iBeth

Silly Instructor's Manual Claims

I ran across some silly instructor manual claims while prepping a course.  The textbook itself is wonderful, and the instructor manual is quite useful overall, so I'm not going to identify the book here--but this passage really surprised me:

There are several ways to bring the students' reading of assigned texts into the classroom.  A traditional way is to give reading quizzes over assigned material.  We don't care for this, since it gives students the impression that reading amounts to simple comprehension of material, comprehension that can be adequately represented in an answer to a question on a quiz. 

Huh?  I admit that quizzes give the impression that reading involves comprehension, and my courses require more than that from students--but "simple comprehension of material" is a great start. 

Even sillier is the next sentence:

If reading quizzes are graded, the practice also associates reading with punishment.

Grading is punishment?  And here I thought that grading helps students assess their learning.  Do these authors believe good grades to be punishment, I wonder, or only bad grades?  And does it punish students to grade their writing and their tests, too? 

These authors suggest an alternative to quizzes: setting students a few questions to answer while they read, but they "urge" teachers not to grade them, allowing only that they may be used as discussion starters or to take attendance, "if that is required in the program in which you teach." This alternative is great, a strategy I use more often than quizzes, but again, why assume that students will be harmed by grading?

This passage from a different instructor manual was a good antidote:

[Some] argue that we should shrink from being authoritarian and not pretend to have privileged knowledge that we impress upon our students as if they were a colonialized people . . .  I cheerfully admit that I could be wrong, but my experience and my judgment tell me that both the "feel good" and the liberatory approaches . . . fail more often than they succeed and that both encourage a disdain for hard work and hard thinking.

Prepping a new course always turns me into a curmudgeon. 

Responding to Final Exam Excuses

My husband sent me this joke in which a professor gets the last laugh.  Four students miss an exam due to partying, but they tell their professor they fell victim to a flat tire.  He agrees to let them take the exam a day late:

The guys were excited and relieved. They studied that night for the exam. The Professor placed them in separate rooms and gave them a test booklet. They quickly answered the first problem worth 5 points. Cool, they thought! Each one in separate rooms, thinking this was going to be easy....

Then they turned the page.

On the second page was written....

For 95 points: Which tire? _____

I love this story, even though it is obviously fictional.  (Where would a professor find four separate empty rooms during exam week?)  But I don't think the idea could be used in real life.  The students would protest the fact that so much of their grade was based on material not covered in class.  And even if they gave different answers, each would insist that he got it right and the other were wrong, and how could the professor say otherwise?  That story has "grade appeal" written all over it.

Excuses are always tough to deal with.  On one hand, no one wants to be played for a sucker.  On the other hand, tragedies do happen. 

For example, three of my 34 students in one class this semester had mothers die.  With the first two students, everything they said rang true.  From the third student, the excuse sounded a bit odd--without giving details, I just couldn't see how one circumstance led to the next, and it was coupled with a larger request--but I tried to respond with appropriate sympathy while requiring for evidence ("I'm so sorry to hear about this.  Of course you can retake the exam.  Just bring me some sort of documentation and explain how X led to Y, for example, did you have to travel to the hospital?  Then we'll figure out when you will be ready to take it.")  The evidence never showed up. A week later, the registrar contacted me about a hardship withdrawal for the third student, and I felt bad that I had doubted at all.  (Based on my experience, mothers of college-age students die far more often than fathers--very creepy.)

Idea Generation Techniques

This site is neat: All Known Idea Generation Methods.  (via Rebecca's Pocket)

Regalia Reflections

Many of my colleagues routinely skip graduation, not only because it is boring (sorry folks--40,000+ students mean you don't know most of them, and our commencement speakers tend to be county commissioners and the like, fine people but not a big draw) but also because they don't have their own regalia.  Sure, they can rent, but that's a pain.  Many of them show up in the cheap paper regalia worn by high school students or regalia borrowed from colleagues who managed to find an acceptable reason to miss the event.

I have my own regalia, a gift from a friend who bought a new set and gave me her old one.  She spent $1800 on her new regalia, and I am suitably grateful for the hand-me-downs.  She wears her regalia several times a year, since her liberal arts college requires faculty to attend matriculation and commencement ceremonies.

Sometimes I daydream about wearing regalia all the time.  No need to have a big work wardrobe.  Just throw on the regalia and the comfortable shoes.  Regalia can be hot, but surely we could get some in space age cooler fabrics.  Gain weight with impunity--who could tell?

If we taught in our regalia, would students respect us more, or would they think we were that much more ridiculous?  I'll bet we'd have more anonymity when we ran into them at the grocery store. 

Of course the "work wardrobe" isn't really a big deal when you're a faculty member.  We are probably the crummiest dressed people on campus.

if a Shudra watches dharma and greg . . . .

