My Short Attention Span

Well, I got to thinking and talking about my habit of jam-packing every moment of a 50 minute class with some activity of some sort. I have come to the realization that I have a relatively short attention span (or more accurately attention tolerance span) and I like to have long spans of doing the exact same thing broken into smaller tasks or actvities or the ability to multi-task several things at once.

I do not know if this is because of my age, the fact that I am a mom of two young kids and am required to prioritize and multi-task or my reliance on technology that allows me to do these things. Anyway, I just know that it is so and I expect that my students feel the same way.

So that got me to wondering if my students ever feel like I am just rushing through things with no opportunity for reflection.

Today in the Learning Community class, I wrote down 5 activities would we try to get through in 50 minutes. I actually felt bad about these 5 things because they were something that I settled on the day of class instead of meticulously planning for in advance. One of the items was to allow students to share something from their journal assignment for the day. This is something that can seem like a throwaway 5-10 minutes that can be done or left out, but it really, really worked today. First, I think it shows students that their journal writing matters. Second, it made the discussion relevant to what mattered to them. Third, who wants me to regurgitate what they have read from the handbook (also assigned)? Anyway, we managed to cover that (the journal and handbook assignment--kind of) and then a handout about what things in writing that annoy me, a life list assignment and the writing assignment for their first paper. And though all of that was accomplished in just 50 minutes, it seemed to work out just fine...not too fast, not too lingering.

But perhaps I should check with the students to see how they felt about it...

That darned dreaded assessment thing. How to assess when students "get it" or feel as confident about the lessons as you did...??? If I ever answer that question, I will become a rich woman indeed.

Word of the week: perhaps. Why do I keep saying perhaps? Why do I keep making myself seem so much older than I really am?