I am a legend in my own time

From a student evaluation:
"This class was as awful and painful as everyone's says."

I am not familiar with Everyone's says, but apparently, it's pretty bad.

On a serious note, I do agree with all of the "How could this class be made better" comments. Every once in a while, you do have the random student that goes off on you, but in general, I have been impressed with the ability of my students to offer substantive feedback on what works and what doesn't in a class.

My take on a Christmas Classic

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Professor Version

It's the most wonderful time of the year!
With the students appealing the grades they're receiving, 
"What's with this F?"
It's the most wonderful time of the year.

It's the hap-happiest season of all!
The finals aren't graded, the faculty's jaded,
And students I've not seen since fall!
It's the hap-happiest season of all!

There'll be stories of sickness
And grandmas who've kicked it
And slide-offs into the snow.
Academic suspension and
Scholarship tension and
Homework from long, long ago!


It's the most wonderful time of the year
My patience is fading,
I'll finish my grading
When students aren't here!
It's the most wonderful time of the year!

There'll be technology crashes
And tears on the lashes,
And deadlines that they didn't know.
The roommate's psychotic,
The boyfriend's hypnotic and
He just would not let her goooooooo!


It's the most wonderful time of the year
There is much celebrating 
I've finished my grading 
And I'm on my break! It's the most wonderful time
It's the most wonderful time
It's the most wonderful time
It's the most wonderful time of the year!


Honestly, I love about 99% of my students.  And I love the other 1% because it's a commandment. Every once in a while, I just have to write a song. It's who I am.

I am so boring

What have I been up to for the last few days?

• Got my diploma framed.
• Wrote on bananas with toothpicks. One said my son's name. The other said, "Eat me."
• Much crafting for presents. Pictures will show up when the gifts have been given so as to not ruin any surprises.
• Spent more than two hands worth of hours working on a syllabus. The course is being completely redesigned to take into account a new prerequisite sequence, so even though I've been teaching it for the last two years, it's like designing from scratch. New textbooks, new material, the whole shebang.

That doesn't sound like much, but I've been working what feels like non-stop. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to course design so that's always a much longer process than it would be for some other people. I do love it though. I love planning the perfect semester, where all the projects work perfectly, and all the students lack attitutde problems.

Oh, I got an email from my dean about my student evaluations. I had one student just go after me in a way that was quite upsetting. He just wanted to let me know that I'm a great teacher, and it was obvious that someone had it out for me, but to not worry, because it happens to everybody once in a while. Just one more reason why I love my dean.

Sorta Productive Saturday!

My fibro was acting up today, so I didn't do much physical stuff. GeekBoy took a bunch of stuff to the DI today, so that was good.

I redesigned a course that I haven't taught in five years today. Wow, that makes it seem like I've been teaching for a long time. I'm really excited about getting to teach it. It's on the presidency, and what an interesting time it's going to be teaching that course right now.

I also synched all the music that I have purchased on three separate computers onto my laptop, so now I have all my happy music in one place.

And, I bought these earrings a few years ago, but I never wore them because the ear wires were super long and dangly and they just bothered me. So today I swapped out the ear wires with ones that I like, so it's like having a brand new pair of earrings.

First Day

And the promise of perfection is gone.

How old I do I have to be for students to realize that I really do know what I'm talking about?

Last Day

Today is the last day before the start of the new semester. I love this day. Stacks of syllabi are in neat rows on my desk, calmly waiting, with the promise of a perfect semester wafting off of them like the fumes from old mimeographed copies.

They hold the possibility of a perfect semester, of the perfectly designed assignment, of the perfect learning environment.

Tomorrow, or the day after that, the syllabi will be stuffed in backpacks, creased and forgotten. At the end of the semester students will bewail their lack of knowledge of deadlines and guidelines, having long forgotten these few pages and their hope for a new leaf being turned in the pursuit of academic excellence. Students will become more than a name on a sheet, a photo on a printout, a head to count. There will be irritations and frustrations; dropped classes, dropped books, dropped balls; reluctance, refusal, and remonstration.

But today, there is still the possibility of perfection.

Today, it's just me and my syllabi.

Tomorrow, the real world begins again.

One of those moments

I had one of those moments today that make all the grading, and whining emails, and entitled students worth it.

I had students design and complete an experiment in their research class this semester. They ran a classical experimental design with a control group and two different experimental groups. They are analyzing the data now, and I'm so impressed with the work that they have done. They are presenting their research in class on Thursday, and I want to talk to them about presenting it at a conference. Their findings are really interesting and relevant, and I think it would be great for them to get some additional exposure. Watching undergraduates turn in to researchers has been exhilarating.

Three preps

I teach a 4-4-4 load with three preps a semester. Next semester I have assigned new texts in two of my preps. I am adding substantial new readings to the other prep. Two of the classes will have completely new assignments. The third class, in which two of the three texts are new, also has new minor assignments.

My life would be so much easier if I didn't have a commitment to pedagogical excellence.

