I know that administrations feel that by giving a student a mid-term grade, that student will understand where s/he is on the learning curve of the course and adjust his/her efforts accordingly. What administrations don't understand is that often we professors do not structure courses so that half of the material has been completed or properly evaluated. What's worse, is that often mid-term grades are a quick run through of skill assignments or quizzes that, in the end, account for only 20-30% of the final grade. This is hardly indicative of a student's standing, nor is it very helpful.
As a matter of face, mid-term grades can either discourage a student who thinks that the grade is one that can't be raised sufficiently prior to the semester's end or can give a student a false sense of accomplishment that s/he will do as well on the harder independent assignments that are to follow.
For adjuncts, compiling mid-term grades is an unnecessary drain on resources. Hours are spent in a rush to provide the most accurate picture for the student, even when we know it's not that accurate. I'd rather have a student come up to me and ask, "how am I doing, and what can I change to do better?" because this will allow me to better guide the student through the remainder of the course.
In my opinion, mid-term grades are an outdated practice. Administrators may have a need to track at this time, and concerned parents who have their student's permission to check on such thing, may feel that this is a good way to make sure their investment is actually performing in classes, but pedagogically, it serves little or no purpose. Students don't take them seriously, and, frankly, neither do too many professors.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Technology. Sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth.
The three schools in which I teach use Blackboard as a course management and delivery system. I've been using Blackboard for nearly ten years, having been introduced to it when I first started teaching as an adjunct at UNH. Over the years, Blackboard has evolved by adding more features and refining the ones already there. Blackboard has been a boon to the distance learning world in that it allows students to access assignments, engage in discussion forums and real time chat, e-mail their fellow students without looking up individual addresses, access their grades, and upload assignments. In addition, students can take tests and quizzes online and use a number of peripheral learning tools if made available by their schools and their professors.
Blackboard is also a useful tool for use in traditional classes, since it allows the class to continue if the professor is ill or the schools closes for snow, helps to make the campus greener by allowing students to receive assignment handouts and deliver assignments without the use of paper or printer, and allows for the speedy delivery of announcements. All this is wonderful but....
It doesn't alwasy work. As the technology increases, so do the problems. Blackboard tech support has told us that it is not work with Firefox, and, indeed, last year that was the problem. Students uploading with Firefox would get error messages that told them to upload a valid file, which is what they were trying to do. Students attempting to take quizzes would have half the page blanked out, or they would get kicked out altogether. This year, students using Internet Explorer are getting the same message. They can't seem to find a browser that works with Blackboard.
IT staff at the schools is telling us that students should change docx files to doc files. Why? No one had a problem with docx file last year? Now we are told that students are trying to upload documents with long and complex names, but somehow assign1.docx doesn't seem long or complex to me, and I don't see any unsual characters there either.
The end result is that instead of uploading assignments to the assignment section, students are dumping everything into digital dropbox. Now for the uninitiated, let me explain. Uploading directly through the assignment area places the student's document right into the grade center. Open. Read. Grade. Write comments. Done. One stop and all the material is there until the end of the course. Digital dropbox is one big dumping ground. Files are uploaded and listed, and often you have to open each file to find the right one from the right student. If you keep the files through the semester, the list just grows longer and longer, and if you want to erase them, you must erase them one by one. In short, it's an archaic, slow, pain-in-the-rear way of handling documents, and one that is rumored to be deleted in future versions of Blackboard.
In addition, if you teach multiple sections of the same class, you must upload your material to each section separately. So what time am I saving? Distance learning courses are getting to be a major time hog, and the frustration that comes from a long list of students complaining that their files won't load, and they don't want to be penalized is time consuming, frustrating, and defeating of the entire purpose: to deliver quality educational materials quickly and efficiently.
So my question is this? Why can't a software system used by schools and colleges all over the country figure out how to co-exist with the various popular browsers and accept student documents with ease? Maybe we should just all go back to collecting papers.
