I have just read through a pile of mostly bad essays and graded them accordingly, much to the horror of their authors. I don’t like handing out poor grades, but I cannot give one page essays, the assignment for which was designed to showcase students’ very best writing decent grades if the essays totally suck. I have told the students that my function is to insure that they can perform well in English 110, and that I would be doing them a disservice by giving bad essays good grades.
A few of the students felt quite betrayed and blindsided, I think. As I have throughout the semester, I encouraged them to make appointments with me to discuss and improve their writing proficiency. I also told them that I am doing so for their benefit, not mine, as I don’t like to work extra hours without extra pay any more than they do. I do, however, feel responsible if they have diligently proceeded through the entire semester and are still incapable of writing clearly.
To that end, I will spend all day tomorrow in conference with students, though I really need to use the time to produce work for the classes I am taking. I do think that by informing students of that detail, some were convinced to make appointments and stop hating me.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Monday, May 7, 2007
Non-anonymous, pre-final grade, student comments Re: English099
Because nearly every student—even the conscientious ones---did abysmally on the midterm, I have given the class an opportunity to purge their miserable midterm grades by taking a test on every grammar chapter we studied this semester. Given that it would prepare them for the final, it made sense to offer this alternative rather than curve the grades, which wouldn’t contribute to anyone’s knowledge of the grammar they do need to learn.
All of the exam questions on both the midterm and this more comprehensive test were adapted from material that accompanied the text we are using, so either I did a poor job of choosing the questions or did a very bad job of preparing the students and/or teaching grammar.
Fortunately, most all the students did well on the second, more comprehensive test which incorporated the material tested on the midterm. Most everyone, probably me in particular, was very relieved by the improved test scores.
Given the very inconsistent attendance and performance by many of this year’s students, I requested feedback, suggestions, accolades and criticism to be written in the empty space at the end of the test. Since this feedback was not submitted anonymously, it is probably less reflective of reality and more brown-nosey than is the survey conducted by the English Department. Still, I found it informative and somewhat helpful in coordinating our semester’s end work.
Below, I will attach the often disturbingly ungrammatical, unexpurgated and uncorrected snippets from students who responded to my request for feedback, included as the last question of the test:
Essay Question: In an attempt to continuously improve my classes, I utilize student feedback. Please specify how I could make the 099 experience more helpful. What could have been improved, changed, omitted, etc.? Is there anything you especially liked or disliked about the class? Please be honest. This won’t affect your grade.
1) “I really believe that writing 5 draft for our paper help out a lot. I’ve never had a teacher tell us to do that and now that I know this method I can take it with me in other classes. The only problem I had was that a lot of my Ch. Review were missing from my book. Other than that the class is fun and I actually learned how to notice my grammar errors.”
2) “The thing that really helped in this 099 class is definatly the chapter reviews. It is a way to test yourself to see if you truly understood the concept. The subject that should be omitted should be illogical shifts. That was hard but you have to learn it. Also the talks as a class where everyone says something personal, I think brought the class together.”
3) Everything has gone well in this class and I have not complaints. I think the best thing was meeting up and discussing our papers. I learned a lot more doing that. It also helped improve my writing.
4) I liked this class a lot. It really helped me look at my writing diffently. But the one thing I would change is more time for 1 on 1 with a teacher. I feel it helps me more than sitting in a class.
5)I really like the conferences. They work well. And help a lot. I think I enjoy this class most out of all of my classes. The only thing try and narrow down topics for papers. It’s hard trying to pick one.
6) More lecture time in class, not just writting. I think the class would learn more material if the teacher explained writting rules and techniques a lot more.
7) My 099 experience even though it was minimum due to my absent days, has been educating. The days that I actually showed up to class helped in abig way. I believe you shouldn’t change one thing. The way you are unpredictable keeps the student guessing about the next class.
The one thing that I honestly disliked about the class is the time that it starts. I’m really not a morning person, so if it was an afternoon class I would’ve showed up more often instead of sleeping straight through. In conclusion, you are a great teacher. Never change.
8) Fastwrites are helpful as well as the meetings to review papers.
9) It’s perfect, we just have lazy people in the class.
10) I like your class. I feel that you are willing to help us learn and pass. I believe I just need to go over some of the practices from the book in class, other than the rewrites.
11) The only problem in the class is the time. 9:30 am is too early, but you have no control of that. Otherwise the class is good.
12) I personally enjoyed this class, I feel when papers need to be handed in we should only hand in the rough and final draft. I enjoy the topics that we get to write about and would not change that. I also thought by having a say in what we do in class has made it worth comming.
13) I think it is a good class. I wish I could of taken it later on in the day.
14) I do like the class, I have improved my writing since the beginning of the semester. I also like the class because we do get into side conversations which gives us a break from actual work. I also would like more group work. Personally, I work better with a partner or in a group.
15) I think that this class was very helpful. I wish I didn’t have it this early but that is anther story. I have learned many new things. But overall it was a good class.
16) I think that a way to improve the class would be to let the students out early, every once in a while. This way, if the students are bored, they won’t have to be bored anymore. I also think that if there is no response from the students, then to have a talk about what is going in the news. This will allow students to participate more. And when they participate more, their grade will go up. In the long run, it will help out the students.
17) I like how the class was set up. It’s easygoing, but still important. The students know what has to get done and what will happen if it doesn’t. It has a friendly atmosphere, it makes me want to come to class to see what will happen today or what stories will be told. I enjoyed this Eng 099 much more than the other one I was in.
18)Well, I really liked the way you taught us things I don’t really know what could be improved or changed. But in my opinion the papers and the step by step were really helpful because if we did the brainstorm and fastwrite in class we already had half the paper already done. That’s a creative way to go. None of my past teachers have done that so I liked that.
