mission of the college and to creating a healthy climate.

However, I still miss my two friends. These brown bag talks will never replace the cranky hallway conversations, the delightful and exasperated critiques both Stefanie and Mark shared with the rest of us.

Meaning Making

I'm working through the final weekly progress memos from my technical writing students. They've been revising sentences to improve them, often by finding buried verbs. Here's a funny revision from this morning!

• Original sentence: "This manual gives instructions to end users."
• Most student revisions: "This manual instructs end users."
• Unusual student revision: "This manual instructs you how to end users."

Just what kind of manual would that be? And would I let students write it as a final project for the course? :-)

It's Typo Season

Here's a good one from a student paper about high school education: "I believe if the government spit evenly the amount of money to every school, there will be available funds for everyone to invest in afterschool."

Good cartoon for class discussion?

(click here to view)

Joel Pett Lexington Herald-Leader Nov 13, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

The hypocrisy of our current health-care "system" get summed up pretty well in this cartoon -- or at least one of the most egregiously sexist aspects of that hypocrisy.

Many more awful aspects to choose from, of course.

For example: why does no one talk about the *ethical* aspect of health care any more? Why don't we talk about the absolute necessity of *health* for anyone to exercise any of their human or civil rights? Why can't we have a system -- as do other democratic, industrialized countries -- that provides health care for all citizens?

A Writing/Reading/Texting Revolution

I'm reposting a message I received from a great listserv (techrhet, which means technology and rhetoric, the list where I find out all the cool stuff about technology).

One of the major list participants, Nick Carbone, noted SEED magazine's article called "A Writing Revolution," which he found via Andrew Sullivan's The Atlantic blog "The Daily Dish," a post he called "We're All Authors Now" (starting to feel like nested Russian dolls, huh? That's the power of the interwebs and the power of "reach" and "speed" as Laura Gurak once said).

Here's what Carbone sent to the list (emphasis added):

The key claim: Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today’s modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape tomorrow's.

The article measures the rate of authorship from 1400 to the present age, with a graph to show rates of change in authorship. It defines authorship as having a 100 readers. So one who tweets to a 100 follows, or writes an email like this to lists with over a 100 members, is counted as an author.

The analysis unfortunately includes some cyber-enthusiasm that makes some claims that stretch the argument too far, like this example of what seems to be a logical fallacy: "When United Airlines refused to reimburse a musician for damaging his guitar, the offended customer posted a song online—“United Breaks Guitars”—and United’s stock dropped 10 percent." -- is that Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc?

There's no doubt more to pick at, but the chart and the measures of writing growth, and the fact digital technologies provide at least the potential for every writer to find at least a 100 readers (there's no guarantee that will happen) is very cool to see.

Insight of the week

Students write poorly when they don't know what they're talking about.

It's not that they're bad writers. It's that they're trying to write about something that they don't understand. Or they're trying to make stuff up.

So maybe the lament "They can't write!" should be modified to "They're not ready to write!"