Unrelated but maybe not and then definitely not.

 Posted by on Sun, 11/20 at 2:55pm  Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 202016
 

This these are some biggies. Cover letters. Personal essays for applications to scholarships. Writing our bios for when we submit for publication.

It sounds daunting to me. Mystical. And it should be the furthest thing from it. So I want to share our experiences somewhat. We’re all working on a teaching philosophy in 6700 and all that theory is super but I want to know approaches to the businessy side of things. I’ll look in your posts for advice but anything I find I’ll post about.

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Actually about teaching, though, for reals.

I’ve been looking at the ideological kerfuffle, the sudden urge to teach ideology. Yes we need to talk about this. Sure. And I think that’ll have to come through from now on in our professional communications for a time to come. Do I need to only talk about my commonalities with the university’s ideology? What if I see things as systemically fucked and I’m trying to be the bug in the machine but not the rabbit eating the power cables? Forget about it in the classroom and in the office and in all my professional communications? I’m beginning to see that will be a fun, essential thing to consider before acting, but will come at the cost of there being times I won’t want to hold back. We’re freaking out about Trump right now and how he narrowly lost the popular vote. Now all these proud closet Trumpers and bona fide evangelists (I use this word to rag on the god-emperor jokes themselves), too are feeling like they won, and they did. But we think the people who won don’t like us, our peoples, or at least don’t vote that way.

And in case you haven’t read this, here’s a decent spot to start considering what you align with in academe-politics: http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Now-/238422

It’s there even if you did read it, too. It doesn’t go away.

Note Taking: The Marginalized Instructor

 Posted by on Wed, 10/12 at 1:53pm  Uncategorized  No Responses »
Oct 122016
 

I love taking notes. It’s sometimes the only thing keeping me from drooling all over my desk. I am better able to stay energized and focused when I am writing down what my professor is saying, or making quick comments about my own thoughts. When I first began graduate school, it took me a while to get used to taking notes of what OTHER STUDENTS say in class. In my seminar/workshop classes, I learned to value my peer’s statements as much as I valued my professor’s.

When I look out and see my students doodling in their notebooks, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I was a chronic doodler all throughout undergraduate school and it helped me focus when I was in danger of zoning out. However, as an instructor, I get a sinking feeling when I see their spirals and line tracings. When they do take notes, it is often on due dates (which they are inevitably confused about anyway) or the occasional class discussion. I prompt them to take notes, but without specific instructions on how to do this allusive activity, I fear they are not getting the most out of this useful process.

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, George Williams posted an article entitled, “Do Your Students Take Good Notes.” He includes several helpful articles about the note-taking process and how professors can facilitate activities to spur students on. He asks several helpful questions: “What do you do in your teaching to facilitate effective note-taking by your students? Do you have specific assignments that involve students’ notes? Do you lecture or facilitate discussions in ways that make note-taking easier?” (Williams).

I want to structure my classes in a note-taking-friendly way. A useful tactic I pulled from this article was to ask students during their one-on-one conference whether they had anything helpful in their notes when brainstorming.

http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/do-your-students-take-good-notes/62864

Stiffening and Suppression: Hairspray and the Savage

 Posted by on Wed, 9/14 at 1:53pm  Uncategorized  1 Response »
Sep 142016
 

These past few weeks have been eye-opening and draining. I feel that one of the hardest challenges I have faced has been the time I spend prepping for my class. It is these moments that send me into a frantic spiral as I worry about whether the students will understand my directions and explanations. I worry about whether they will understand the importance of this assignment and whether or not the assignment is actually important. I worry about whether they will laugh at the jokes and sarcastic remarks I try to smuggle into the dense content and discussions.  I keep hoping this feeling will go away–but we are several weeks into the semester and I still feel the late night dread and the early morning panic of lesson planning.

The classroom is a totally different story. I walk in and my worry goes away. I feel comfortable and in control when leading discussions, facilitating activities, and delivering brief lectures. It is the in-between time, this purgatory in my week between being a teacher and being a student, that gives me a conniption. My struggle is codified in my blog title.

“Stiffening and Suppression: Hairspray and the Savage” is indicative of my attempts to bring balance to my life as an educator and a student. When creating a student example paper heading, I used the website http://www.besttitlegenerator.com/ to generate a random title for my paper because I was tired of coming up with ideas and worrying about whether I would get a laugh out of my students. In the end, I had one student chuckle at what I thought was a hilarious example of a title for an academic article. I had been so excited about my carefully crafted example heading/title, but it took me all of 30 seconds to present it. It took them all of one rough draft to format it incorrectly–but that’s another rant for another day.

I’m not upset at the formatting errors, but rather at the amount of time it seems to take me to construct these educational artifacts. I want to become more competent and equipped to structure class activities and examples in a way that leans on my strengths in the classroom and makes the planning time a less stressful experience.