Blackboard is also a useful tool for use in traditional classes, since it allows the class to continue if the professor is ill or the schools closes for snow, helps to make the campus greener by allowing students to receive assignment handouts and deliver assignments without the use of paper or printer, and allows for the speedy delivery of announcements. All this is wonderful but....
It doesn't alwasy work. As the technology increases, so do the problems. Blackboard tech support has told us that it is not work with Firefox, and, indeed, last year that was the problem. Students uploading with Firefox would get error messages that told them to upload a valid file, which is what they were trying to do. Students attempting to take quizzes would have half the page blanked out, or they would get kicked out altogether. This year, students using Internet Explorer are getting the same message. They can't seem to find a browser that works with Blackboard.
IT staff at the schools is telling us that students should change docx files to doc files. Why? No one had a problem with docx file last year? Now we are told that students are trying to upload documents with long and complex names, but somehow assign1.docx doesn't seem long or complex to me, and I don't see any unsual characters there either.
The end result is that instead of uploading assignments to the assignment section, students are dumping everything into digital dropbox. Now for the uninitiated, let me explain. Uploading directly through the assignment area places the student's document right into the grade center. Open. Read. Grade. Write comments. Done. One stop and all the material is there until the end of the course. Digital dropbox is one big dumping ground. Files are uploaded and listed, and often you have to open each file to find the right one from the right student. If you keep the files through the semester, the list just grows longer and longer, and if you want to erase them, you must erase them one by one. In short, it's an archaic, slow, pain-in-the-rear way of handling documents, and one that is rumored to be deleted in future versions of Blackboard.
In addition, if you teach multiple sections of the same class, you must upload your material to each section separately. So what time am I saving? Distance learning courses are getting to be a major time hog, and the frustration that comes from a long list of students complaining that their files won't load, and they don't want to be penalized is time consuming, frustrating, and defeating of the entire purpose: to deliver quality educational materials quickly and efficiently.
So my question is this? Why can't a software system used by schools and colleges all over the country figure out how to co-exist with the various popular browsers and accept student documents with ease? Maybe we should just all go back to collecting papers.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Help! I'm buried in papers and....
it's only the middle of week four. Ah, This happens every semester. So why am I surprised, dismayed, depressed? Teaching is one thing. Most adjuncts who have been doing this for a while can do it in their sleep. But, in truth, the actual "teaching-lecturing-discussing" (i.e. fun parts) of teaching take relatively little time. You get up in the morning, dress according to the type of faculty "chic" that is popular on your particular campus, drive and park (if you can) , stroll to your building carrying the tools of your trade, and amaze your students with your wisdom. But when you get home (few, if any of us have anything like an office on campus), the real work begins.
I like to tell my students that whatever they do, I have to do 12, 15, 20, 30 times for each assignment. Each assignment must be carefully crafted to provided an "exercise" that will either help a student to hone a particular skill or prove to you that s/he has learned it sufficiently for your department head to continue to hire you. This itself takes time. Unless you are teaching at Hogwart's, you most likely have to upload your material to your students using some sort of Academic software platform, such as Blackboard (which is what all of my schools use). You need to be very careful and double-check every move you make or you will (as I have done) upload the assignment 1) to the wrong course, 2) to a course that ran LAST semester 3) to the wrong area within the course site 4) with the wrong end date / time or 4) without providing a link for its return, in which case the thoughtful student, ever mindful of late penalties, will dump the work in that scholastic black hole, digital dropbox, or send it as an attachment to e-mail.
You try to assign sparingly and craft assignments that are quick and easy to grade, however, if you teach English, as I do, you find that that is nearly impossible. Eventually (all too soon), the assignments appear and students start to clamor for their grades (not that they are interested in seeing how well they did but in seeing how you grade) and you are under pressure.
