A fit of productivity

We have all seen it happen. It is entirely too easy to get so caught up in our teaching duties that we use them as an excuse to put off other aspects of the profession. Well, this week, I took the bull by the horns in my new Research First program. Response papers got graded on Sunday, instead of Wednesday or Friday, but they still received comments and grades prior to the one week mark, which seems admirable even in my perfectionist eyes. Of course, it is also pretty much necessary, since they are weekly response papers and another batch will come in tomorrow.

So, week 1 of Research First:

-one article submitted

-another article begun

-one grant written (reworking of previous grant, not from scratch)

-one grant written from scratch

-accumulated karma: one invitation to an ACLA panel

Of course, this all means that on Wednesday, I will indeed be tied to class prep for Thursday and next Tuesday, but I am on a productivity high for the moment.

Questions in the classroom

When I wrote my teaching philosophy, it was largely centered around getting students to ask the hard questions. Now I am faced with a dilemma summed up by the title Don’t Ask Stupid Questions…There Are No Stupid Questions. I do want students to ask questions, I want to know when they are confused, I want them to reach deeper. But I also want them to grow backbones!

There is always that student – often a decent student, with an excellent attendance record – who has no self confidence. If they haven’t figured out in three seconds what is going on, they spend the next five minutes proclaiming loudly that they don’t know what is going on, rather than trying to figure it out. This is quite literal in the worst variety: they look around at their classmates, mutter about how confusing this all is…but don’t spend any effort actually looking at the work, be it cues on the board or in the text. For the decent student, they may spend a bit more effort, but they need to have their conclusions verified at every step. One frequent example from yesterday’s classes was second year students asking about or looking in their dictionaries for the word “robar.” After convincing themselves and the registration system that they are ready for intermediate Spanish, they cannot trust themselves to make an educated guess about ROB + AR, even when it is used in context.

I am afraid that my responses to these kinds of situations will keep them from asking questions. They really do need to learn to figure out a few things for themselves. Imagine the amount of learning that could go on if they could figure out a few things and then ask questions to build on that! Imagine us leaping across the barren moonscape, rather than being crushed by the gravitational pull of Jupiter.

I appreciate any suggestions for fostering a healthy atmosphere of students with the confidence to draw some of their own conclusions and to ask questions when they reach the end of that ability. I would especially like to see a couple of links that I could make available to my students.

It is all academic

How often have we heard this phrase used to mean “it doesn’t matter” or “it is irrelevant”? I admittedly just told someone so much, although I did qualify my statement by “in the worst possible meaning of the word.”

It seems to be human nature that every once in awhile the need to be acknowledged as right takes over all other considerations. Sometimes we forget that our (admittedly vast) knowledge is completely and utterly beside the point. As fascinating as Lefebvre’s and Foucault’s theories on the power dynamics of spatial use may be, your friend probably doesn’t want to learn about them while nursing a bruised shin that resulted from a poorly placed coffee table. I mean, I would probably get a good laugh from the reference, but I am a geek. But for the most part, you have to pick and choose your audience before derailing a conversation on arms control into a discussion of the physics of bullet trajectories; before suggesting Bucky balls to the person trying to decide what to get a toddler for Christmas…

As academics, we often roll out eyes at the uneducated masses. Some of us also roll our eyes at the pompous masses that surround us in the ivory tower. The next time you are having trouble relating to someone, stop and ask yourself if you are making an effort to reach them at their level. Moreover, stop and ask yourself if you are even talking about the same thing, or are you just being academic? Adjusting discourse: it isn’t just for the classroom!

B2S

I have created TRACS (our label for the Sakai CMS) sites for all of my courses. I have syllabi prepared for two out of three. I have online activities prepared for 2/3 of the language class. I will be spending this afternoon reading the novel that I have included on the grad syllabus that I have never read – I am literally headed into The Morass.

You would think that after nine years of living in the South, I could accept that back to school is completely independent of cooler temperatures. The leaves on the live oaks will not change. It will be another two months before I even think of putting on a fuzzy sweater.

So, I don’t use pencils, I don’t take a yellow bus to school, I don’t particularly care for the varieties of apples that are bright red…What is left for a new school year?

This year, it includes both a completely new grad class and University 101 for Freshpeeps. I have one hour a week for one semester to instill in new students an understanding of the requirements and nuances of the university system, appropriate study habits, appropriate stress relief activities and a respect for community, to paraphrase the stated goals of the course. The real problem, from my point of view, is presenting it all in a way that doesn’t seem like some young idealist professor laying out the unattainable definition of perfection. How do you convince young adults with their first taste of freedom that consistency and classroom attendance really are the best indicators of academic success? Or that numerous studies performed with their digital native peers have shown over and over that they just think they are multitasking effectively? Basically, how do I engage them in a required course about being a student when they are surrounded by other students who view all homework as busywork and all attempts to convince them to do it as an infringement on their personal freedom?

Most importantly, is 50 minutes of class enough time to get them to pull out the valuable advice from Adrienne Rich’s 70’s feminist discourse? How much of themselves would they see if I decide to assign that essay?

B2S: Time for questions, time for searching – which is really what education is all about.

Inflicting Another Blog on the World

A large part of teaching is watching students struggle to make connections. More and more, it seems that students understand their education to be a matter of collecting data. These collected facts are rarely interesting until connected to other pieces. While browsing an old, dusty, disorganized bookshop can be fun, when I am researching I prefer a well ordered and perhaps even logical system. I strive to convince students that the skills they develop are at least as important as the flashcards they accumulate – recognizing patterns, knowing when something makes sense and clear expression of your ideas are not just for school!

This blog is obviously about sharing thoughts and data, or I would just save it on my computer. However, the reasoning behind making these musings public is to develop not only the habit of contributing, but my written voice, as well. At times it may be calling out, listening to distinguish the origins of the echos off the forbidding walls; at times it may rage against the mechanisms of society and academy, ignoring the common sense of mere peasants; at times it may merely be a muttering to accompany the monsters of the dream of reason.

Mostly, it will be a place to channel my oft stirred urge to ask other participants in this virtual world if it doesn’t hurt to put so many typos into one sentence. I don’t really have a problem with text speak in most situations, and I can certainly enjoy phonetic recreations of local accents, but I am not sure what to make of an offering of “smill warings.”