Today I am 49. These birthdays that end in '9' are harder than the ones that end in zero, somehow. I remember angst at 29 and 39...
My mother (who grows more delightful every day) recently confided that she didn't think I looked close to 50 at all! Thanks Mom!
B cooked a wonderful surprise steak for me tonight, which we had with our own Peruvian (blue) potatoes (mashed) and fresh green beans. Still no hard frost: we could have had a salad of arugula and nasturtiums if I'd have gone out with the flashlight to find them. IT'S GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, PEOPLE.
Got a comment in the last entry from a friend of an old friend, now gone. Chris M was my age, and died way too early, of melanoma. Birthdays are a time for taking stock: I've been reading some old notes and thinking about things. We can't know when the Fates will snip our thread of life, so it's best to live "life to the lees" (Tennyson). Case in point: driving off to work today, B remarked how, in a pre-industrial time, we could have stopped to watch the magnificent sunrise unfold in all its glory - all purples and oranges and pinks. Awareness of that sunrise was my gift - as I stole glances at it, driving along at 75 mph in the wheel of life, I tried to live in that moment.
From the birthday girl: I recommend you all try to do the same, if only for a moment, every day.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
weird, wild week
This last week was really full of weirdness and transitions.
1. There's the weather - it snowed on Friday driving to work, and again this evening. I don't remember snow EVER here on the coast in Massachusetts in October. I haven't finished harvesting my garden or planting perennials yet!!
The heat in the house is full-on now and we are battening down the hatches (storm windows, Mortite). I look at the pile of clean clothes to be folded and it seems weird that I was wearing tank tops and teeshirts within the last week.
2. File under retrograde: I was asked to help with vetting candidates for the position I left in 2002. Little has changed there, and it is SO WEIRD to be back in all the Drama. It reaffirms my sense that I did the right thing by leaving. I could almost double my salary going back there - but I am having so much more fun now. And summers off!
3. It is mid-semester, and the grading stack looms large. I have worked all weekend on two encyclopedia articles (done!) and a reconfiguration of 3 lectures into a single lecture, with a "jigsaw" assignment for students. We'll see tomorrow (unless it is a snow day!) how that goes. It's a fractious class; my expectations are fairly low. Since I am teaching no new preps (although I am always updating), it's my goal to incorporate much more student activity. 100 minutes is WAAAAY too long for a lecture.
1. There's the weather - it snowed on Friday driving to work, and again this evening. I don't remember snow EVER here on the coast in Massachusetts in October. I haven't finished harvesting my garden or planting perennials yet!!
The heat in the house is full-on now and we are battening down the hatches (storm windows, Mortite). I look at the pile of clean clothes to be folded and it seems weird that I was wearing tank tops and teeshirts within the last week.
2. File under retrograde: I was asked to help with vetting candidates for the position I left in 2002. Little has changed there, and it is SO WEIRD to be back in all the Drama. It reaffirms my sense that I did the right thing by leaving. I could almost double my salary going back there - but I am having so much more fun now. And summers off!
3. It is mid-semester, and the grading stack looms large. I have worked all weekend on two encyclopedia articles (done!) and a reconfiguration of 3 lectures into a single lecture, with a "jigsaw" assignment for students. We'll see tomorrow (unless it is a snow day!) how that goes. It's a fractious class; my expectations are fairly low. Since I am teaching no new preps (although I am always updating), it's my goal to incorporate much more student activity. 100 minutes is WAAAAY too long for a lecture.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
which is more discouraging?
Friends, we have two options: the ill-prepared students; and the incompetent administrators.
Poor students, all they have been socialized to understand as "learning" is the memorization of terms. One bright young woman asked me today, "So, if I just memorize the class slides, I will do fine on the midterm, right?" I tried to explain about deep thinking, and applying ideas and concepts, and synthesis, but she looked a little blank.
I have seen my students making flashcards of terms we use often in class, for heaven's sake. So narrow a conception of learning: "as though to breathe were life."
Then on the other side of things, we have people who just aren't ready for primetime trying to do real jobs. There's the IT staff who fluffs off all reports of problems with "oh yeah, we're looking at that, we'll get back to you." (They never do.) There's the coordinator who responds to questions about how to find info about his program with, basically, well, just send out the info to everyone since we don't know how to reach our target population. There's the dean who never listens because his mind is busy working on the next riposte (or the next job opp?). It's a pathetic, not-ready-for-real-life group and sometimes I just want to scream out in search of competence. Do your fucking jobs, people: is that too much to expect??
Poor students, all they have been socialized to understand as "learning" is the memorization of terms. One bright young woman asked me today, "So, if I just memorize the class slides, I will do fine on the midterm, right?" I tried to explain about deep thinking, and applying ideas and concepts, and synthesis, but she looked a little blank.