From the first assignment to the last, the problem seems to multiple with a frightening progression that would perplex math professors and rabbit breeders all. As you proudly conclude the grading of one assignment, four or five more are coming in. Before you know it, you have 20-25 ungraded assignments (times as many students as you have in any given class) and then.....the long papers start to arrive. Complicating matters are 1) students who use funky word processing programs that you can't open 2) students who upload their papers to the wrong assignment links 3) students who e-mail you to ask what the assignment is even after you have struggled to make it clear 4) you made one of the mistakes above that you were attempting to avoid but made anyway because it was 2am and you were seeing double despite being buzzed on copious amounts of caffeine when you uploaded.
So, it's week four of the semester, and I'm pretty much glued to my computer keyboard, and the virtual pile of very real assignments is growing taller as I speak. Anyone have a virtual bulldozer, I can borrow?
I like to tell my students that whatever they do, I have to do 12, 15, 20, 30 times for each assignment. Each assignment must be carefully crafted to provided an "exercise" that will either help a student to hone a particular skill or prove to you that s/he has learned it sufficiently for your department head to continue to hire you. This itself takes time. Unless you are teaching at Hogwart's, you most likely have to upload your material to your students using some sort of Academic software platform, such as Blackboard (which is what all of my schools use). You need to be very careful and double-check every move you make or you will (as I have done) upload the assignment 1) to the wrong course, 2) to a course that ran LAST semester 3) to the wrong area within the course site 4) with the wrong end date / time or 4) without providing a link for its return, in which case the thoughtful student, ever mindful of late penalties, will dump the work in that scholastic black hole, digital dropbox, or send it as an attachment to e-mail.
You try to assign sparingly and craft assignments that are quick and easy to grade, however, if you teach English, as I do, you find that that is nearly impossible. Eventually (all too soon), the assignments appear and students start to clamor for their grades (not that they are interested in seeing how well they did but in seeing how you grade) and you are under pressure.
From the first assignment to the last, the problem seems to multiple with a frightening progression that would perplex math professors and rabbit breeders all. As you proudly conclude the grading of one assignment, four or five more are coming in. Before you know it, you have 20-25 ungraded assignments (times as many students as you have in any given class) and then.....the long papers start to arrive. Complicating matters are 1) students who use funky word processing programs that you can't open 2) students who upload their papers to the wrong assignment links 3) students who e-mail you to ask what the assignment is even after you have struggled to make it clear 4) you made one of the mistakes above that you were attempting to avoid but made anyway because it was 2am and you were seeing double despite being buzzed on copious amounts of caffeine when you uploaded.
So, it's week four of the semester, and I'm pretty much glued to my computer keyboard, and the virtual pile of very real assignments is growing taller as I speak. Anyone have a virtual bulldozer, I can borrow?
Friday, September 11, 2009
Remembering my students on 9/11
I remember 9/11 for different reasons. We were haunted by the same images that haunted millions as they watched desperate people jump from the same roofs between which Philippe Petit danced on a wire a quarter-century earlier. But one of the reasons I remember 9/11 is how it impacted my students and how young I realized they were.
I was teaching at the state university that year - Fresham English - and the majority of my students had moved away from home and into fairly large dorms with new roommates only 10 days before. They had lived comfortable and safe lives for the most part. They were not rich, but they were privileged. They had cell phones, video games, laptops, and whatever clothes they wanted. Most had their own credit cards, and many had cars on campus. They felt grown-up and were enjoying the first taste of personal freedom.
When terrorists flew those planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, you could see the fear and uncertainty in the eyes and the reactions of the students. Some had parents who flew fairly often; others had relatives who worked in lower Manhattan. Others were Muslim or Arabic and wondered how they would be viewed by their fellow students. For the first days after 9/11 faculty members tried to help students make sense of what had happened. We answered the unanswerable questions: "Why would anyone do this?" and "Why do they hate America?" For our attempts to answer these questions in an academic way, we were scorned by Conservatives who called us "unpatriotic," which was about the worst thing you could call anyone after 9/11.
