February Shmebruary, and a note to male students

So I'm still not really back in the habit of regular posting yet. Who knows if I ever will be. I had a five day travel to Florida for a conference experience, quickly followed by rehearsals and then a performance of the Vagina Monologues, then poker night. By the time we got home on Friday the 13th, I was shaking so bad I was just about literally crying for sleep.

And this week I've been pretty lame. Had another late night on Tuesday, hosting an event to talk with students about advising at the college, and since then have just been coasting toward the weekend. Next week the students are all gone for winter break, and I am heading south to NYC to check in with my sisters. Yay!

Of course, then I get back from that and leave for another (more local) two day conference down in Nashua, NH (starts on my birthday, thanks a lot), but Jay will be at another conference in Massachusetts that weekend, so it's not like we would be enjoying the time together in any case. I get home from that on the 7th though, and then on the 10th, I leave for another conference in Saratoga Springs - where I will actually be presenting. Ack.

So, pretty much what I'm saying here is that the scarcity of posting looks like it won't let up for a while yet.

But you're used to it now, I'm sure. Heh heh.

And finally, a note to the college men who come to my office:

Please bathe. Regularly. With soap.

I will be more likely to spend lots of time with you and help out and let you use my computer if you don't smell like someone who has been sleeping in their own stench for weeks at a time.

If you smell like sour funk, don't be surprised when I suggest that you go look up the information about the college you might want to transfer to in your own room, and then come back when you have something more concrete. And after you have bathed.

That is all.

Broken

Recently I've been listening to This American Life while knitting.

This episode: Two Steps Back captures perfectly the reasons I haven't fought too hard to get back into public school teaching. The school and the teachers described and interviewed in the program just about reduced me to tears, because it so closely resembles my experiences with the public school system in this country.

I firmly believe the system is broken. Some individual schools have been spared, but the federal mandates currently in place would change that.

No sane educator would take an honors student and place them in a remedial course. Why then are the educational reform programs doing just that with high-achieving schools and teachers? Yes, some students, and some teachers, need a structured program to help them rise to the expected heights. Knocking people off the top of that peak and making them climb back up at the same pace as the slower ones is pure lunacy.

And this is why I would have to think long and hard about sending a child to public school - not because of the teachers or the curriculum (though I have questions about them, too) - but because of the politics and bureaucracy that have far too much control over the whole system.

That's right. I'm brilliant.

Hah. (Thanks to Sue for the procrastination tool. Just 12 more research essays to go!)

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

gah

Jay got me sick, the meanie. Sinus something. I can hear the snot forming in my sinuses and my face feels like it's going to splinter off from my skull.

Guess what I'm supposed to be doing this weekend? Yes. I'm supposed to be grading research essays. Guess what I won't be doing this weekend. That's right: grading.

Which means that next week is going to suck as I try to get everything done during the week, but so it goes.

Definitely not worth it

The trip to visit the folks was very nice - that's not what I'm referring to, never fear.

No, it's the job that's killing me. I haven't written anything except this blog (other than grading comments) since January. Sunday nights, I get so upset at the thought of going to work the next day that I feel like screaming. (Sometimes I do scream.) I'm having trouble sleeping. I'm gaining back weight that I lost.

I spent hours this last weekend looking at job listings in the area. I am either over qualified (cashier/deli worker/etc) or underqualified (surgeon/dean/sales exec/etc) for every single one of them.

Something needs to change.

In the meantime, I need to survive the last 4 weeks of the term. Not as easy as one might suppose.

Back to the grind

On the last day of my 30th year...

I really need to be prepping for class, but I didn't want to leave Grandma's obit at the top of the page any longer.

So, here's the easy way out:

This is the hat I made for K2's birthday last month. My own pattern.



These are the matching mittens.



And here's what happens after grading 30 english comp papers:

Good news

We finally hooked up the web access at home, so I might actually return to more regular posting.

Then again... my teaching schedule for the spring term just got turned upside down. One section of the class I've been teaching is probably going to be cancelled due to low enrollment. Good news side is that I have been offered 2 sections of a higher level course, but that means scrambling to put together a new course (admittedly one with a very established curriculum) and grading about 50 student papers for each assignment instead of the 35 I had last term.

We shall see.

No Tears Yet

I just finished the end of term reviews with my students. No one's started crying yet - at least not while in my office - so I'll count that as a minor triumph.

Today was hard for me - had to fail two students who just weren't demonstrating the skills they need to succeed in the college level course next term. I always feel bad because they're always in such denial about their abilities that the failure comes as a shock. Often they've already signed up for the next class in the spring, so failing this class means they have to rearrange everything.