19) I liked everything except dangling modifiers, parallelism and all that crap. But overall this class is fun and I enjoy coming!
20)Believe it or not, I love this class there is absolutely nothing I would change about this class I’m relaxed when I’m hear and I don’t feel stressed or pressured in any way or form.
I will comment on these comments in a future blog entry. It will also be very interesting for me to see whether this feedback from identified students is at all similar to the contents of anonymous evaluations the same students fill out and submit to the department.
All of the exam questions on both the midterm and this more comprehensive test were adapted from material that accompanied the text we are using, so either I did a poor job of choosing the questions or did a very bad job of preparing the students and/or teaching grammar.
Fortunately, most all the students did well on the second, more comprehensive test which incorporated the material tested on the midterm. Most everyone, probably me in particular, was very relieved by the improved test scores.
Given the very inconsistent attendance and performance by many of this year’s students, I requested feedback, suggestions, accolades and criticism to be written in the empty space at the end of the test. Since this feedback was not submitted anonymously, it is probably less reflective of reality and more brown-nosey than is the survey conducted by the English Department. Still, I found it informative and somewhat helpful in coordinating our semester’s end work.
Below, I will attach the often disturbingly ungrammatical, unexpurgated and uncorrected snippets from students who responded to my request for feedback, included as the last question of the test:
Essay Question: In an attempt to continuously improve my classes, I utilize student feedback. Please specify how I could make the 099 experience more helpful. What could have been improved, changed, omitted, etc.? Is there anything you especially liked or disliked about the class? Please be honest. This won’t affect your grade.
1) “I really believe that writing 5 draft for our paper help out a lot. I’ve never had a teacher tell us to do that and now that I know this method I can take it with me in other classes. The only problem I had was that a lot of my Ch. Review were missing from my book. Other than that the class is fun and I actually learned how to notice my grammar errors.”
2) “The thing that really helped in this 099 class is definatly the chapter reviews. It is a way to test yourself to see if you truly understood the concept. The subject that should be omitted should be illogical shifts. That was hard but you have to learn it. Also the talks as a class where everyone says something personal, I think brought the class together.”
3) Everything has gone well in this class and I have not complaints. I think the best thing was meeting up and discussing our papers. I learned a lot more doing that. It also helped improve my writing.
4) I liked this class a lot. It really helped me look at my writing diffently. But the one thing I would change is more time for 1 on 1 with a teacher. I feel it helps me more than sitting in a class.
5)I really like the conferences. They work well. And help a lot. I think I enjoy this class most out of all of my classes. The only thing try and narrow down topics for papers. It’s hard trying to pick one.
6) More lecture time in class, not just writting. I think the class would learn more material if the teacher explained writting rules and techniques a lot more.
7) My 099 experience even though it was minimum due to my absent days, has been educating. The days that I actually showed up to class helped in abig way. I believe you shouldn’t change one thing. The way you are unpredictable keeps the student guessing about the next class.
The one thing that I honestly disliked about the class is the time that it starts. I’m really not a morning person, so if it was an afternoon class I would’ve showed up more often instead of sleeping straight through. In conclusion, you are a great teacher. Never change.
8) Fastwrites are helpful as well as the meetings to review papers.
9) It’s perfect, we just have lazy people in the class.
10) I like your class. I feel that you are willing to help us learn and pass. I believe I just need to go over some of the practices from the book in class, other than the rewrites.
11) The only problem in the class is the time. 9:30 am is too early, but you have no control of that. Otherwise the class is good.
12) I personally enjoyed this class, I feel when papers need to be handed in we should only hand in the rough and final draft. I enjoy the topics that we get to write about and would not change that. I also thought by having a say in what we do in class has made it worth comming.
13) I think it is a good class. I wish I could of taken it later on in the day.
14) I do like the class, I have improved my writing since the beginning of the semester. I also like the class because we do get into side conversations which gives us a break from actual work. I also would like more group work. Personally, I work better with a partner or in a group.
15) I think that this class was very helpful. I wish I didn’t have it this early but that is anther story. I have learned many new things. But overall it was a good class.
16) I think that a way to improve the class would be to let the students out early, every once in a while. This way, if the students are bored, they won’t have to be bored anymore. I also think that if there is no response from the students, then to have a talk about what is going in the news. This will allow students to participate more. And when they participate more, their grade will go up. In the long run, it will help out the students.
17) I like how the class was set up. It’s easygoing, but still important. The students know what has to get done and what will happen if it doesn’t. It has a friendly atmosphere, it makes me want to come to class to see what will happen today or what stories will be told. I enjoyed this Eng 099 much more than the other one I was in.
18)Well, I really liked the way you taught us things I don’t really know what could be improved or changed. But in my opinion the papers and the step by step were really helpful because if we did the brainstorm and fastwrite in class we already had half the paper already done. That’s a creative way to go. None of my past teachers have done that so I liked that.
19) I liked everything except dangling modifiers, parallelism and all that crap. But overall this class is fun and I enjoy coming!
20)Believe it or not, I love this class there is absolutely nothing I would change about this class I’m relaxed when I’m hear and I don’t feel stressed or pressured in any way or form.
I will comment on these comments in a future blog entry. It will also be very interesting for me to see whether this feedback from identified students is at all similar to the contents of anonymous evaluations the same students fill out and submit to the department.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
April "Vacation"
And so faithful English 099 Blog reader, you are no doubt wondering what has been going on in English 099. Although I am not Catholic and have never even been inside a confessional, I often find myself in these situations muttering to myself, “ Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned; it’s been three weeks since my last post..” Or however long it’s been. I am not currently in a location with internet access, so I can’t check, and am writing this post into a Word document which I will later transfer to the blog as a post, which is where you are no doubt reading it at this very moment.
