Tonight, I'm going to be talking about a bit of Edward Bernays's Propaganda. I found this clip from a BBC documentary The Century of Self. It's scary.
If need (or needs) be?
2 days ago
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Cyber Bullying
At the MnCUEW keynote on Friday, John O'Brien presented a bunch of slides he'd complied to to illustrate his point that technology is changing how we communicate.
One video was about cyber bullying, and I re-post it here because it's direct - and uncomfortable:
One video was about cyber bullying, and I re-post it here because it's direct - and uncomfortable:
Monday, March 14, 2011
Activities in Minnesota
According to the brainstorm list one of my students wrote on the midterm, these are activities you can do in Minnesota weather:
- swimming
- ice fishing / fishing
- ski / snowboarding
- hiking
- camping
- canoning / boating
- drag car racing
He added this wonderful sentence in his actual essay: "You can go snowboarding, show shoeing or ice fishing because where in Untied States you can go ice fishing." Where, indeed!
Sunday, March 13, 2011
"Academically Adrift"
A couple of days ago in The New York Times, op-ed columnist Bob Herbert published "College the Easy Way." In it, he reflects on a new book called Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roska.
It was published in January, and it got a bunch of press then. In fact, I've heard these authors on the radio, and I'm sympathetic to their findings -- I, too, find that the institution I work for has struggled to preserve its integrity (often, in my view, sacrificing that integrity in order to satisfy legislative overseers who have none).
I am not sympathetic, however, to the blaming of faculty: teachers are such easy targets, aren't they? Public conversation about teachers is almost always negative, a fact pointed out by Nicholas Kristof in this column, where he argues that teachers should be paid more, not less). It's tougher to look at systems -- and to see the forces behind the breakdown of systems.
I am not sympathetic, however, to the blaming of faculty: teachers are such easy targets, aren't they? Public conversation about teachers is almost always negative, a fact pointed out by Nicholas Kristof in this column, where he argues that teachers should be paid more, not less). It's tougher to look at systems -- and to see the forces behind the breakdown of systems.
Related to that point about the forces behind the breakdown, I read a comment at the end of Herbert's column, which ends with almost 200 comments from readers around the world. The following comment sums up what I have been thinking about the political consequences of the bully-Republican politics we are living under. I've printed it below [adding paragraph breaks] to share a straightforward articulation of the problem:
It would seem from what we know now that rightwing Republicans want to set our kids "academically adrift." They know that an educated electorate would not buy into their conspiracy theories, their parochial view of the world and their narrow, inhumane vision of human relationship.
Therefore, they have gone about rewriting school and college texts in such places as Texas and Mississippi to accommodate their bogus religious and political propaganda such as creationism, civil war heroes and a fictional interpretation of the pre-civil rights era.
In their deficit-cutting frenzy, they have set their eyes on dismantling public education as we know[it], shifting money from public schools to private schools through a voucher program that benefits even the children of the rich.
At the federal and state levels, they are proposing deep cuts in education even though America is clearly lagging behind in this important area compared to others nations like China and many parts of Asia, and even though we are now faced with global competition in a knowledge-based economy.
Think of how ignorant our kids and the broad electorates in America are becoming as they listen to the misinformation and untruths that poor our in deluge in rightwing media daily.
Finally, while they claim they are for small government, they interfere boldly with many aspects of our private lives, including the bed rooms of the nation. We are truly in trouble! God save us from Republican fundamentalism.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Downtown
I'm writing this post from the MnSCU system office - where they've become so lean that there's no longer a receptionist to let you in the offices! Weird because the glass doors are locked at all times, and so you have to wait outside until you happen to come into the vision field of a person walking around inside.
I've been reading portfolios for the Outstanding Educator Award - quite a wonderfully tiring experience. Some really, really good people work in the MnSCU system. I'm learning some great new ideas, and I've discovered a program that I think would be perfect for my nephew: a Heavy Equipment program at Staples!
Okay, back to work.
I've been reading portfolios for the Outstanding Educator Award - quite a wonderfully tiring experience. Some really, really good people work in the MnSCU system. I'm learning some great new ideas, and I've discovered a program that I think would be perfect for my nephew: a Heavy Equipment program at Staples!