Granted, I know that failing them now is actually kinder than sending them on to fail the next class over and over. (The class I teach has no effect on grad point average.) Also, it is their responsibility to make sure they do demonstrate the minimum skill level in order to pass. SO they don't have anyone to blame but themselves.

But I still feel like the bad guy.

Hope this doesn't suck

I just switched over to the Googlized version of Blogger. I really hope I don't regret it.

Anyway... on to some actual content, eh?

Today is the last day my class will meet. Yay! The reason for the early end is that the remainder of the week will be taken up with individual portfolio reviews in which the student brings all the work they did over the semester, and we look to see if they've made actual progress. For some students, this will take maybe 5-10 minutes. For others? Half an hour.

For the best students, this is merely a confirmation that they're ready to move on to the college level courses - a brief review to remind them what they've accomplished during the term. For the students who will not be passing, it's a chance to see exactly what they need to improve in order to pass the next time.

For the students on the borderline, it's most important. Sometimes I'm not sure until the portfolio review if a particular student should pass the class. Generally, even if the student isn't quite performing to standard, if they've shown great improvement, thereby indicating an ability to learn from instruction, I'm likely to pass them.

It's the students who are clearly performing below standards, who haven't shown improvement, but who do not understand this, are the hardest to deal with in the reviews. They don't understand why they're not passing - and I can't understand whether it's because of the same dimness that renders their work substandard or whether it's the result of willful denial of reality. Either way, those are the conferences I dread the most.

Except perhaps the conferences with the students who are probably capable of passing the class, but who have decided that because of their obvious and superior talents, they don't actually need to DO all the work. Little shits. They knew the requirements from Day One, but somehow decided the rules didn't apply to them. These are the abusive types, who shovel attitude at me all term, who try to go over my head to the department chair to "test out" of the class without "actually having to pass". These are the ones I hate. Personally hate. I don't want to pass them, because they don't really deserve it unless I rely on psychic grading to know what they *could* have done. But I don't want to fail them, because then I'd have them in my class next term. I may have to meditate on the solution to those students... preferably with a large glass of wine in one hand.

/rant

Maybe because it's finally snowing

Or maybe because I'm in the home stretch on this fall's classes, or maybe it was that one of my favorite students brought me a sample bottle of his family's homemade Shiraz, but I'm feeling less bleh today than I have in a long while.

I've been seriously dreading coming to work lately. I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, that the students aren't even interested in learning, that another term of this will kill me, etcetera and so forth - bad mojo all around.

A couple things have helped me not want to get all AK-47 on this place.

I finally managed to drop by one of the staff people who teaches the same class I teach during a block of time when she wasn't crazy busy. One of the hardest things about teaching is that you're pretty much on your own - it's hard to know if you're "doing it right" until you get the students' work as proof of their understanding. What makes these remedial level courses harder, is that sometimes, no matter what we do, some of these students are never going to "get it", either from lack of interest, effort, or ability. I have to learn not to take that personally. One of the other things that my colleague told me, that I hadn't really thought about before is this: these students are not happy about having to take this class, even though it's more a gift than a punishment, and they've never learned to separate the class from the person teaching it. So all that angsty resentment they've been projecting at me is not about me. It's about the class.

Must remember that. Must remember that. Must try to remember that. Ommmmm...

The second thing is that I do have some really great students - students who put in the effort, who ask questions, who show huge leaps of improvement, who bring me bottles of wine... I just need to focus more on the great students and less on the cranky, resentful, unwilling-to-do-the-work students. I'm trying. But it ain't so easy as it sounds.

And in any case - 3 more class meetings, then individual portfolio reviews, and then DONE!!!

Meep

That's what I say to Jay when I have nothing to really say. Kind of a substitute for "hello", I suppose. Though, come to think of it, I think that's what I set my email notification to back in college...

Anyway.

First meeting of the student women's group was interesting. A small turn out, but lots of good ideas. Our second meeting is Thursday, so hopefully we'll keep chugging along.

NaNo count is up to 8825 and I'm still working on it this afternoon. Day 6 should be at 10002 words to be on track, and I think I should be able to get there without too much effort. (Famous last words)

Back to work!

Sanity Check

My life up here in Vermont is still pretty isolated. Only slightly more so than it was in Salt Lake or at the Grand Canyon, but that slightly seems to make a big difference.