I am in Borders, safe again. Safe from interminable yearbook production and cat-tastrophe’s, from critical elements of basement renovations, hasty home organization necessary for company that does nothing towards the cause of true, helpful organization. I am safe from Seder preparation, tax preparation and the accompanying hunt for each, finding necessary documents among the proliferation of boxes which were thrown, just prior to the seder, into my bedroom, rendering it unusable for anything but sleep, which I haven’t had the opportunity to do much of for a long time.
It is Friday. The last day of public school vacation. The last day of my special, frantic week from hell, during which I taught, corrected papers, and designed, produced, and solicited sponsors for, the yearbook of the Diloreto class of 2007. I had never made a yearbook before, though I could easily produce another now. Which perhaps bodes well for a segue into the real novel from my “practice” novel , aka the Writing a Novel in 30 Days (As if. Let’s call it 60 days) project.
For the past four years, the yearbooks for the elementary school my children attend have been—to my way of thinking---lame, hideous, and grim in their black and white scissored and collaged chaotic arrangement of photos.
It had seemed like an excellent idea in September, when I confidently informed the PTA that I would head the yearbook committee, produce a color yearbook and subsidize the extra cost by soliciting sponsors to enable students to purchase the books for the same ten bucks the amateurish black and white ones had cost. My kids are graduating this year, and though we have many, many, many photos of every event that has taken place at Diloreto since 2002, I wanted them and their classmates to have a nice keepsake of the years they spent at the school.
I have gotten to know the kids who attend school with my children, and I feel close to them. New Britain offers many options for middle school; consequently, the fifth graders will not be attending school all together next year, but spread out between at least four public middle schools in town, plus two magnet schools in Hartford.
Ah, yes, I have left out the part about being finally safe and squared away for middle school next year, relieved of the burden of exploring options for my kids, and trying to find the best fit. Except for two of the public schools, each school requires applicants to enter a lottery. One, the so-called “Gifted and Talented” middle school, requires academic testing which is not even available to students who haven’t been recommended by their teachers. My agonizing over where my kids would go to school next year has been a separate, time-consuming, dilemma compounded by my belief that ten year olds should be in an elementary school, not one in which a teenage mentality prevails.
I have just dropped the mocked up and proofed pages at Kinko’s, where the Fedex center has promised to unite the last 20 pages with the first 28 by noon tomorrow, which will make the book complete and ready to be turned into yearbooks—colored yearbooks---for the fifth graders at Diloreto to purchase at ten dollars apiece. I have pulled all-nighters, I have had my kids home all week. The deadline to submit the pages has inconveniently coincided with April vacation, so not only have I not been alone and able to concentrate this week, but school was not in session and the principal, who neglected to include both a signature and a photo to accompany her address to the graduating class, could not be reached, not could parents of the 111 fifth grade students be contacted in order to solicit photos and dedication line sponsorship. Extending the deadline, unfortunately, would not have enabled the finished books to reach us until three weeks after the end of the schoolyear.
I will not discuss the all-nighters or the angry rantings of my kids’ dad when pressed into service to accommodate yearbook meetings, nor the tantrum my daughter threw a few night backs when I, maxed out beyond belief, told her to please make her own dinner, that there was Beefaroni or oatmeal or aging matzoh that could be spread with peanut butter. Though her brother offered to make dinner, my daughter needed mom to make it, apparently equating food preparation with mother love, neglecting to realize that the goddamned yearbook production was a much showier, more stressful and lasting example of just that.
And of course, there was the second cat-tastrophe. Readers of this blog might well remember the kitten trapped 35 feet up in a tree for nine hours in the wind and cold, necessitating the canceling of my classes in order to find someone who would consent to get her down. The evil little thing has since gone into heat for the first time, been fixed, and continued to boss around the big boys—her six pounds against their combined 35. “You have ee-vil eyes, Junie B.,” my son told her one night and I realized that it was true, and that it was she who had made poor Gus an outcast in his own house, left to skulk lonely and alone, spraying the laundry, the closets, anywhere he could lay claim, for his buddy Bruno has abandoned their friendship to care for Junie B, allowing her to suck on his nipples while he patiently lay on my bed licking her head.
Gus is an emo cat. We found him in the bushes during my kids’ sixth birthday party, abandoned by his own mom at two weeks old, and of course my kids talked me into keeping him by earnestly proclaiming him “a birthday present from God, Mommy.”
A few weeks back, Gussie started looking very crummy. Though only four years old (roughly equivalent to 28 in human years,) he wasn’t grooming himself and his fur began looking like that of an old, old cat. An emotional eater who had gained quite a bit of weight in the months which followed Junie joining our household, Gus suddenly began to lose weight. He lost so much weight so quickly that the vet told us his liver was failing—a situation specific only to cat anatomy—and that he needed to be hospitalized in the Kitty ICU where he would be forcefed through a tube implanted in his esophagus through his neck.
Gus was in the ICU for five days that coincided with the children’s vacation AND the yearbook production deadline. While he was in the hospital, I visited him and stroked his cheek with my own, the way mother cats do, the way I did when he was a baby and we fed him with a bottle until he could eat on his own. Without that care, he had been failing, retreating into cat depression behind the glaze of his third eyelid.
Once home, he needed to be fed through the tube which had been implanted and sewn into place, jutting out 3 inches and bobbing as he walked, looking as though he were in a Halloween costume, the kind where its wearer appears to be walking around after being shot by an arrow or stabbed through by a knife.
His protocol for care included pills and liquids and the mixing of high protein cat food with water before infusing it, a milliliter every five minutes, into his body through the tube, the entire process taking more than an hour several times a day.