I have seen my students making flashcards of terms we use often in class, for heaven's sake. So narrow a conception of learning: "as though to breathe were life."
Then on the other side of things, we have people who just aren't ready for primetime trying to do real jobs. There's the IT staff who fluffs off all reports of problems with "oh yeah, we're looking at that, we'll get back to you." (They never do.) There's the coordinator who responds to questions about how to find info about his program with, basically, well, just send out the info to everyone since we don't know how to reach our target population. There's the dean who never listens because his mind is busy working on the next riposte (or the next job opp?). It's a pathetic, not-ready-for-real-life group and sometimes I just want to scream out in search of competence. Do your fucking jobs, people: is that too much to expect??
Sunday, October 11, 2009
chalk-n-talk versus powerpoint
Teaching seems more manageable lately than when I wrote my last entry. But there are other part of life that have been occupying my time: guests from overseas; contract writing assignments; family events; buttoning up the yard for winter.
I've been working this evening on a class session on cultural geography. I have a bunch of slides from previous iterations, and I'm thinking about taking out the very "texty" slides and talking to those points instead. Some of my more "progressive" colleagues pooh-pooh PowerPoint, and God knows, there is lots to ridicule there. I've been trying to shift my ppt use to things I can neither say nor draw/write on the blackboard. Thus: maps, charts, photos, links to video clips, etc. I usually don't annotate them very well in the slides (I have to redo this when I use them in online courses) because they are supposed to be complements to the activities in-class, for the bodies in-class, not a substitute for coming to class. That is, if you skip my class and think you can get all the "Material" from the slides posted online, well, poor sad you. That's not the way I roll.
Yet I am always tempted to write what I call "organizer" slides: headers with 3-5 bullets that show in outline form what I am about to talk about. I talk through these too, but I always feel that SEEING it in words reinforces what I am saying out loud. Lately I have been replacing these organizer slides with writing on the board. I guess my thinking is that it seems more spontaneous and dynamic (although frankly it's all scripted, like 90% of what I teach) and that it engages students differently because it's happening in real time, like a performance, right in front of them.
But then the chalk dust (I wear a lot of black, so there's that), and my poor handwriting. Is chalk-n-talk really qualitatively different than a slide of the same information?
I've been working this evening on a class session on cultural geography. I have a bunch of slides from previous iterations, and I'm thinking about taking out the very "texty" slides and talking to those points instead. Some of my more "progressive" colleagues pooh-pooh PowerPoint, and God knows, there is lots to ridicule there. I've been trying to shift my ppt use to things I can neither say nor draw/write on the blackboard. Thus: maps, charts, photos, links to video clips, etc. I usually don't annotate them very well in the slides (I have to redo this when I use them in online courses) because they are supposed to be complements to the activities in-class, for the bodies in-class, not a substitute for coming to class. That is, if you skip my class and think you can get all the "Material" from the slides posted online, well, poor sad you. That's not the way I roll.
Yet I am always tempted to write what I call "organizer" slides: headers with 3-5 bullets that show in outline form what I am about to talk about. I talk through these too, but I always feel that SEEING it in words reinforces what I am saying out loud. Lately I have been replacing these organizer slides with writing on the board. I guess my thinking is that it seems more spontaneous and dynamic (although frankly it's all scripted, like 90% of what I teach) and that it engages students differently because it's happening in real time, like a performance, right in front of them.
But then the chalk dust (I wear a lot of black, so there's that), and my poor handwriting. Is chalk-n-talk really qualitatively different than a slide of the same information?
Sunday, September 27, 2009
treadmill
I am experiencing now what I experienced for years working in local government: that treadmill feeling in which you struggle to get through every day with enough preparation and performance not to embarass yourself or your organization, and stay up too late all the while craving the escape of sleep, only to wake far too early only to do it all over again.
This for 5 days, then the sweet, sweet release of the weekend. On Friday afternoon you feel great, thinking about all the work you'll achieve in 2 days off. You take Friday night off. On Saturday you try to catch up with some household stuff, and the day flies by. On Sunday you wake up in mild panic and before you know it, it's evening and you are facing piles of stuff that can't possibly be finished, leaving you with the same old catch-up routine in the week to come.
If all I were doing was course prep, my workload would be manageable and even enjoyable, because I love just about everything (except grading) about teaching. I love writing curriculum plans and lesson plans. I love thinking up classroom exercises to make students apply and think about the readings and concepts. I love just talking to students.
But now that I'm on the tenure track, I am trying to do so much more: co-authoring a textbook; writing encyclopedia articles; trying to finish research for a paper to be given in November; trying to write up articles from my dissertation; supervising an independent study project; leading a study trip next spring. It's just TOO MUCH.
I always think that better organization will get me through it. Yet truthfully: the days roll by and mid-December will come, and then what is done is done; what is not done will not be done. The delight of the academic is in starting fresh every 4 months.