Part of the problem is that both Jay and everyone else we know seems to be extremely busy. Look at a college instructor's schedule, and you might see the 10-15 hours a week of class time, which seems like a light work load. But then you factor in prep time, and especially grading time, and the weekly hours jump up to 30-60. Add in the apparent faculty/staff shortages this term, which mean that many people are teaching "overload", or more than the usual 12 credits/term, and you end up with a definite lack of time for socializing.

Most of my recent conversations have been more snippets and sound bites, tossed out while running down the hall or past another faculty member's office. I can't remember the last time I had a sit down conversation with another adult with actual listening involved. (Though I did get a little fix of that while visiting K2 down in NYC.) So much for the slower pace of life in rural Vermont.

I've been so bogged down with grading my backlog of assignments for the midterm progress report deadline this week that I haven't had time for the outlets that keep me sane: this blog, my writing, my critique circle, good pleasure reading, and all the other little creative things that stretch my brain. The only thing I have kept up with (mostly) is my exercise schedule. The plan this term was to get a minimum of 6 1/2 hours of exercise each week. I've pretty much stuck to that - with nice results in terms of physical health and fitness - but that, too, takes away from my creative time. And for my mental health, that creative time is essential.

So what I've decided to do is this: I will schedule a certain number of hours on specific days to grade student work. I will not skip those times (procrastination is part of the problem) nor will I grade outside those times (must set boundaries). As for the balance of mental and physical exercise... I'm still trying to figure out how to strike a balance.

I've started mentoring at one of the local middle schools - I meet with a seventh grade girl once a week at lunch - and have volunteered to advise the second attempt at a Women at OurCollege group. (Last year, the advisor was a bit too... aggressive and scared away most of the interested women before the group could get off the ground. We're starting with a more social gathering type group, to branch out into specific discussion and action meetings as everyone gets more comfortable with the idea.) I'm hoping both of these actvities will help me feel more connected and not just stretched further.

(Oh - and it looks like I missed my 4 year blogoversary last week. Four years...)

Gasp

Drowning in midterm grading.

Gasp.

Must find a more efficient way to grade 35 mediocre to crap papers.

Gasp.

By this time in past semesters, I've been down to 20 students or less.

Gasp.

I think I got spoiled by small class sizes last year.

Gasp.

Not that I want the students to go away.

Gasp.

But the non-participators with attitude problems?

Gasp.

Them, I would not miss.

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.

Ugh... They Got Me

Freshmen are the kindergartners of college. Germs galore. I've been fighting off the current plague for the last week, but this time, they got me good.

So welcome back phlegm, welcome back fever, welcome back headaches and sore throat.

All I can say is better this week than next. I'm heading to NYC next Thursday to see how the other half lives. Do not want to be sick while traveling. Been there, done that, no thanks.

I am a lame blogger.

But I am really pathetic right now. You should see my sad, swollen puppydog eyes. Oops. I left out "bloodshot".

Ugh.

Appalled doesn't cover it

So. My students.

Sigh.

I assigned a short essay about the author's reasons for not changing her name when she got married, and offers several reasons why women decide to either keep their last names, take their husband's last name, or find a solution in the middle (hyphenating, merging, etc.) (I'm not including author name or title because I don't want this to turn up in a search...)

The writing part of the assignment was to "state your opinion on whether women should take their husband's names, explain your opinion, and explain why you agree or disagree with the specific points the author makes". So, naturally, most of the students failed to answer the whole question, but that's not what sickened me.

Some examples (typos uncorrected):

"Women should not disrespeck men by refusing to change."

"...talking back to some one who calls you the wrong name is rood and disrespectfull"

"...if a women does not let her husband have the family name she must not be ready for marriage"

"In a way he did adopt her because after he asked for her hand in marriage he takes care of her and gives her a place to live and loves her.

"She is leaving one family and joining another family because your father does give the bride away to the husbands family at the wedding."

"If you correct people it can be rude and leave everyone feeling awkward."

"I think she makes some good points, but she sounds too much like a feminist."

:the sound of kate weeping:

So, according to my students, women should be seen and not heard, other people's comfort is more important than a woman's wishes or individuality, fathers own their daughters, husbands own their wives, women need someone to provide for them at all times, and feminist is a bad word. Brilliant.

In their defense, most of these students come from rural, low-income families, and most of their parents never attended college - in some cases, parents didn't even finish high school. So I'm not dealing with the most worldly people. And they're young - their opinions are more likely to be their parents' opinions than their own right now.

But still.

I actually gagged as I read these papers, and I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't grading on opinion - only on whether the questions were all answered with adequate support.

But still.

What century is this?

Sigh.