But of course, everything I’ve mentioned above is mere digression, justification for having not made English 099 a priority in my life. Interestingly, however, class has been going fairly well. I had third meetings with students, during which we discussed their argument essays and I gave them an opportunity to redo the poor essays. I don’t need to mention here how I was forced, at the last moment, to cancel an entire morning of individual meeting due to last minute notification of an award ceremony where my daughter was to be honored, nor do I need to discuss the opening of baseball season and the drafting of both kids into the majors of Little League and all the chauffering and game attendance it entails.
And so, against this backdrop of the convergence of nearly every element that could possibly make demands on my time, I have been teaching 099. The yearbook is in the mail; the taxes are done. The cat had a follow-up appointment and seems to be recovering, for which I am very grateful. Passover has passed by; my children are quite unexpectedly two of the 1000 or so fifth grade students in the city who have been accepted into the 50 member sixth grade class of the Gifted and Talented middle school, which will be moving next year—remarkably-- to a location three blocks from my house.
And the classes are gelling. Even the early morning one. We are in the home stretch. I have removed some assignments; the weather is nicer, the students better prepared. We know what to expect from each other now and digress frequently in class about our lives. During their vacation this week, my kids have accompanied me to class, as they have since they were back in pre-school and all my students thought they were cute. It is interesting to watch the ten year olds interact with the eighteen year olds. They are of sibling age now, and everything is changing. My kids are graduating into middle school; my students are beginning to think of themselves as on the cusp of adulthood. They write about these thoughts in their essays, about how strange it is suddenly, to find themselves considered adults.
I well remember those years, both the ones I spent on the cusp of adolescence and the ones on the cusp of adulthood when I thought I was waiting for my life to start. Neither was an easy transition for me, and I don’t imagine the transition from ten years of being the mother of young children to the mother of less-young children will be easy either. Kids, cats, class, me. All in flux, always in transition.
If I ever get the opportunity to prioritize my own schoolwork again, I will be on track to graduate from the MFA program in December, and for that to happen I’ll have to write a book. The book I’ve been promising to write since I was 8 and vowed to complete one before I hit double digits, a scary age, a non-kid age, the age of my own children now.
I am in Borders, safe again. Safe from interminable yearbook production and cat-tastrophe’s, from critical elements of basement renovations, hasty home organization necessary for company that does nothing towards the cause of true, helpful organization. I am safe from Seder preparation, tax preparation and the accompanying hunt for each, finding necessary documents among the proliferation of boxes which were thrown, just prior to the seder, into my bedroom, rendering it unusable for anything but sleep, which I haven’t had the opportunity to do much of for a long time.
It is Friday. The last day of public school vacation. The last day of my special, frantic week from hell, during which I taught, corrected papers, and designed, produced, and solicited sponsors for, the yearbook of the Diloreto class of 2007. I had never made a yearbook before, though I could easily produce another now. Which perhaps bodes well for a segue into the real novel from my “practice” novel , aka the Writing a Novel in 30 Days (As if. Let’s call it 60 days) project.
For the past four years, the yearbooks for the elementary school my children attend have been—to my way of thinking---lame, hideous, and grim in their black and white scissored and collaged chaotic arrangement of photos.
It had seemed like an excellent idea in September, when I confidently informed the PTA that I would head the yearbook committee, produce a color yearbook and subsidize the extra cost by soliciting sponsors to enable students to purchase the books for the same ten bucks the amateurish black and white ones had cost. My kids are graduating this year, and though we have many, many, many photos of every event that has taken place at Diloreto since 2002, I wanted them and their classmates to have a nice keepsake of the years they spent at the school.
I have gotten to know the kids who attend school with my children, and I feel close to them. New Britain offers many options for middle school; consequently, the fifth graders will not be attending school all together next year, but spread out between at least four public middle schools in town, plus two magnet schools in Hartford.
Ah, yes, I have left out the part about being finally safe and squared away for middle school next year, relieved of the burden of exploring options for my kids, and trying to find the best fit. Except for two of the public schools, each school requires applicants to enter a lottery. One, the so-called “Gifted and Talented” middle school, requires academic testing which is not even available to students who haven’t been recommended by their teachers. My agonizing over where my kids would go to school next year has been a separate, time-consuming, dilemma compounded by my belief that ten year olds should be in an elementary school, not one in which a teenage mentality prevails.
I have just dropped the mocked up and proofed pages at Kinko’s, where the Fedex center has promised to unite the last 20 pages with the first 28 by noon tomorrow, which will make the book complete and ready to be turned into yearbooks—colored yearbooks---for the fifth graders at Diloreto to purchase at ten dollars apiece. I have pulled all-nighters, I have had my kids home all week. The deadline to submit the pages has inconveniently coincided with April vacation, so not only have I not been alone and able to concentrate this week, but school was not in session and the principal, who neglected to include both a signature and a photo to accompany her address to the graduating class, could not be reached, not could parents of the 111 fifth grade students be contacted in order to solicit photos and dedication line sponsorship. Extending the deadline, unfortunately, would not have enabled the finished books to reach us until three weeks after the end of the schoolyear.
I will not discuss the all-nighters or the angry rantings of my kids’ dad when pressed into service to accommodate yearbook meetings, nor the tantrum my daughter threw a few night backs when I, maxed out beyond belief, told her to please make her own dinner, that there was Beefaroni or oatmeal or aging matzoh that could be spread with peanut butter. Though her brother offered to make dinner, my daughter needed mom to make it, apparently equating food preparation with mother love, neglecting to realize that the goddamned yearbook production was a much showier, more stressful and lasting example of just that.