As the dust literally and figuratively started to clear, one student - a young Jordanian who had American citizenship by birth - left the campus because he feared for his own safety and didn't know how to handle the names he was called and the shoves he received in the hallways. Another student flew back and forth to her home in New Jersey - just across the river from Manhattan - to attend memorial services for parents of nine of her high school friends. Still other students had friends, relatives, acquaintances who died in one place or another that day, and more still knew of someone who just escaped, someone who was a first responder, someone who was supposed to be on one of the planes or in one of the buildings, but wasn't.
The sememster that began with 9/11 was the hardest semester in which to teach. We were all off our stride for the duration of the term. No one could concentrate fully; everyone picked up more colds; students' grades often took a tumble, and some of us abbreviated our curricula in order to somehow keep everyone on track.
I realized that these college students may be young adults, but emotionally, they were very much children. I was a pre-teen when Kennedy announced missiles in Cuba, a high school freshman when our beloved JFK was killed. I grew up listening to stories of WWII told by a mother who had served as an Army nurse. I had lived through years of bloody images shown during the supper hour for the entire VietNam era. I had watched the race riots of the 60's and saw the blood running down streets. These children hadn't. Nothing in their lives had prepared them for the event that we simply call 9/11. This was their first realization that the world is cruel, that all people do not love each other, and that bad things truly can happen to good people.
As for me, I was so busy dealing with my students that I never checked the names of the dead. Two or three weeks later, I realized that a young man I had routed for on a summer reality show called "Murder in a Small Town" and who had won the $50,000 prize for being the last man standing, was one of the first responders and killed. And much later still, I found out that a man who had been our friend, but with whom we' had no recent contact, died on Flight 93. His name was Don Greene. And he loved to fly.
I was teaching at the state university that year - Fresham English - and the majority of my students had moved away from home and into fairly large dorms with new roommates only 10 days before. They had lived comfortable and safe lives for the most part. They were not rich, but they were privileged. They had cell phones, video games, laptops, and whatever clothes they wanted. Most had their own credit cards, and many had cars on campus. They felt grown-up and were enjoying the first taste of personal freedom.
When terrorists flew those planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, you could see the fear and uncertainty in the eyes and the reactions of the students. Some had parents who flew fairly often; others had relatives who worked in lower Manhattan. Others were Muslim or Arabic and wondered how they would be viewed by their fellow students. For the first days after 9/11 faculty members tried to help students make sense of what had happened. We answered the unanswerable questions: "Why would anyone do this?" and "Why do they hate America?" For our attempts to answer these questions in an academic way, we were scorned by Conservatives who called us "unpatriotic," which was about the worst thing you could call anyone after 9/11.
As the dust literally and figuratively started to clear, one student - a young Jordanian who had American citizenship by birth - left the campus because he feared for his own safety and didn't know how to handle the names he was called and the shoves he received in the hallways. Another student flew back and forth to her home in New Jersey - just across the river from Manhattan - to attend memorial services for parents of nine of her high school friends. Still other students had friends, relatives, acquaintances who died in one place or another that day, and more still knew of someone who just escaped, someone who was a first responder, someone who was supposed to be on one of the planes or in one of the buildings, but wasn't.
The sememster that began with 9/11 was the hardest semester in which to teach. We were all off our stride for the duration of the term. No one could concentrate fully; everyone picked up more colds; students' grades often took a tumble, and some of us abbreviated our curricula in order to somehow keep everyone on track.
I realized that these college students may be young adults, but emotionally, they were very much children. I was a pre-teen when Kennedy announced missiles in Cuba, a high school freshman when our beloved JFK was killed. I grew up listening to stories of WWII told by a mother who had served as an Army nurse. I had lived through years of bloody images shown during the supper hour for the entire VietNam era. I had watched the race riots of the 60's and saw the blood running down streets. These children hadn't. Nothing in their lives had prepared them for the event that we simply call 9/11. This was their first realization that the world is cruel, that all people do not love each other, and that bad things truly can happen to good people.
