Random Thoughts

Switching Gears

Nancy McKeand — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:40:49 +0000

After years of trying to incorporate more technology into my teaching, I find myself having to rethink everything. In my current position, I have access to very little technology and my students have access to even less.

I am looking forward to the challenge. How can I adapt my teaching to this new environment? How can I help my students meet their goals of obtaining their GEDs? I am very fortunate to have some excellent colleagues to learn from and to bounce ideas off of.

I actually look forward to going to work each day! What a change!

Congratulations to Connie Willis!

Nancy McKeand — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:59:07 +0000

Catching up on some blogs this afternoon, I was overjoyed to read that Connie Willis has been named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Ms. Willis is a great writer and a fabulous storyteller. She really deserves this honor! If you haven’t read her work, you should.

2012 Reading

Nancy McKeand — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:54:41 +0000

Usually by this time in January I have read three or four books. This year, with a move and starting a new job, I have only finished one book. I hope this situation will improve as things calm down a bit. We’ll see.

I have decided that this year I will read one non-fiction book and one classic for every modern novel that I read. At least that is the plan! I don’t know if I will stick with it or not, but I hope so.

2011 Reading

Nancy McKeand — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:49:20 +0000

Well, my goal of 100 books and 45000 pages remains unmet. I read 85 books and an total of 32,778 pages. I read books by 54 authors. I am actually quite pleased with this!

I am also pleased that I began reading more fantasy this year. Goodkind and Salvatore are favorites, but I have enjoyed all of the fantasy I have read. I look forward to finishing the Sword of truth series and to reading a lot more fantasy in 2012.

Looking forward, I expect to read an even more eclectic selection of books. I am planning to read a lot of classics I have never read in addition to the other books I tackle. I think it will be a good year!

December Reading

Nancy McKeand — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:14:04 +0000

In December I read a total of 2598 pages. It is due to riding in the car a lot, I think. But anyway… I read

The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke

Killing Floor by Lee Child

Bishop as Pawn by William X. Kienzle

Worth Dying For by Lee Child

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

The Lighthouse by PD James

Many of the books were pretty standard for me: Lee Child, James Lee Burke, and PD James. These were all excellent examples of why I read these authors.

The Crichton was unusual, but I like pirate stories, so I read it. It was good, too. I kept seeing Errol Flynn escaping from one disaster after another. It was fun!

The Kienzle book was the second one I have read by him. I first discovered him when I worked at the seminary college in Louisiana, but I hadn’t stumbled across another one since then. I enjoy reading about the Catholic Church, so I enjoyed this book a lot.

The month and the year are over. I will have to see what the final tally of pages was. And I think I am ready to make public my reading goals for 2012. Stay tuned.

Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you…

Nancy McKeand — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:54:51 +0000

Yes, I have finally found another job. As some of you may know, I was given a final one year contract at the university where I was employed. I didn’t want to have to come back for it, but nothing else worked out over the summer, so I returned for the fall semester. I am glad in some ways because I really learned a lot last fall. But it was not a fun place to be, and it really took a toll on me. Now, though, I am free of that and looking forward to the future.

What am I going to be doing? Well, I will be teaching in a women’s prison. It is something I have thought about for a long time, and things have finally worked out for me to do it. I start January 3, so we are going crazy trying to get me ready to move and finding a place for me to move to.

Great advice for writing teachers

Nancy McKeand — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:44:25 +0000

Now that I am not going to be teaching developmental writing anymore, I found a post with advice for writing teachers that I can really agree with wholeheartedly.

Like the philosophy of the program I taught in, the writer says:

Grammar instruction by way of worksheets and rote memorization of rules does not work. If you are using grammar bell ringers, ask yourself if you see that learning transferred into their writing. It doesn’t happen.

Unfortunately, I don’t think what we did in that program helped much , either. It was apparent early on last semester that exposing students to sentence patterns and then expecting them to use them in their papers was only somewhat effective for some students. Most of my students correctly used compound sentences and compound subjects and compound predicates and other structures before we talked about them in class. As a matter of fact, some of them used them better before we talked about them in class than they did afterwards. Now, maybe I confused them unnecessarily, but maybe they just didn’t need to talk about those structures at all.

I was encouraged to continue reading and see that the advice offered agrees completely with my philosophy:

Write. Write. Then write some more. Students, even those struggling the most, typically have only a few real grammar issues that they need to learn and watch for. Find their individual issues through writing.

All of the students had a few basic problems that, had I been able to structure the class my way and work on these problems with individual students, I think we could have made more progress.

I know that part of the problem was that I was teaching the curriculum for the first time. And part of it was my strained relationship with the university and the department. But I wasted too much time teaching sentence patterns instead of having students write.

In my new job, I hope I will have the opportunity to help students improve their writing. If I do, I know I will do it by having them write and write and then write some more. It is the only way!

By the way, the post has a great handout on grammar and style that I think would be very helpful for the students I used to have. I may try it with the new ones, too.

Some direction for my reading

Nancy McKeand — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:27:55 +0000

I have gotten a little help with my reading from, of all people, Neil deGrasse Tyson. No, he didn’t really say, “Hey, Nancy, I think you should read these books.” But he answered a question: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” I figure his thoughts on this topic are probably something I should consider. When I read the list, posted on Open Culture, I decided I would include these eight in my 2012 reading. The 8 books, along with Open Culture‘s links to where to get them for free and Dr. Tyson’s teasers about why they are important, are:

1.) The Bible (eBook) - “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”

2.) The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”

3.) On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”

4.) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”

5.) The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”

6.) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”

7.) The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”

8.) The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”

While I do not expect these 8 books will take me all year to read, I want to include them in my reading in 2012.

What to read…

Nancy McKeand — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:50:19 +0000

As the year draws to a close, I know that I should be thinking about my reading goals for next year. I usually have that decision made long before now, but this year somehow I haven’t been able to focus on it yet.

I don’t think I want to set a goal of a certain number of books. I have done that for three years now and it seems like it is time to do something else. I tried a page goal this year, too, but I don’t know that I like it any better than a book goal.

I am thinking about reading series this year — finishing off series I have started or reading all the books by certain authors or something like that. Maybe just books by certain authors. But I don’t know.

Any suggestions?

End of the semester

Nancy McKeand — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:07:08 +0000

I just returned from graduation and all my grades are in. The semester is over. I must admit that I am very glad! I enjoyed my students tremendously, but it was a very stressful semester. I felt totally cut off from the world outside of my job because of the amount of time and energy it took. Now I am eagerly looking forward to catching up on reading blogs, on working on the novel, and on everything else I have put off since August.

It feels good to be able to breathe again!