Just venting

I have no idea what my brain has been doing while I've been sleeping, but I've woken up with songs stuck in my head the last few days and also have snippets of dream imagery pop up as I go about my day. I have had "Larry Boy" from a Vegggietales show stuck in my head all morning. It was "Love Hurts" by Nazareth all day yesterday. There's something cathartic about knowing I may have gotten one of those songs stuck in someone else's head just by mentioning them...of course, it hasn't helped to get the song out of mine yet... : (

The Progress of my classes so far this semester:
Mid-term is as likely a time as any other to pause to think about how things are going. It's interesting that the one class that I will not be teaching in Spring 2008 is the one that I am most happy with at the moment.
ENG 005: Basic Writing
My 005 classes have really surprised me this semester. I think I'm at the usual drop-rate by now, but the ones who remain are stronger than in past semesters. There are many who already strike me as students who will skip over 006 and we've only written 2 papers. It makes me excited to think of what they'll do in the remaining two papers. The students who are not succeeding at the moment also seem to admit that it is their own fault that they haven't progressed as much as they or I would like them to. I wish all students had their maturity level.
ENG 101: Learning Community Rhet. Comp I
I'm sad to say Denise and I felt the need to do a mini-intervention yesterday. I think there was a lot of frustration all around. I was really sad and cranky after the first final papers came in. They averaged below a C+, and that was with Denise saying I had been generous in some of the grades. It seems like we have a number of students who are A-/B+ writers who did not "bring it" in the first batch of graded essays. That really confused me because their first drafts looked strong, but then the revision that was needed didn't get done or strange decisions were made during the revision process. There don't seem to be any students right in the middle either. It seems like the grades fell into the B+ or D categories. That means there's a whole group of students who are learning in the classes, but it's not showing in college-level writing yet. And that scares me!

So, we surveyed students to find out how much work they are putting into the classes. A little under half of them admitted to spending under 3 hours a week on preparing for the two classes! 3 hours a week is what students should spend on one college course alone, minimum! No wonder I was disappointed with the papers. I spent at least 6 hours grading the 17 papers that were turned in. And that reminds me-- the vibe I got from Sue McClure (our intervention facilitator) was that for the students to put more effort into the homework, we're probably going to have to grade more of it on a regular basis. Oh, how I do not want to do that. I hate book-keeping. Hate hate hate it. For several reasons. First, it cuts into time for what I consider to be my real work: offering useful comments on writing and preparing lessons. Second, it just seems so high school-ish. Or even junior high-ish. In the real world, people are not going to micromanage every little task you are assigned. And I don't want to either. Another important reason is that it often makes the work seem even more like busywork. It turns learning into a performance and a task-list instead of an intuitive instrinsic thing and I HATE that. Loathe it even more than I loathe the paperwork portion of it. Want to smash thinking like that into a little pulp. A student wrote me to say she was "working her ass off" to complete assignments for the class. I feel the same way about preparing for this class and integrating it with the other one and then to add to that micromanaging 18 students' blogs and daily work to verify that they are doing what we just want them to do anyway so they can learn more effectively and fully. There's got to be a better way.

ENG 102: Rhet Comp II...i.e. the research class
It's amazing what night and day 101 and 102 are, despite there being only a semester's difference between the two classes. In 101, some allowance has to be made for the fact that this is likely many of the students' first college semester, and that results in rules and regulations and homework grading (see above). In 102, they have more of a "been there. done that" aura. I completely relax with my 2:00 102 class. They tell me what they need. They ask the questions they need to ask. I just kind of guide them here or there. If they do the work or don't do the work, they accept the consequences and we move on. I keep harping on them to read the textbook assignments. My only worry is that I have a strong sneaking suspicion that some of them are not reading it and are going to turn in a formulaic standard research paper and wonder what went wrong with their grade at the end of it all. I need to write an assignment sheet with guidelines on it. Whenever I hear the word "guidelines," I think of "parlay" (spelling??) from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Anyway...on to the on-line course. Apart from being swamped in electronic paperwork for that class, I am really pleased with the class overall. I can't believe the community and comraderie this class has established on-line. Though they are all on their own individual projects at the moment, they still offer feedback for one another in a courteous, genuine way. And most of them seem to be following their interests...which makes for better research papers in the end. I'm not on the mean satisfied with their second projects, so I think I need to be more directive with those next semester, but I think they learned valuable lessons about the need for focus and planning and the like before moving on to their next paper.

Wrapping this post up...
I have conferences with 005 students restarting in 40 minutes, so I am going to close this out, listen to something to purge my brain of the song that is still in it, finish my Dr. Pepper and use the bathroom and try to accomplish one of the assignment sheets I referred to in this post. But I feel better after venting.