As for me, I was so busy dealing with my students that I never checked the names of the dead. Two or three weeks later, I realized that a young man I had routed for on a summer reality show called "Murder in a Small Town" and who had won the $50,000 prize for being the last man standing, was one of the first responders and killed. And much later still, I found out that a man who had been our friend, but with whom we' had no recent contact, died on Flight 93. His name was Don Greene. And he loved to fly.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Legacy of the Helicopter Parent
Yesterday, I read a story in the Wall Street Journal about helicopter parents on Facebook. And it made me think of the effect helicopter parents have in the college classroom. Helicopter parents come in many types -from those who just hover quietly in the background assuring the well-being and safety of their children to those who aggressively play savior and jump in at the slightest provocation to make things "right." A recent example of the prevalence of helicoptering is the outcry of parents against President Obama's speech to school children.
Thousands of parents, without foreknowledge of the contents of the speech, were instrumental in schools disallowing the speech or insisted that their children be excluded from the viewing. Parents question the content of school curricula, sometimes getting books banned from the classroom or school library. And parents go to extraordinary lengths to make sure theire children are treated fairly, often becoming violent with coaches who don't allow a child enough time on the playing field even when that child has no sports ability whatsoever. When kids get in trouble, these same parents have been known to step in and take care of things - paying for damages, interceding with authority figures, and sometimes just yelling loud enough and often enough that they get their own way.
And this is how helicopter parents have an effect on the college classroom. Even those parents who have given up on helicoptering once their children move away from home and into a dorm have often already taught their children that they are never wrong and that when things go awry, it is the job of someone else to fix it. Students who have spent their in-class time having private conversations with their neighbors or snoozing in the back row, suddenly want to know why I gave them a C, as though I had played a nasty trick on them. They then want to know what I can do about it. In case you haven't noticed, nothing in these questions admits responsibility on their parts. The problem is mine, and they want me to fix it, as their parents have been fixing things for them.
In one of the worst situations I had encountered, a student took an incomplete in a class, but failed to complete the work. The work that had been done to that point had all been late and far below par. I began to wonder how the student had been admitted to the school in the first place, but perhaps it was the student's prowess on the paying field that helped with that. The student failed the course, and then proceeded to work up the academic ladder. The program director, the department head, the adviser (who phoned me and told me step by step how to change a grade with that tone of expectation in her voice) and, finally, the dean were brought into the issue by a student who had to face the reality that the athletic scholarship would be lost with a failing grade on file. At one point, the student even confronted me openly in the library insisting that I had to do something because I had promised I would.
Luckily, I keep e-mails, copies of assignments, etc, and it was evident to administration that the student had not demonstrated knowledge and proper use of the course material. However, the insistence of this student that we make it right cost countless hours and aggravation on the part of people who were in no way responsible for what were the student's failings.
Perhaps parents have to helicopter a little more than we did when our kids were children. But if parents want to make children into free and independent thinkers who can take responsibility for their own actions, who can discover their own strengths, abilities, and talentss as well as their weaknesses, and difficulties, then those parents need to interfere a lot less and quit fixing things. My question is: do parents even want free and independent children, or are they, as evidenced by their fear of the possible partisanship of the Presiden'ts speech, merely growing clones of themselves.
Thousands of parents, without foreknowledge of the contents of the speech, were instrumental in schools disallowing the speech or insisted that their children be excluded from the viewing. Parents question the content of school curricula, sometimes getting books banned from the classroom or school library. And parents go to extraordinary lengths to make sure theire children are treated fairly, often becoming violent with coaches who don't allow a child enough time on the playing field even when that child has no sports ability whatsoever. When kids get in trouble, these same parents have been known to step in and take care of things - paying for damages, interceding with authority figures, and sometimes just yelling loud enough and often enough that they get their own way.
