Finding some balance

I am one of those teachers who bends over backwards for her students.  Now that my kids are all gone, it fits into my life to do that.  My husband doesn’t object and he is big enough to take care of himself if he needs something.  But this semester I have a group of students who are extremely demanding.  They question every assignment grade.  They wanted to submit many drafts, with only the most minor of edits made.  And since I have more students than normal this semester, this has been a real problem.  I ended up spending all weekend every weekend working on stuff for school.  So I decided to make some changes.

Last week I explained to the group currently writing papers that I would look at three drafts and I would look at them on certain days.  If they wanted me to look at the draft, it had to be submitted before then.  So yesterday I looked at 20 drafts.  But that was it.  Of course, some students submitted a second draft before they read my comments, but I am ignoring those until I check drafts again on Wednesday.

I hope that this will help make the students more responsible and thoughtful about the work they turn in as well as help me find some balance between work and life.  We both need it!

The limits of a paper

In the travel literature class I am taking this semester we have read some very interesting pieces and, of course, we have written and will write a number of papers.  I love actual books, and I love writing in my notebook.  I even love composing and printing my papers for the professor.  But as I was checking ot some blogs this afternoon, I ran across a post by Graham with a video of Blue King Brown, an Australian group.  The song they are performing in the video directly applies to an article that I am reading and writing about right now.  Were my “paper” a blog post instead of 2-3 pages double spaced, I would include this song in my response to the article.

This is going to sound pretty pathetic, I am sure, but this is the first time I have really wanted to do a different kind of “paper”.  That means that it is the first time I have really understood how at least some of my students might want to do something different.  I thought I got it before, but this is absolutely the first time I have really felt limited by a piece of paper.

My challenge now, of course, is to find ways to allow, no really encourage, my students to break away from the traditional paper.

And on that note, my students in one class have been posting to their blogs again.  Some of them are really getting into this.  Links to their blogs can be found here.

Teacher inquiry

A friend and I are engaged in teacher inquiry this school year.  She is, so far at least, just looking at her classroom practice to see where it works and where it doesn’t.  I am working on differentiating instruction in one of my classes.  So what?  What makes this somewhat unusual, I think, is that she is a kindergarten teacher and I teach at the university.  But, we are both part of the High Pains Writing Project, so we know that she has things to offer me, and I have things to offer her.  We know that we can help each other become better teachers by sharing our knowledge and experience and even our questions.

This is proving to be an interesting experience.  I know that Dee has helped me see my own classroom more clearly than I was seeing it before.  My program is set up for students who are at a high intermediate or advanced level.  But this semester, I have some students who would qualify as high beginners.  I needed to do something.  I had started making adjustments a few weeks ago, but now that we have started this project, I am trying to expand my efforts and create something that I can use in the future when I encounter a similar situation.  It is exciting.  And, as always, it is really rewarding to talk with another professional about my practice.

Mid-semester break

Here we are, halfway through the semester.  I don’t remember any semester that has left me needing a break as much as this one has.  For the first time, I am thinking of imposing an attendance policy similar to what the math department has – the equivalent of 2 weeks’ worth of absences means you fail the course.  Attendance has never been a problem for me in university level ESL until now.  On top of that, simplifying my expectations for the courses does not seem to have helped.  Maybe I do need to go back and teach simple sentences.

Anyway… I am really trying to take a break from it here.  But I can’t stop thinking and trying to come up with answers.  I am hoping that I can gain a little perspective.  I need it!

Things are looking up technology-wise

I am no longer using Blackboard with my students.  I discovered quite by accident that there is a small pilot Moodle program on campus, and I have been allowed to join it.

I have used Moodle for a number of years, both in my former job and in my volunteer teaching for an overseas university.  I haven’t really had to learn how to use it, which is nice, but I have been pleasantly surprised by how easily my students have adapted to it.  They are already, after about 30 hours, telling me how much they like it.

So suddenly, I feel like a tremendous burden has been lifted from my shoulders!  Maybe I can make it through the semester after all!