And of course, there was the second cat-tastrophe. Readers of this blog might well remember the kitten trapped 35 feet up in a tree for nine hours in the wind and cold, necessitating the canceling of my classes in order to find someone who would consent to get her down. The evil little thing has since gone into heat for the first time, been fixed, and continued to boss around the big boys—her six pounds against their combined 35. “You have ee-vil eyes, Junie B.,” my son told her one night and I realized that it was true, and that it was she who had made poor Gus an outcast in his own house, left to skulk lonely and alone, spraying the laundry, the closets, anywhere he could lay claim, for his buddy Bruno has abandoned their friendship to care for Junie B, allowing her to suck on his nipples while he patiently lay on my bed licking her head.
Gus is an emo cat. We found him in the bushes during my kids’ sixth birthday party, abandoned by his own mom at two weeks old, and of course my kids talked me into keeping him by earnestly proclaiming him “a birthday present from God, Mommy.”
A few weeks back, Gussie started looking very crummy. Though only four years old (roughly equivalent to 28 in human years,) he wasn’t grooming himself and his fur began looking like that of an old, old cat. An emotional eater who had gained quite a bit of weight in the months which followed Junie joining our household, Gus suddenly began to lose weight. He lost so much weight so quickly that the vet told us his liver was failing—a situation specific only to cat anatomy—and that he needed to be hospitalized in the Kitty ICU where he would be forcefed through a tube implanted in his esophagus through his neck.
Gus was in the ICU for five days that coincided with the children’s vacation AND the yearbook production deadline. While he was in the hospital, I visited him and stroked his cheek with my own, the way mother cats do, the way I did when he was a baby and we fed him with a bottle until he could eat on his own. Without that care, he had been failing, retreating into cat depression behind the glaze of his third eyelid.
Once home, he needed to be fed through the tube which had been implanted and sewn into place, jutting out 3 inches and bobbing as he walked, looking as though he were in a Halloween costume, the kind where its wearer appears to be walking around after being shot by an arrow or stabbed through by a knife.
His protocol for care included pills and liquids and the mixing of high protein cat food with water before infusing it, a milliliter every five minutes, into his body through the tube, the entire process taking more than an hour several times a day.
But of course, everything I’ve mentioned above is mere digression, justification for having not made English 099 a priority in my life. Interestingly, however, class has been going fairly well. I had third meetings with students, during which we discussed their argument essays and I gave them an opportunity to redo the poor essays. I don’t need to mention here how I was forced, at the last moment, to cancel an entire morning of individual meeting due to last minute notification of an award ceremony where my daughter was to be honored, nor do I need to discuss the opening of baseball season and the drafting of both kids into the majors of Little League and all the chauffering and game attendance it entails.
And so, against this backdrop of the convergence of nearly every element that could possibly make demands on my time, I have been teaching 099. The yearbook is in the mail; the taxes are done. The cat had a follow-up appointment and seems to be recovering, for which I am very grateful. Passover has passed by; my children are quite unexpectedly two of the 1000 or so fifth grade students in the city who have been accepted into the 50 member sixth grade class of the Gifted and Talented middle school, which will be moving next year—remarkably-- to a location three blocks from my house.
And the classes are gelling. Even the early morning one. We are in the home stretch. I have removed some assignments; the weather is nicer, the students better prepared. We know what to expect from each other now and digress frequently in class about our lives. During their vacation this week, my kids have accompanied me to class, as they have since they were back in pre-school and all my students thought they were cute. It is interesting to watch the ten year olds interact with the eighteen year olds. They are of sibling age now, and everything is changing. My kids are graduating into middle school; my students are beginning to think of themselves as on the cusp of adulthood. They write about these thoughts in their essays, about how strange it is suddenly, to find themselves considered adults.
I well remember those years, both the ones I spent on the cusp of adolescence and the ones on the cusp of adulthood when I thought I was waiting for my life to start. Neither was an easy transition for me, and I don’t imagine the transition from ten years of being the mother of young children to the mother of less-young children will be easy either. Kids, cats, class, me. All in flux, always in transition.
If I ever get the opportunity to prioritize my own schoolwork again, I will be on track to graduate from the MFA program in December, and for that to happen I’ll have to write a book. The book I’ve been promising to write since I was 8 and vowed to complete one before I hit double digits, a scary age, a non-kid age, the age of my own children now.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
midterm bombed by all
Well, nearly every student in both classes bombed the midterm, which I find disconcerting, but have attempted to view as a teaching oppportunity. I handed back the corrected exams today and we reviewed them. Hopefully this will enable everyone to take a new exam which I will administer the week after next. Since there were only two marks in the 80's and 3 in the 70's, I view it as a failing on my part to successfully teach the students how to identify and correct illogical shifts, faulty parallelism, misplaced and dangling modifiers, and run-ons and comma splices. I used as the test a combination of materials provided by the writers of the text book we are using. I think I will create my own questions for the next version of the test on those issues.
In a related issue, I've decided to utilize new teaching materials next semester. I am going to go with a program from Newsweek, hoping that the students will actually want to read the articles, many of which are written in formats I teach. Newsweek provides each issue at .59 per week, accompanied by a number of teaching resources, including hard copy guides and online materials. To teach grammar, I found a book at Borders that costs 12 dollars instead of the 40 or so for a used paperback textbook. This particular book, whose name escapes me at the moment, provides online tests and essay correction for people buy it and get a code to use for log-in. The book is very concise and written for regular adults, not students and is billed as learning grammar in 20 minutes a day. A departure for me. We will see what comes of teaching with these materials next semester.
In a related issue, I've decided to utilize new teaching materials next semester. I am going to go with a program from Newsweek, hoping that the students will actually want to read the articles, many of which are written in formats I teach. Newsweek provides each issue at .59 per week, accompanied by a number of teaching resources, including hard copy guides and online materials. To teach grammar, I found a book at Borders that costs 12 dollars instead of the 40 or so for a used paperback textbook. This particular book, whose name escapes me at the moment, provides online tests and essay correction for people buy it and get a code to use for log-in. The book is very concise and written for regular adults, not students and is billed as learning grammar in 20 minutes a day. A departure for me. We will see what comes of teaching with these materials next semester.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Post Spring Break
Everyone agrees that after the break, the end of the semester should be much closer than it actually is. We still have an additional 7 weeks to go. Most of my students are actually in class, however, probably because we are reviewing for the midterm next week. I give them more difficult review material than I plan to include in the test. Better that than the reverse, I learned the hard way.