Okay, back to work.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Coriolanus Corollary
So I'm reading a bit of Shakespeare's later plays: The Winter's Tale was for class, and now I've dipped into Coriolanus. It starts with a mob of angry Roman citizens who are starving because of the rich folks' greed.
Here are some lines that should sound familiar (I've broken up Shakespeare's line breaks so that we can see the sentences):
FIRST CITIZEN:
We are accounted poor citizens. . . .
What authority surfeits on would relieve us. [Sounds familiar!]
If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely;
but they think we are too dear.
The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance;
our sufferance is a gain to them.
Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes;
for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. (I, i, ll.13-22).
Later, the crowd is calmed by a smooth-talking friend of the dastardly Coriolanus:
MENENIUS:
I tell you, friends, most charitable care have the patricians of you. [yeah, right!]
For your wants, your suffering in this famine, you may as well strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them against the Roman state . . . .
For the famine, the gods, not the patricians, make it, and your knees to them, not arms, must help.
Alack, you . . . slander the helms of the state, who care for you like fathers, when you curse them as enemies.
FIRST CITIZEN:
Care for us? True, indeed! [Yeah! Right!]
They never cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain;
make edicts for usury, to support usurers;
repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statues daily to chain up and restrain the poor. [sounds like Gov. Walker!]
If the war eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. (I, i, ll. 61-82)
The Bard knew about politics - but this play is a tragedy, and Coriolanus is killed. I hope we have no tragedy on our hands in this era, but I'm not so sure . . . .
Here are some lines that should sound familiar (I've broken up Shakespeare's line breaks so that we can see the sentences):
FIRST CITIZEN:
We are accounted poor citizens. . . .
What authority surfeits on would relieve us. [Sounds familiar!]
If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely;
but they think we are too dear.
The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance;
our sufferance is a gain to them.
Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes;
for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. (I, i, ll.13-22).
Later, the crowd is calmed by a smooth-talking friend of the dastardly Coriolanus:
MENENIUS:
I tell you, friends, most charitable care have the patricians of you. [yeah, right!]
For your wants, your suffering in this famine, you may as well strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them against the Roman state . . . .
For the famine, the gods, not the patricians, make it, and your knees to them, not arms, must help.
Alack, you . . . slander the helms of the state, who care for you like fathers, when you curse them as enemies.
FIRST CITIZEN:
Care for us? True, indeed! [Yeah! Right!]
They never cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain;
make edicts for usury, to support usurers;
repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statues daily to chain up and restrain the poor. [sounds like Gov. Walker!]
If the war eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. (I, i, ll. 61-82)
The Bard knew about politics - but this play is a tragedy, and Coriolanus is killed. I hope we have no tragedy on our hands in this era, but I'm not so sure . . . .
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Upton Sinclair would be proud
I want to preserve this video for the next time I teach The Jungle: people don't seem to realize that we could fall back to those brutal days (they certainly exist in other parts of the world).
Sunday, February 20, 2011
That's George Eliot?
When I was in grad school, I had a seminar on Victorian literature with Professor Robert Lougy. It included George Eliot, and I didn't like her novels much: too long and mannered for my taste. I don't really remember much from that seminar: we read Middlemarch, I know, and The Mill on the Floss. Did we read Silas Marner? Probably. What else? I can't remember.
But these days I assign my students an Eliot short story in our British Women Writers class: in our anthology is "The Lifted Veil," an atypical Eliot story that includes gothic elements. The supernatural isn't the only thing that's atypical, as far as I can remember from that long-ago seminar; it's the darkness of the narrator's vision.
Here's what the narrator, Latimer, says in the beginning of the story -- it's been bothering me because it seems so timely:
While the heart beats, bruise it,--it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brother recognition,--make haste,--oppress it with your ill-considered judgments, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.
But these days I assign my students an Eliot short story in our British Women Writers class: in our anthology is "The Lifted Veil," an atypical Eliot story that includes gothic elements. The supernatural isn't the only thing that's atypical, as far as I can remember from that long-ago seminar; it's the darkness of the narrator's vision.