This for 5 days, then the sweet, sweet release of the weekend. On Friday afternoon you feel great, thinking about all the work you'll achieve in 2 days off. You take Friday night off. On Saturday you try to catch up with some household stuff, and the day flies by. On Sunday you wake up in mild panic and before you know it, it's evening and you are facing piles of stuff that can't possibly be finished, leaving you with the same old catch-up routine in the week to come.
If all I were doing was course prep, my workload would be manageable and even enjoyable, because I love just about everything (except grading) about teaching. I love writing curriculum plans and lesson plans. I love thinking up classroom exercises to make students apply and think about the readings and concepts. I love just talking to students.
But now that I'm on the tenure track, I am trying to do so much more: co-authoring a textbook; writing encyclopedia articles; trying to finish research for a paper to be given in November; trying to write up articles from my dissertation; supervising an independent study project; leading a study trip next spring. It's just TOO MUCH.
I always think that better organization will get me through it. Yet truthfully: the days roll by and mid-December will come, and then what is done is done; what is not done will not be done. The delight of the academic is in starting fresh every 4 months.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
class and achievement
I confess to a certain wistfulness when I read the alumni publications of my undergrad college, especially articles about how undergrads have helped faculty refine and expand their research or develop new research directions. Could that ever happen in my professional life?? It seems we are talking about two parallel universes of higher education.
The majority of my students are in front of me because someone, somewhere, has convinced them that a college degree is a desirable (or necessary) accessory to a better life (usually meaning better-PAYING). This irritates me on two levels.
I am especially irked at the whiney assumption some students have that they are automatically disadvantaged because they go to state college instead of Ivy League. (That idea is being instilled in them by the Marxist element, and it's total bullshit.) (George Bush went to Yale; need I say more??) I believe that my students, if they READ the assignments, and think about them, and engage with their classmates and me in interrogating them, could get just as deep an education as the average student at the Ivy League.
The majority of my students are in front of me because someone, somewhere, has convinced them that a college degree is a desirable (or necessary) accessory to a better life (usually meaning better-PAYING). This irritates me on two levels.
I am especially irked at the whiney assumption some students have that they are automatically disadvantaged because they go to state college instead of Ivy League. (That idea is being instilled in them by the Marxist element, and it's total bullshit.) (George Bush went to Yale; need I say more??) I believe that my students, if they READ the assignments, and think about them, and engage with their classmates and me in interrogating them, could get just as deep an education as the average student at the Ivy League.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
NCLB: creating a new generation of sheep?
Really, I DO want to blog on a daily basis. But I've been a little freaked out lately by the onslaught of work (teaching prep, and the giant lurking shadow of Publish Or Perish) and trying to keep the household together too. B had the flu week before last (he is still sick with a cold) and I had a cold last week (I am still not 100% but a lot better). So the week before last I made some sort of soup every night (he has dental issues too).
Now we are on to solid food. Lobsters tonight!!
My human geog students are working on a demographics project involving retrieval of census data. I give them a little guidance for how to find what they need, but I wonder what would happen if I gave them NOTHING? I've had a couple inquiries along the lines of "could you send me the link to the data, I can't find it with your instructions," to which I gently respond that the goals of the assignment are partly about the skills of info-retrieval without a recipe or step-by step "then click this" type of listing.
It's only a couple of students so I shouldn't generalize, but I have found lack of creative problem-solving and ability to deal with the unknown to be characteristic of today's college students. Sometimes, in my more cynical and paranoiac moments, I theorize that the rationale for standardized testing (like the MCAS in MA) has nothing whatsoever to do with knowledge or learning or competence, and has everything to do with socializing a population to be compliant, fill-in-the-bubble oriented, and totally incapable, by training, of independent, critical, or creative thinking. Just what a repressive, totalitarian, controlling Republican administration would want.
Please tell me I am wrong about this. Please?
Now we are on to solid food. Lobsters tonight!!
My human geog students are working on a demographics project involving retrieval of census data. I give them a little guidance for how to find what they need, but I wonder what would happen if I gave them NOTHING? I've had a couple inquiries along the lines of "could you send me the link to the data, I can't find it with your instructions," to which I gently respond that the goals of the assignment are partly about the skills of info-retrieval without a recipe or step-by step "then click this" type of listing.
It's only a couple of students so I shouldn't generalize, but I have found lack of creative problem-solving and ability to deal with the unknown to be characteristic of today's college students. Sometimes, in my more cynical and paranoiac moments, I theorize that the rationale for standardized testing (like the MCAS in MA) has nothing whatsoever to do with knowledge or learning or competence, and has everything to do with socializing a population to be compliant, fill-in-the-bubble oriented, and totally incapable, by training, of independent, critical, or creative thinking. Just what a repressive, totalitarian, controlling Republican administration would want.
Please tell me I am wrong about this. Please?
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