Nicole

Adulting

 Posted by on Mon, 9/26 at 2:40pm  reflection  No Responses »
Sep 262016
 

I have to say that I have loved my grad school experience so far.  I am constantly amazed at how drastically my day to day life has changed over the course of a few days time.  I went from my last day of work on a Saturday into orientation the following Monday.  My life hasn’t been the same since.  I have loved everything about the experience, even though at times I might gripe, I am honestly the happiest I have been in a long time.  I come out of every class a little bit more confident than the last and I have gotten the hang of the work load in 6700.  The only thing lacking in my experience right now is actual literature.  I hear other GTAs discussing books that they are reading and I really miss that aspect of my college experience.  I know it will come later and that it would honestly be too much for me to handle at this point, but that doesn’t make me miss it any less.  I, like Conor, have also struggled to maintain a certain balance between school work, teacher work, and personal fun.  I feel like I have had many years to develop strategies to keep everything afloat (the busier, the better for me), but I have never experienced a work (and fun) load as heavy as I have in the past few weeks.  I hope the work (and the fun) continue because I honestly wouldn’t trade either. Well maybe I would trade HotEL, because it is basically like learning a foreign language, but I know I will come out better for having gone through it.

A Sea of C Students

 Posted by on Mon, 9/26 at 2:08pm  report & response  No Responses »
Sep 262016
 

In surfing through the Inside Higher Ed website I stumbled upon this article that caught my eye.  Written by John Warner, “The Roots of Those Not So Good C’s” (hyperlink below) discusses the potential causes of C students, particularly from his experience in teaching freshmen level writing courses.  I find this discussion engaging because I feel that at times that he is describing some of my exact students. Warner starts out his article with a surprising and very interesting fact by stating,”The news out of the University of Arizona that students who received a C in the required first-year writing course have a less than 50 percent likelihood of graduating…”  I found this so interesting because there was clearly a direct correlation made between this particular course that we are all currently teaching and how it can be an indicator of student success (or failure).  Due to the nature and size of our classes we may be the best poised teachers to see problems arise in our students.  We may additionally be best equipped to help guide them to successfully overcoming those problems, when such a feat is possible.

Warner discusses 5 potential causes for students being C students.  One of these is “lack of writing experience/substandard pre-college education” which definitely speaks to my students.  In discussion today my students brought up the fact that many of them have never been expected to write papers that are more than 2 MAYBE 3 pages in length.  Many of my students feel like they are flying blindly into the 4-5 page essays that we are expecting them to write.  This was a bit surprising to me and makes me look at my expectations in a new light.

The next potential cause that Warner discusses is “college transition problems.”  Under this headline Warner alludes to the “freedom” that college offers for students.  He basically talks about how students struggle to balance between school life and personal fun.  This point also hit home for me as I had a student tell me today that she made a bad decision to go out on Saturday night which caused her to miss both of her UCEW meetings that she had scheduled.  I know I should have had some sympathy for her but it was difficult for me.  I basically told her that she has to be responsible about the decisions she is making, and she seemed to already have learned her lesson from this experience so I felt that I did not need to belabor the point.

While Warner goes on to discuss 3 more potential causes for C students, the last one that I felt I related to was what he referred to as the “acute problem.”  He discusses this as a range of “minor” to “major” outside factors such as “illness or death of a loved one” or “homesickness.”  While I always take stories from students with a grain of salt (especially when they conveniently fall on the due date for a major assignment), I also feel like until they prove me wrong I have to give them the benefit of the doubt.  I have already had multiple students report to me that they have lost friends or family members, or are personally going through some kind of major issue.  While most of these students are doing okay with their course work, I can see the potential for them to be affected long-term by some of these issues and am currently doing everything I can to maintain a certain level of expectation while also remaining sensitive to their basic emotional needs.  This whole teaching thing is more complex than I could have ever imagined.  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be for me to maintain a fair balance of expectation in the classroom.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/roots-those-not-good-enough-cs

Designing a Calm Jealousy in Classroom Discussion: Mood and Means of Production

 Posted by on Mon, 9/26 at 1:12pm  remedy  No Responses »
Sep 262016
 

Last week I finally had a moment where I felt like I was able to connect with my students on a different level.  Having early classes I find that most of my students are half asleep for most of the class period, even through group assignments and discussions.  Aside from having them stand up and move around between activities I wasn’t really sure how to get them to wake up and be present.  I obviously avoid the dreaded lecture as much as possible, but I also felt that sometimes discussions were not engaging for most of them either.  During said class period I decided to do a thesis exercise with the class that engaged them on something other than the college experience.  Asking them to collectively come up with a topic unrelated to any of our readings, but rather something that was engaging to them, I found that both classes came up with the same topic: Sleep.  I then placed them into groups and asked the groups to come up with a thesis statement, 3 main points, and personal evidence to support these main points about sleep.  This led to a very surprising amount of engagement on their part.  It was clear that this was a subject that they were able to engage with and thus they were able to think in terms other than writing an academic essay.  This was a great exercise because they were able to see how their ability to connect with the topic led to clearer arguments and points being made.  It was probably the first moment that I had where I felt like I actually connected and got through to my students.  It was surprising to me that both classes came up with the same topic and that they were both engaged in the discussion.  This has gotten the ball rolling for me with my students and I feel like it opened the door for both of us to engage on a different, more productive level that wasn’t available prior to this exercise.  While the thoughts that led to this activity were my own, I found a useful website that suggests similar approaches to his problem:

http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-student-participation-tips

This website has a list of “10 smart ways to increase classroom participation”  one of which I mentioned earlier in this post: Physical activity.  When breaking students into groups for activities I have been asking students to get up and organize themselves in a line based on some ice-breaker type topic (birthday, first letter of last name, etc.), this has helped to get them moving and also breaks down some of the communication barriers between them.  I feel that both of these elements have helped to increase classroom participation and thus I feel that this “problem” in my classroom has lessened to some extent.