For fun, in my sleepy early class, I let the students form a union and outline a list of their demands from management (me). It was kind of fun. They asked for things like kegs of beer, I offered to bring in iced tea. They asked for no homework on Thursdays and I did away with one of the essays on the syllabus. They asked for field trips, movies, music, beer pong, a buffet and various other items on which we compromised, agreeing, for example to provide the first three items in the above list, which I will manage to use to their educational advantage.
Two of the girls in my second class have been systematically ten minutes late to nearly every class. On Tuesday, the other students and I agreed during the first ten minutes before the two lategirls arrived that they would have to submit only the final proofread draft of the next essay due, while the tardy two would have to submit all drafts as was originally assigned, because they had arrived too late to hear the amended assignment.
On Thursday, the two were on time.
For fun, in my sleepy early class, I let the students form a union and outline a list of their demands from management (me). It was kind of fun. They asked for things like kegs of beer, I offered to bring in iced tea. They asked for no homework on Thursdays and I did away with one of the essays on the syllabus. They asked for field trips, movies, music, beer pong, a buffet and various other items on which we compromised, agreeing, for example to provide the first three items in the above list, which I will manage to use to their educational advantage.
Two of the girls in my second class have been systematically ten minutes late to nearly every class. On Tuesday, the other students and I agreed during the first ten minutes before the two lategirls arrived that they would have to submit only the final proofread draft of the next essay due, while the tardy two would have to submit all drafts as was originally assigned, because they had arrived too late to hear the amended assignment.
On Thursday, the two were on time.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Wk 7
The semester proceeds. My classes have gelled into what they are going to be. The early class is sleepy. The later class is rowdy. Oddly, we rip through material more quickly in the rowdy class.
I have added a few new tricks this semester. Since so many students (including me) are wicked procrastinators, I have begun to require that the brainstorm and fastwrite steps of each essay be done in class. I have learned that this helps students leave class feeling as though they have at least begun their papers, and are able to get to the next draft more easily, even put aside small blocks of time for each draft, with time lapses between steps in order to foster objectivity and enable structural change. That works for some students, others demonstrate by the lack of any real change between their drafts, that they probably proofread on the screen, printing out nearly identical versions of their essays and blithely hand in 5 nearly identical drafts or else just hand in the brainstorm, fast write and final, claiming that they accidentally left the others on their desks and vow to bring them in “next class”.
Wk8
Alek gets sick and is out of school for an entire week. Because he is so sick, he climbs into my bed at night. Consequently, I have no prep time without kids around, no time for schoolwork without kids around, and so I pull all-nighters—which I had not anticipated being a part of my daily routine after my kids began sleeping through the night. Hah.
Because of lack of sleep and a sick kid sharing my bed, by Wed. I have inconveniently caught whatever illness the kid has been suffering. Because of missing class during the treed cat incident, I cannot miss any more classes, and so I drag into class mustering enthusiasm for the fun awaiting my students: Argument essays and how to structure one.
I have decided this semester to assign two argument essays, the first focusing on structure, the second addressing and adding the elements of correct MLA citation, in and out of text. And so, we discuss researching a debatable question in order to develop a thesis, rather than starting with a thesis and looking for information to support it. We discuss presenting info relating to the history of an issue, multiple contemporary perspectives, the presentation of an expected objection of readers and how to overcome and/or neutralize it. We address how to present supporting information and the fact that using the opinions of experts is, in this case, a good thing when correctly cited and not something to be hidden-- as it was in high school, when everyone reworded information found in the encyclopedia, trying to pass it off as his or her own writing.
We discuss how a conclusion should pack a punch and seal the persuasive deal, rather than parrot information already presented in the body of the essay. Unfortunately, few students have read the essays assigned, I find after springing a pop quiz, and this is annoying, as one of the essays, The New Prohibition, by Charles Krauthammer, packs just such a punch when, after presenting the argument that since tobacco ads are banned from television, so should be ads for alcoholic beverages.
The concluding sentence of his essay, is to me, perfect. “Would you rather have your children addicted to alcohol or tobacco?” he asks after, in the body of his essay, mentioning the nearly victimless aspect of smoking vs. the danger to families, other drivers, etc. by someone who is drunk. I am quite annoyed that we are unable to discuss this essay and its conclusion and structure without my first reading it aloud to a college class! I have administered 3 quizzes in a row after assigning readings. It seems as though they don't care, projecting the attitude we have all taken: When no written work is due, it means there is no homework.
It will be interesting to see how the Spring Break has manifested itself in terms of researching and writing this first argument paper, which is due next Thurs.
The semester proceeds. My classes have gelled into what they are going to be. The early class is sleepy. The later class is rowdy. Oddly, we rip through material more quickly in the rowdy class.
I have added a few new tricks this semester. Since so many students (including me) are wicked procrastinators, I have begun to require that the brainstorm and fastwrite steps of each essay be done in class. I have learned that this helps students leave class feeling as though they have at least begun their papers, and are able to get to the next draft more easily, even put aside small blocks of time for each draft, with time lapses between steps in order to foster objectivity and enable structural change. That works for some students, others demonstrate by the lack of any real change between their drafts, that they probably proofread on the screen, printing out nearly identical versions of their essays and blithely hand in 5 nearly identical drafts or else just hand in the brainstorm, fast write and final, claiming that they accidentally left the others on their desks and vow to bring them in “next class”.