If you read Dr. B, you've seen this, but I cannot resist linking to this ongoing saga myself.  Note to students: When seeking to hire someone to write your paper for you, be careful who you ask.  You might be asking someone who will give you more than you asked for.   

Let's hope this student used her real name and that her name is not common.  (Note: As I write this, the blogger removed her real name from his site.  Can't wait to check in tomorrow and get the final resolution.)

You'd probably be surprised how many people will walk into our campus writing center and try to persuade the staff to write their papers for them.  But you'd be gratified to know how insulted the writing center staff are by such offers. 

Then there was the time that two students strolled in together for their appointments (made for exactly the same time--and both students were late).  The students each brought the exact same paper and each told the peer tutors that the paper was their own individual work.  But the perfidy was discovered when the two writing consultants each started reading the papers aloud (a common writing center practice) and quickly realized they each were reading the exact same thing.  Hmmm.

First Day Oddities

I met a class for the first time today; when I arrived, the classroom was already mostly full, including one student asleep in the back row.  I waited until the official start time, then walked back to try to wake him up.  He was so deeply asleep that he didn't wake up even when I called to him loudly and shook his arm several times. 

Finally, I decided that if the student needed sleep that badly, I should just let him sleep.  He woke up after about 15 minutes of class.  (If he was still asleep when my class ended, I'd have tried to wake him again and called for help if I couldn't wake him . . . just for safety).  On the first day, I take attendance from index cards that I have students fill out.  I put an index card on his desk but I don't think he ever turned it in.  Students sitting near him all reported that he was there when they arrived, so it's possible that he had fallen asleep in a previous class and awakened to find himself in mine, too embarrassed to leave.

If he was leftover from a previous class, he might have slept for a very long time, because on the board when I arrived was a note from the teacher of the class immediately before mine.  It said, "I forgot your syllabus.  (Nice, huh?) Just come back on Thursday if you're the 3:00 p.m. comp class."

I was a trifle surprised by that message.  So you forgot the syllabus--you can't stay to meet your students and TELL them about the class?  You have to cancel an entire class period?  That just didn't seem right.  I suppose that the teacher could have met *some* of the students but just left early, but then why leave a note?  It's not unusual for a semester's first classes to be shorter than the scheduled period. 

Thank goodness the unknown teacher remembered to say WHICH class should just come back on Thursday, or my students might have left, too!  I've heard stories about such messages wreaking havoc for hours afterwards.

Recommendation Letter Hell

Did I recently say this time of year should be renamed Grading Season?  It's also recommendation letter season.  As I write this, the campus is deserted; I am the only one in the building, and I am surrounded by various forms, envelopes, and stacks of letterhead.  Every year I am asked to write at least 25 different letters of recommendation for various purposes (jobs, scholarships, awards), and every year I despair.

Paper grading season

OK, so I hate grading papers and I am a *writing* teacher.  How pathetic is that?  At least, other bloggers (e.g., New Kid on the Hallway) remind me that I'm not alone. 

I used to feel terribly guilty about the fact that I procrastinated, that even when I was in the midst of grading I  needed incentives just to get through the job ("OK, one more and you can go to the bathroom.")  Now, I figure that procrastination is just one way of ensuring that I'm efficient.  I can spend 45 minutes commenting on a single paper if I let myself.  Even with a small class of 20, at 45 minutes per paper,  that's 15 hours spent just on grading.  I can't afford that kind of time, not and do the rest of my job.

Cartographies

Frequently, when I’m trying to write a paper, I’m reminded of those complex kinetic sculptures that connect varied colors and shapes in a complex, multi-layered moving network.  Picture one of those delightful sculptures cut off from its hanger and collapsed in a heap on the ground—my ideas are that heap.  If only I could figure out a good place to hoist them aloft, I could produce something intriguing, but as it is, my thoughts are generally a tangled, unremarkable mess for far too long. 

Maybe I should take more time to explore visual mapping.  Robert E. Horn suggests lots of ways that visual mapping can support problem-solving and argumentation . . . sort of Edward Tufte on a scooter.  I’ve always been convinced that the way we USE texts is more important than what we put IN our texts (witness this blog, which helps me cultivate habits of critical reflection even though nothing I say here is terribly interesting or insightful).  Maybe this visual tool can help me better direct my own research into fruitful avenues? 

Shifting Perspectives on Red v. Blue

I've been so saddened by the polarized state of the U.S. lately.  What good is freedom of speech when we can't talk to each other?  Thomas Friedman's point in his column today really resonated with me:

But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.

So I was comforted to remember that the red/blue divide is a not a traditional way of looking at our country but rather a sorry remnant of 2000, and that our media in 2000 got the colors backwards at that.  (Eric Alterman has also made this point--can't find the deep link now, tho, sorry.)

Also helpful are a bunch of alternate ways of mapping our political beliefs.  See them after the jump.