And this is how helicopter parents have an effect on the college classroom. Even those parents who have given up on helicoptering once their children move away from home and into a dorm have often already taught their children that they are never wrong and that when things go awry, it is the job of someone else to fix it. Students who have spent their in-class time having private conversations with their neighbors or snoozing in the back row, suddenly want to know why I gave them a C, as though I had played a nasty trick on them. They then want to know what I can do about it. In case you haven't noticed, nothing in these questions admits responsibility on their parts. The problem is mine, and they want me to fix it, as their parents have been fixing things for them.
In one of the worst situations I had encountered, a student took an incomplete in a class, but failed to complete the work. The work that had been done to that point had all been late and far below par. I began to wonder how the student had been admitted to the school in the first place, but perhaps it was the student's prowess on the paying field that helped with that. The student failed the course, and then proceeded to work up the academic ladder. The program director, the department head, the adviser (who phoned me and told me step by step how to change a grade with that tone of expectation in her voice) and, finally, the dean were brought into the issue by a student who had to face the reality that the athletic scholarship would be lost with a failing grade on file. At one point, the student even confronted me openly in the library insisting that I had to do something because I had promised I would.
Luckily, I keep e-mails, copies of assignments, etc, and it was evident to administration that the student had not demonstrated knowledge and proper use of the course material. However, the insistence of this student that we make it right cost countless hours and aggravation on the part of people who were in no way responsible for what were the student's failings.
Perhaps parents have to helicopter a little more than we did when our kids were children. But if parents want to make children into free and independent thinkers who can take responsibility for their own actions, who can discover their own strengths, abilities, and talentss as well as their weaknesses, and difficulties, then those parents need to interfere a lot less and quit fixing things. My question is: do parents even want free and independent children, or are they, as evidenced by their fear of the possible partisanship of the Presiden'ts speech, merely growing clones of themselves.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Insomnia
I’m finally starting to feel human after my abbreviated night of sleep. I, who usually drifts away quickly sometime between 11 and 11:30 PM, found myself still struggling to shake the gremlins of academia from my brain at 3:30AM. You see, today is the first day of classes for the fall semester, and I’m not ready.
Oh, I have my first four syllabi done and Blackboard sites up for those courses. Texts are packed in my tote for my 6PM College Writing class, and my online class and hybrid class are ready and awaiting student participation. I’m certainly not nervous about walking into a classroom of students after ten years. Actually, having been a music and drama major, I’m quite comfortable (and happy) in front of an “audience.” I’m just not ready.
I’m not ready to be thrown into fifteen weeks of the non-stop chaotic prep, grading, driving from school to school, packing tote-bags, making copies, attending meetings, scheduling and being available for conferences, answering tons of e-mails from students who either have questions that have already been answered in handouts or who are complaining about grades I “gave” them, updating Blackboard sites, monitoring discussion groups, and more. I know that no matter how organized I try to be, I will not do enough to stay on top of it all.
As an adjunct, I have taught straight through from Martin Luther King Day until August 20. After 10 days outside of a classroom, I’m thrust back into six different classrooms to teach seven different classes in three different schools and one distance learning course from my own over-used desk chair. I will have approximately 110 faces to match with names and 20 or more names that don’t have faces in my distance learning course. I’ll bounce around the worlds of College Writing (MLA), Argument Writing (APA), public speaking, World Literature, and creative writing. If I’m lucky, my last grades of the semester will be uploaded the day before Christmas. Gosh, I’m not ready.
I’ve done this before. I know that the last warm summer days will drift into beautiful cool and colorful fall ones. I know that the leaves will fall and flow from the trees and their spectacle will give way to the spectacle of holiday decorations. Trick-or-treaters will be replaced by turkey eaters, and holiday shopping and decorating will come and go, as I Velcro my face to my computer screen commenting and grading one paper after the next. When I finally emerge, it will be just in time to see the wrapping paper fly and the Christmas tree packed away for another year. The World Series, football season, the opening of Celtics basketball, fall festivals, craft fairs, apple picking, Santa parades, the first snow fall, and twinkling lights will all come and go, and I will barely notice.
