Dear All,
At long last, it seems that I have properly signed in and can now post to this blog. I hope that more of you will decide to participate in writing and that those who have already posted will post more. I cannot complain, however, as I have been negligent myself in getting this accomplished.
I'll only write a short piece tonight to get things back in gear. I'm at that moment in the semester where I've decided that everything I've done so far is wrong and that the students are suffering from my inability to give the proper assignments or to judge their papers with efficiency. Mostly this is because I'm looking up at 100+ papers with the threat of a new score appearing on Friday and the looming holidays. My students are more anxious than I've ever seen them -- even the good ones -- which is another cause for my fears. I know that both their fears and my own are mostly ridiculous, but their anxiety seems to be rubbing off on me. The more I try to play it cool, the more worried they are, the poorer they do, and the more anxious I get. It's quite a cycle.
This is my fifth year at Dominican College, my sixth teaching post-doctorate, and my fifteenth overall as a teacher. I've been given the opportunity to teach all kinds of crazy things, from Shakespeare to sci-fi to Latin to medieval lit. I must admit that I'm not sure I have any idea what I'm doing or where this all ends up. I hope that I've made them think -- some have told me that I have -- and that I've made them feel something about the literature -- exactly one has, and she is a bullshit artist. I see older professors begging for some kind of positive feedback from the students, and I worry about falling into that trap.
Don't get me wrong -- students have been kind in their reports about me. I've been told that I have "ill skillz" (no lie) and that I've made really boring stuff like Shakespeare momentarily interesting. I taught a once-a-week, three-hour, medieval-lit class on Thursday nights that filled, and it looks like I'll have a dozen students who'll take a chance on a 1-credit Octavia Butler class next semester. All of that feels good, and my superiors all seem pleased about the level of student interest. But I can't help but wondering how much of that is due to the fact that I don't like giving tests and my papers tend to be more on the "fun" side. Many of them clearly don't do the readings, and while they listen intently in class, I've got to wonder how much is sinking in. I did have a student recite a couple of lines of a sonnet she memorized in a class for me once, so maybe things are okay.
I promise you that any attempt to assure me that everything is probably okay will not work -- as a matter of fact, it may make things worse. If past semesters are any guide, I'll probably wallow in self-pity, fearing that I haven't given them enough homework until the final week, realize that I have a shitload of ungraded papers, curse the amount of work that I did assign, and then rush through it all to get it done in time for the grades to be in. And then I'll take a month off and start it all up again in January with the best of intentions. Shakespeare, medieval lit, and writing in the spring (with maybe some short classes of Tolkien and Butler): I promise it'll all be different next semester. (Yeah, right!!)
Rob
Rob: Three words: daily quote ID quizzes. Separates the wheat from the students who refuse to read. (But then you raise your standards, students flee, and you get asked why you are not a better teacher. I know the drill.)
ReplyDeleteI am routinely judged on a question on our student surveys that asks if mine was one of the more difficult courses a student has taken. I guess if I do my job poorly, communicate negligently, and leave students adrift, then, sure, my class will become difficult. Is that how I succeed on that question?
You are so eager to please, Rob. Too afraid of people saying bad stuff about you. The magic of tenure, though, is that you no longer care. Honestly. I know I do a great job and if somebody doubts me, that's their problem.
So when is your promotion review? Is it going on now??????
Let's get writing, everyone! Lots to talk about!
My tenure review is next year and we are one of the few school I know where tenure and promotion do not come together. I have to wait at least another year to get bumped up to Associate. Everyone keeps on telling me not to worry about tenure, but still I worry.
ReplyDeleteActually, since writing this, I've had a couple of conversations about insecurity with the students and how it's good NOT to have a firm footing in an understanding of literature -- at least not one so firm that it doesn't allow for further interpretation. I've promised myself that I won't be that prof that quizzes for everything. It doesn't really seem to push them to read; it just justifies lowering their grades even further. I'm going to try and go back to my policy of trying to let something sink in by supersaturation. We shall see.
When I assign reading and then I quiz on it, I find my students discussing plot points and characters as I enter the room. They're talking about the story or whatever before class so that they can pass the quiz. That almost always translates into a great discussion once we've used a bit of class time with a quiz. In short, my students almost always read what I assign. The quizzes are the things that make that happen. I use them also to teach students how to read. What I tend to ask for in quizzes are the things I'd like the students to notice and think about. I ask why a character did what s/he did, not just what color his or her shirt was. Lots of stuff out there talking about this. Here's an example:
ReplyDeletehttp://otl.du.edu/teaching-resources/motivating-students-to-do-the-readings/
Try it a few times to see.