Here's what the narrator, Latimer, says in the beginning of the story -- it's been bothering me because it seems so timely:
While the heart beats, bruise it,--it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brother recognition,--make haste,--oppress it with your ill-considered judgments, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Brilliant
More than two decades ago, I read Mark Johnson and George Lakoff's book Metaphors We Live By. It knocked my socks off with its brilliance. "Yes," I thought. "Our language reveals the metaphors that shape/control our thinking. I'd never thought about it like that, but he's so right!"
I thought that same thing this morning when I read this article Lakoff wrote: "What Conservatives Really Want." In it, Lakoff lays out all the moves that conservatives make in the public sphere - including shaping/controlling the language ("80% of the talking heads on TV are conservative," Lakoff reminds us - he could make the same claim about "talk radio").
By listing all the moves conservatives make, he reveals that the controlling metaphor of conservatives' worldview is the autocratic "strict father": they want the world to be structured like a head-of-household family where the strict father makes all the decisions, is not questioned, metes out the [necessarily physical] discipline.
With this kind of family, the social contract that Democracy promises (that we-the-people have a social responsibility to our fellow citizens) becomes a threat: helping others in the wider culture undermines the authority of the strict father.
Lakoff articulates SO clearly the views I've had for at least two decades but haven't been able to formulate, other than to say we're living through the last desperate gasps of the Patriarchy. To me, no one talks about the masculine violence that's behind all the criminal activity, economic greed, and gun-toting fear we see around us.
Conservatives campaign on the slogan "Take our country/state back!" (Minnesota's recent Republican candidate for governor used this phrase, even though our state had been suffering under a Republican governor for eight years. No logic there, but "strict fathers" don't work with logic; they work with fear). Back to where, is of course the question. Turning out country back in time seems to be the conservatives' goal - when men were men, women knew their place, and Dad yelling "Get off my lawn!" and following that up with a few firings of a 410 shotgun are appropriate ways to act.
Change is automatically a threat to the "strict father." And our speeded-up, technologically enhanced pace of change scares these fathers (who can also be "Mama Grizzlies"), but "strict fathers" cannot show that they're scared. So they scare everyone else instead. And then use the threat of physical violence against everyone else.
Back to Lakoff: he sees the Wisconsin protests as a hopeful sign of real citizens who want to make the world a better place (real public servants such as teachers, pipe fitters, fire fighters, rather than the fake "public servants" that politicians claim to be, in another theft of a good metaphor). I applaud his article and want to share it far and wide.
Read it and pass on his clear thinking.
I thought that same thing this morning when I read this article Lakoff wrote: "What Conservatives Really Want." In it, Lakoff lays out all the moves that conservatives make in the public sphere - including shaping/controlling the language ("80% of the talking heads on TV are conservative," Lakoff reminds us - he could make the same claim about "talk radio").
By listing all the moves conservatives make, he reveals that the controlling metaphor of conservatives' worldview is the autocratic "strict father": they want the world to be structured like a head-of-household family where the strict father makes all the decisions, is not questioned, metes out the [necessarily physical] discipline.
With this kind of family, the social contract that Democracy promises (that we-the-people have a social responsibility to our fellow citizens) becomes a threat: helping others in the wider culture undermines the authority of the strict father.
Lakoff articulates SO clearly the views I've had for at least two decades but haven't been able to formulate, other than to say we're living through the last desperate gasps of the Patriarchy. To me, no one talks about the masculine violence that's behind all the criminal activity, economic greed, and gun-toting fear we see around us.
Conservatives campaign on the slogan "Take our country/state back!" (Minnesota's recent Republican candidate for governor used this phrase, even though our state had been suffering under a Republican governor for eight years. No logic there, but "strict fathers" don't work with logic; they work with fear). Back to where, is of course the question. Turning out country back in time seems to be the conservatives' goal - when men were men, women knew their place, and Dad yelling "Get off my lawn!" and following that up with a few firings of a 410 shotgun are appropriate ways to act.