Follow-up on my writing class

I have to say that this class, while not doing great, seems to be getting the idea.  We wrote two more paragraphs about our pictures in class on Friday.  I tried to get them to look at totally different things in the pictures each time.  For the most part they were able to do that.  Homework for Monday is to revise the three paragraphs and either rewrite them or type them and print them out.  Monday we are going to cut the paragraphs apart and order them.  Then we will work on transitions.

I know this is basic.  I am not doing anything new here.  But I was not expecting to have to go this with my students here.  I shouldn’t have to, in theory.  But it is going well.  I am happy.  It is better than asking them to do something they have not a chance in the world of being able to do!

Pulling back

This semester has been really difficult.   I finally realized last week that I cannot have my academic reading and writing class write a variety of essays this semester because many of the students cannot even write a sentence in English. At first I thought it would get better once they got acclimated.  But I still have students who don’t understand what I am saying when I talk to them.  I get blank stares and nods rather than any kind of response.

So I decided yesterday to really pull back and focus on basics.  In the reading and writing class, for instance, we looked at paragraphs today — what they are and how to write them.  I used a couple Flickr creative commons licensed photos and took them through writing a very brief descriptive paragraph about each one.  We talked about topic sentences and supporting details.  It almost looked like they got it.  But when I put them in groups of four to do the same activity with different photos, three of the five groups were unable to do it.  They couldn’t write a topic sentence.

I had hoped to have them choose their own pictures and write descriptive paragraphs for homework, but I pulled back even from that.  Instead, they are just to find a picture of the country they have been reading about and then write one sentence that tells what they see in the picture.  If they are all able to do that for Wednesday, we will work on taking that sentence and turning it into a paragraph.

I am not, at this point, even worrying about the grammar.  For most of them that will be another major hurdle.  I don’t think any of us are up to it at the moment.

Why am I so slow to figure things out?

It seems that Itake forever to figure things out.  Take thesis statements, for example.  Or rather, take teaching thesis statements.  I was having no luck at all getting my student to understand what I was talking about.  Then on Monday I showed them a couple videos, and suddenly a bunch of them really understood what I was talking about.

This was the first one: 

And this was the second:

At the end of these two short videos, most of my students were able to write halfway decent thesis statements.

Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

Using Linux in Portales

Yesterday was Software Freedom Day, and we celebrated it in Portales with a Linux Installfest at the univesity.  We had 7 different computers set up with different varieties of Linux on them and gave people an opportunity to play with them.  There weren’t a lot of people who came, but the ones that did seemed to be happy to have a chance to see Linux in action.

If you haven’t tried Linux, why not check it out?

What Higher Ed can learn from TED

A post over at Inside Higher Ed by Joshua Kim explains why Higher Ed would benefit from the TED approach to knowledge and sharing knowledge.

Kim mentions that these talks can guide educators as to

the optimal length, timing, pace and content of the lecture

TED talks are always very interesting.  The content is engaging.  The presentation is inviting.  I hadn’t really thought about this before since I seldom lecture, but I think I will go back and look at some of the talks to examine the format of the lectures.  It is good information to have.

Kim, though, goes on to discuss even more important things that can be learned from TED talks.  They concern access.  TED talks are released under a Creative Commons license.  Kim discusses the actual license that they use, and I won’t go into it here, but he makes the comment that using this license

strikes a good balance between facilitating the diffusion of the content while protecting the integrity of the narrative.

The second point Kim makes the point that TED talks are made available in a variety of formats and from a number of sources.  He talks of listening to talk on his iPod and suggests that students would like to listen to our content on mobile devices as well.  He says

I strongly suspect that our students will grow accustomed to and prefer media that can be consumed on mobile devices (I know I have!).

There is, as Kim says, much that Higher Ed can learn from TED.  I don’t see it happening on an institutional level at my institution, though.  So all I can do is open my own content up as much as I can.  It is something that our current technological disasters are encouraging me to do, anyway.  So now I just need to really sit down and do something about it!