Wk8
Alek gets sick and is out of school for an entire week. Because he is so sick, he climbs into my bed at night. Consequently, I have no prep time without kids around, no time for schoolwork without kids around, and so I pull all-nighters—which I had not anticipated being a part of my daily routine after my kids began sleeping through the night. Hah.
Because of lack of sleep and a sick kid sharing my bed, by Wed. I have inconveniently caught whatever illness the kid has been suffering. Because of missing class during the treed cat incident, I cannot miss any more classes, and so I drag into class mustering enthusiasm for the fun awaiting my students: Argument essays and how to structure one.
I have decided this semester to assign two argument essays, the first focusing on structure, the second addressing and adding the elements of correct MLA citation, in and out of text. And so, we discuss researching a debatable question in order to develop a thesis, rather than starting with a thesis and looking for information to support it. We discuss presenting info relating to the history of an issue, multiple contemporary perspectives, the presentation of an expected objection of readers and how to overcome and/or neutralize it. We address how to present supporting information and the fact that using the opinions of experts is, in this case, a good thing when correctly cited and not something to be hidden-- as it was in high school, when everyone reworded information found in the encyclopedia, trying to pass it off as his or her own writing.
We discuss how a conclusion should pack a punch and seal the persuasive deal, rather than parrot information already presented in the body of the essay. Unfortunately, few students have read the essays assigned, I find after springing a pop quiz, and this is annoying, as one of the essays, The New Prohibition, by Charles Krauthammer, packs just such a punch when, after presenting the argument that since tobacco ads are banned from television, so should be ads for alcoholic beverages.
The concluding sentence of his essay, is to me, perfect. “Would you rather have your children addicted to alcohol or tobacco?” he asks after, in the body of his essay, mentioning the nearly victimless aspect of smoking vs. the danger to families, other drivers, etc. by someone who is drunk. I am quite annoyed that we are unable to discuss this essay and its conclusion and structure without my first reading it aloud to a college class! I have administered 3 quizzes in a row after assigning readings. It seems as though they don't care, projecting the attitude we have all taken: When no written work is due, it means there is no homework.
It will be interesting to see how the Spring Break has manifested itself in terms of researching and writing this first argument paper, which is due next Thurs.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Kittens
The shift key on my laptop is working erratically. If something is not capitalized it is because I do not have the time or inclination to write the same words over and over again.
Sometimes spellcheck is merciful and corrects the error, as seems to be the case right now.
Our kitten is trapped up high in a 40 foot, lanky tree behind the garage. The kids, in their fourth day of testing for the standardized CT exams designed to accommodate the NCLB act of the Bush administration, are so stressed they left the back door open behind them as they sped out to meet the bus. When I emerged to ready myself for class, the two big cats ran in the door. I could not find the kitten, finally heard her meowing and felt relief, assuming that she was trapped inside the garage, an easy situation to remedy.
But, no. She is up in the tree, so high up that the branches wave in the bitter wind, and when I climb on top of the garage to coax her down, she is so scared that she climbs farther away, up and up. I drag old ladders I cannot lift by myself, and sit on the roof, helplessly holding an open can, redolent with the aroma of tuna, up towards Junie, who meows piteously, afraid to move. I dare not leave my house for fear she will fall and get hurt with no one to attend to her needs.
For the second time in the four years I’ve been teaching at CCSU, I call in to cancel my classes. The only other time this happened was in the fall of 2005, when I was vomiting. Even then I felt guilty. Now I feel like an idiot, but know how delighted my students will be when the English Department secretary tells them they can leave. I know this, not only because no teenager wants to sit in a class so early in the morning, but also because one of the semester’s four major papers is due today.
As I suspected, Min tells me that very few students were actually in the room when she arrived to announce that class was cancelled. I am secretly relieved I will not have to deal with my classes. I was up until 5am, doing schoolwork; I haven’t taken a shower; my house is warm and in need of cleaning. But really, I am truly scared about the cat, can feel her fear and pain and hunger
I check every few minutes to insure that the she is still up in the tree.while I post gigs on Craig’s List, Freedomcycle. I call equipment rental places, looking for extension ladders. The fire department no longer rescues treed animals; the Humane Society blithely tells me the cat will come down when she is hungry, tired, and cold. No, they cannot guarantee that she will land unharmed.
It strikes me that I am reacting as would a student in a similar situation. A student who would get a disappointed look from me upon her return to class next Tues. When I was a student, I thought professors had a cakewalk job. When I was merely professor, I realized how easy students have it. Now that I am both professor and student with a full load of classes and a thesis to write, I recognize that it is not easy on either side of the desk, and so I am much less harsh than I was as a new teacher, caught up in seemingly fair repercussions for slackers.
It is interesting that student cite a teacher who never gives them homework and lets them leave early as being ‘nice”. As a teacher myself, I know that she is making her own life easier by being that particular brand of nice. I’d like to be nice ALL the time, but unfortunately, I feel obliged to help my students improve their writing skills. In order to do so, I have implemented a few new strategies this semester. I make obligatory one on one meetings. I demand students do the brainstorms and fastwrite steps of their essay process in class, knowing that they will be less inclined to procrastinate, knowing that at least the seeds of their papers have been planted, and will hopefully propel them towards feeling less hopeless and floundering than they would by postponing every step of the essay until 2am on the day the paper is due. I hope to make them aware that they need not put off starting their papers because of having only a spare half hour, that a fast write can be done, and should be done, in ten minutes. They can set the alarms on their phones anywhere and write for ten minutes.