Change is automatically a threat to the "strict father." And our speeded-up, technologically enhanced pace of change scares these fathers (who can also be "Mama Grizzlies"), but "strict fathers" cannot show that they're scared. So they scare everyone else instead. And then use the threat of physical violence against everyone else.
Back to Lakoff: he sees the Wisconsin protests as a hopeful sign of real citizens who want to make the world a better place (real public servants such as teachers, pipe fitters, fire fighters, rather than the fake "public servants" that politicians claim to be, in another theft of a good metaphor). I applaud his article and want to share it far and wide.
Read it and pass on his clear thinking.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Learning something new
A former student (I'll call Tracy) who still keeps in touch with me via Facebook has taught me a lot about a slice of American culture I know very little about: lower-middle class rural lesbians.
Tracy and her partner "Hannah" live in the country north of the Twin Cities, in a 70s split-level house with land enough for a half-dozen horses, four dogs, many barn cats, and two children: Hannah's son Christian from one of her marriages (she's had two) and daughter "Sage" that she had via donor insemination while in the relationship with Tracy. (Sage was a bargaining chip when Hannah broke up with Tracy last year - Hannah told Tracy to move into the basement but couldn't move out of the house because she had to "babysit" Sage. Eventually, the two got "back together," and now Tracy is trying to get inseminated.
These women come from extremely damaged backgrounds: lots of sexual abuse/incest, family members in prison for drugs and sexual crimes, suicide of family members, lots of drinking/meth/drug use. Hannah turned to religion (fundamentalist Christian) as a way to make sense of her life; she'd gotten a degree from Bethel, so Christian propaganda had been taught to her. For a while, she dumped Tracy "for Jesus" and because it was a sin to be gay. She dated a series of guys she'd pick up on Craig's List; Tracy (as well as Hannah's 12-year-old son) was still living in the basement while Hannah would bring the guys home.
Neither of them can hold down jobs, and they are both enrolled as students at Capella: Hannah for a master's in counseling (!) and Tracy for a bachelor's in law enforcement. I don't know how they make their mortgage payments, feed their horses, or pay for the sperm. Tracy's getting the second insemination tomorrow (the first didn't result in conception). She shared that news, among other things, with me on FB tonight:
Tracy and her partner "Hannah" live in the country north of the Twin Cities, in a 70s split-level house with land enough for a half-dozen horses, four dogs, many barn cats, and two children: Hannah's son Christian from one of her marriages (she's had two) and daughter "Sage" that she had via donor insemination while in the relationship with Tracy. (Sage was a bargaining chip when Hannah broke up with Tracy last year - Hannah told Tracy to move into the basement but couldn't move out of the house because she had to "babysit" Sage. Eventually, the two got "back together," and now Tracy is trying to get inseminated.
These women come from extremely damaged backgrounds: lots of sexual abuse/incest, family members in prison for drugs and sexual crimes, suicide of family members, lots of drinking/meth/drug use. Hannah turned to religion (fundamentalist Christian) as a way to make sense of her life; she'd gotten a degree from Bethel, so Christian propaganda had been taught to her. For a while, she dumped Tracy "for Jesus" and because it was a sin to be gay. She dated a series of guys she'd pick up on Craig's List; Tracy (as well as Hannah's 12-year-old son) was still living in the basement while Hannah would bring the guys home.
Neither of them can hold down jobs, and they are both enrolled as students at Capella: Hannah for a master's in counseling (!) and Tracy for a bachelor's in law enforcement. I don't know how they make their mortgage payments, feed their horses, or pay for the sperm. Tracy's getting the second insemination tomorrow (the first didn't result in conception). She shared that news, among other things, with me on FB tonight:
thanks. Its at noon. Everythign has been going much smoother this time around, and because I bough more sperm hopefully that means it will take so I can be out the money
right if you want that option then its $560 a vial, and if you want doc its around $700
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
This morning's Writer's Almanac
In Praise of a Teacher
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.
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.
Monday, February 7, 2011
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"!
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"!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
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:
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?
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
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.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
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)
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
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.)
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.)
Thursday, December 16, 2010
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?
"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?
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
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 andsix 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.
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
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.