Time between blog posts is directly proportional to amount of chaos in life

I'm over half way through my first semester teaching a four class load with three preps. I'm still writing my dissertation. I have a two year old who is dealing with institutionalized care for the first time ever, with the complete assault that is on his immune system.

School is going well. I'm hearing good feedback through unofficial back channels. My students are almost all performing well and trying to master some difficult concepts. As Angry Professor says, trying to teach statistics to social science majors tends to color your outlook somewhat. It's been interesting teaching a teaching university rather than a research university. The demands on my time are very different, and the role I am expected to play as mentor is one for which I have never received official training, either in my graduate program or professionally. There is an expectation of an open door policy here outside of official office hours, so if I'm in my office, I'm available. And I'm supposed to be in my office every day. Students here have been taught that professors are always available and willing to talk. They stop in to chat about all sorts of questions. That's completely different from the attitude I had about my professors. I was never in their offices without a specific question, and I left as soon as it was answered.

The nice side effect of this is that I am finding out how much I enjoy collaborating with students. In all of the classes I teach I get to help students think about how they think, and watching them grappling with big normative questions and coming up with new and interesting ways of looking at the world for them to go and explore.

That said, there has been a definite learning curve. I've changed my texts for all three classes next semester, and am going to be dramatically reorganizing two of them. That's what I get to do over the winter break. I've been smart enough to keep a text file for each class entitled "What to Change for Next Semester" so I won't have to go back and wrack my memory trying to remember all the good ideas I've had.

All of this has been exacerbated by a sick little boy. He got the stomach flu last week and didn't eat for five days. And then it turned into an ear infection. He's on two separate types of antibiotics trying to get it to clear up. You know it's bad when I can track his improvement by counting the number of q-tips I am using to clean out the discharge so I can get the eardrops in far enough that they will do any good. (Note: we've topped out at four - both ends.) We've already dealt with pink eye. I'm hoping that once he is exposed to everything that his immune system will cut him a break next semester and he won't spend so much time feeling crappy.

And even with all this, I'm still making slow progress on my dissertation. I keep telling myself that over Thanksgiving break I'll get a lot of it done. That never really worked as an undergraduate. I wonder if it will work now.

First day of classes

Today was the first day of classes. The registrar's server went down. The city decided that it would be a good day to resurface all the city streets surrounding the campus. A faculty member made vaguely ominous warnings about one of my students. I walked into a closet. The class website turned all my uploaded content into html laden gobbledygook.

Yeah.

Hopefully tomorrow will go smoother.

Meaningful assessment

I've been thinking about how to develop meaningful assessments for my courses this week.

Cooper's preschool has been learning the color red this week. Last night he demonstrated mastery of this concept by picking all the red M&Ms out of my bag of M&Ms and eating them.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to develop meaningful assessments for my courses that involve M&Ms.

Student e-mails are a source of joy.

I just had a student email me saying, "I missed class on Monday. Can you tell me what I missed? Also, what is this "Reading for Wednesday" on the class website?"

Ummm, it's the reading you need to do for Wednesday. I thought the title was self-explanatory, but no.

It all balances out...hopefully

Today was a great teaching day. Lots of participation, lots of interest in the topic, lots of energy. That's good because the papers I graded over the weekend made me cranky. I think they hit every one of my pet peeves:

1. Turning in an early draft for feedback, and then not changing any of the things that I pointed out in your final draft. Thanks for wasting my time.
2. Misuse of the word bias. After I gave them all a copy of New Kid's open letter on the topic and we went over it extensively in class.
3. Lack of evidence. That's nice that you think that, but why do you think that?
4. Lack of research, which lead the to the inability to make two and two add up to four. They had the first two, but they couldn't find the other two, which made their papers add up to around 3.2.

Oh well, extensive commenting and discussion of their papers in class will hopefully result in a better second set of papers.

You never can tell

My class last semester was my most difficult one ever. I had a hard time connecting with the students. Many of them never talked. Part of the problem was a new text book that I wasn't particularly comfortable with pedagogically, and my struggle to use that text upset the flow of the classroom throughout the semester.

I got my student evaluations today. I had been dreading these, because of how bad I had felt the semester had gone. I was floored when I read them, however. They were great. The students were remarkably perceptive about the problems with the text book, and were able to separate the problems with the text from the rest of the classroom experience. They had valid criticisms about that classroom experience that I can take an incorporate this semester. One student asked for more break out groups early on in the semester so she (why am I assuming this is a female?) could get to know other students and would feel more comfortable speaking out in the class as a whole during the semester. That's a great suggestion, and one I can incorporate now.

But they loved me. I couldn't have told that from the way they acted in class, but almost all of them thought I was great. The icing on the cake was this comment: "Without doubt one of the greatest teachers and influences of my life."

Wow. It doesn't get much better than that.

And yes, I know, teaching isn't supposed to be about ego, but anyone who has ever done it can tell you it's a performance, and who doesn't like a standing ovation at the end?