The most important pieces of information that I have thus far imparted to students revolve around voice and being able to write a reade-based paper. These two concepts seem to be new ideas for the students with whom I conference. I tell them to write the way the character would speak. Since the character is essentially their ownselves, I tell them to decide whether they are telling that particular story to a peer or a grandmother. When I say that, they get it. They had been confused by rules they learned in high school, the ones that demanded they write intros and conclusions that say exactly what is in the body of the essay, the one that told them they could not use “I’ in an essay-- one of the causes of an illogical shift in person and number that run rife as a virus through the essays.
I hate five paragraph essays, I tell them, I want to hear your story, the way you can best tell it. Just remember that by the final draft of the paper, any information I need, should be on the page. I point out areas in their essays where they have omitted necessary information, forgetting the reader is clueless about certain details that have come seemingly out of thin air
We have covered all the forms of illogical shifts, faulty parallelism and misplaced or dangling modifiers. They have done the exercises fairly easily, even edited pretty well the chapter review paragraph, identifying errors explored in that chapter. When it comes to handing in their own essays, however, many of the issues remain, staring me baldly in the face.
In our conferences, I ask about this phenomenon. Mostly they shrug helplessly that they can see the errors when working with me, but it’s harder on their own. One student informs me that he hadn’t realized they were supposed to incorporate the grammar lessons into their own essays.
The kitten is still stranded in the tree, and I cannot get her down.
Sometimes spellcheck is merciful and corrects the error, as seems to be the case right now.
Our kitten is trapped up high in a 40 foot, lanky tree behind the garage. The kids, in their fourth day of testing for the standardized CT exams designed to accommodate the NCLB act of the Bush administration, are so stressed they left the back door open behind them as they sped out to meet the bus. When I emerged to ready myself for class, the two big cats ran in the door. I could not find the kitten, finally heard her meowing and felt relief, assuming that she was trapped inside the garage, an easy situation to remedy.
But, no. She is up in the tree, so high up that the branches wave in the bitter wind, and when I climb on top of the garage to coax her down, she is so scared that she climbs farther away, up and up. I drag old ladders I cannot lift by myself, and sit on the roof, helplessly holding an open can, redolent with the aroma of tuna, up towards Junie, who meows piteously, afraid to move. I dare not leave my house for fear she will fall and get hurt with no one to attend to her needs.
For the second time in the four years I’ve been teaching at CCSU, I call in to cancel my classes. The only other time this happened was in the fall of 2005, when I was vomiting. Even then I felt guilty. Now I feel like an idiot, but know how delighted my students will be when the English Department secretary tells them they can leave. I know this, not only because no teenager wants to sit in a class so early in the morning, but also because one of the semester’s four major papers is due today.
As I suspected, Min tells me that very few students were actually in the room when she arrived to announce that class was cancelled. I am secretly relieved I will not have to deal with my classes. I was up until 5am, doing schoolwork; I haven’t taken a shower; my house is warm and in need of cleaning. But really, I am truly scared about the cat, can feel her fear and pain and hunger
I check every few minutes to insure that the she is still up in the tree.while I post gigs on Craig’s List, Freedomcycle. I call equipment rental places, looking for extension ladders. The fire department no longer rescues treed animals; the Humane Society blithely tells me the cat will come down when she is hungry, tired, and cold. No, they cannot guarantee that she will land unharmed.
It strikes me that I am reacting as would a student in a similar situation. A student who would get a disappointed look from me upon her return to class next Tues. When I was a student, I thought professors had a cakewalk job. When I was merely professor, I realized how easy students have it. Now that I am both professor and student with a full load of classes and a thesis to write, I recognize that it is not easy on either side of the desk, and so I am much less harsh than I was as a new teacher, caught up in seemingly fair repercussions for slackers.
It is interesting that student cite a teacher who never gives them homework and lets them leave early as being ‘nice”. As a teacher myself, I know that she is making her own life easier by being that particular brand of nice. I’d like to be nice ALL the time, but unfortunately, I feel obliged to help my students improve their writing skills. In order to do so, I have implemented a few new strategies this semester. I make obligatory one on one meetings. I demand students do the brainstorms and fastwrite steps of their essay process in class, knowing that they will be less inclined to procrastinate, knowing that at least the seeds of their papers have been planted, and will hopefully propel them towards feeling less hopeless and floundering than they would by postponing every step of the essay until 2am on the day the paper is due. I hope to make them aware that they need not put off starting their papers because of having only a spare half hour, that a fast write can be done, and should be done, in ten minutes. They can set the alarms on their phones anywhere and write for ten minutes.
The most important pieces of information that I have thus far imparted to students revolve around voice and being able to write a reade-based paper. These two concepts seem to be new ideas for the students with whom I conference. I tell them to write the way the character would speak. Since the character is essentially their ownselves, I tell them to decide whether they are telling that particular story to a peer or a grandmother. When I say that, they get it. They had been confused by rules they learned in high school, the ones that demanded they write intros and conclusions that say exactly what is in the body of the essay, the one that told them they could not use “I’ in an essay-- one of the causes of an illogical shift in person and number that run rife as a virus through the essays.
I hate five paragraph essays, I tell them, I want to hear your story, the way you can best tell it. Just remember that by the final draft of the paper, any information I need, should be on the page. I point out areas in their essays where they have omitted necessary information, forgetting the reader is clueless about certain details that have come seemingly out of thin air
We have covered all the forms of illogical shifts, faulty parallelism and misplaced or dangling modifiers. They have done the exercises fairly easily, even edited pretty well the chapter review paragraph, identifying errors explored in that chapter. When it comes to handing in their own essays, however, many of the issues remain, staring me baldly in the face.
In our conferences, I ask about this phenomenon. Mostly they shrug helplessly that they can see the errors when working with me, but it’s harder on their own. One student informs me that he hadn’t realized they were supposed to incorporate the grammar lessons into their own essays.
The kitten is still stranded in the tree, and I cannot get her down.
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