And not having slept, I’m tired before it all starts. Every time I started to drift off, I thought of another piece of material to present, a change I needed to make to a syllabus, an alternate way to keep students interested. I’m an adjunct. This is my life. And I’m not ready
Oh, I have my first four syllabi done and Blackboard sites up for those courses. Texts are packed in my tote for my 6PM College Writing class, and my online class and hybrid class are ready and awaiting student participation. I’m certainly not nervous about walking into a classroom of students after ten years. Actually, having been a music and drama major, I’m quite comfortable (and happy) in front of an “audience.” I’m just not ready.
I’m not ready to be thrown into fifteen weeks of the non-stop chaotic prep, grading, driving from school to school, packing tote-bags, making copies, attending meetings, scheduling and being available for conferences, answering tons of e-mails from students who either have questions that have already been answered in handouts or who are complaining about grades I “gave” them, updating Blackboard sites, monitoring discussion groups, and more. I know that no matter how organized I try to be, I will not do enough to stay on top of it all.
As an adjunct, I have taught straight through from Martin Luther King Day until August 20. After 10 days outside of a classroom, I’m thrust back into six different classrooms to teach seven different classes in three different schools and one distance learning course from my own over-used desk chair. I will have approximately 110 faces to match with names and 20 or more names that don’t have faces in my distance learning course. I’ll bounce around the worlds of College Writing (MLA), Argument Writing (APA), public speaking, World Literature, and creative writing. If I’m lucky, my last grades of the semester will be uploaded the day before Christmas. Gosh, I’m not ready.
I’ve done this before. I know that the last warm summer days will drift into beautiful cool and colorful fall ones. I know that the leaves will fall and flow from the trees and their spectacle will give way to the spectacle of holiday decorations. Trick-or-treaters will be replaced by turkey eaters, and holiday shopping and decorating will come and go, as I Velcro my face to my computer screen commenting and grading one paper after the next. When I finally emerge, it will be just in time to see the wrapping paper fly and the Christmas tree packed away for another year. The World Series, football season, the opening of Celtics basketball, fall festivals, craft fairs, apple picking, Santa parades, the first snow fall, and twinkling lights will all come and go, and I will barely notice.
And not having slept, I’m tired before it all starts. Every time I started to drift off, I thought of another piece of material to present, a change I needed to make to a syllabus, an alternate way to keep students interested. I’m an adjunct. This is my life. And I’m not ready
Friday, August 28, 2009
Teaching in the Trenches
Summer, what summer?
Mid-August. I’m lying on a hammock under a tree, reading book number twelve (at least) and thinking back fondly to my week by the shore, my trip to the Adirondacks, or all those not-so-nice days roaming around art museums and the great historic homes of New England. Ah, two weeks left before the start of another interesting and challenging academic year ahead in Ye Old Ivory Tower.
That might be my reality if I were a full-time tenured professor in one of any number of private or public post-secondary institutions. But, alas, I’m an adjunct, and I’ve realized that at my age, this is my life now and for the future. Instead of lurking in the supposed ivory towers of academia, I’m mucking around in the trenches. Welcome to my world. Grab a cup of coffee, a glass of wine….never mind, grab a fifth of whisky and a straw and enjoy a taste of the other side of the college experience.
Yes, it’s mid-August, and I haven’t had a week without a class since mid-January. Over the summer, I’ve completed two-trimester classes and taught six different summer classes in public speaking, English composition, and developmental college writing (read remedial). My last class of the summer is scheduled for the evening of Thursday, August 20, and my first class of the fall meets on Monday, August 31. In the interim, I have summer grades to complete and fall syllabi to develop, and a whole summer of fun to cram.
Through this blog, I hope to share with you everything from my own frustrations and satisfactions with my life as an adjunct, give you some insight into what an adjunct does and how a career adjunct lives, help you to understand the college experience from an instructor’s perspective, and put forth some of my own theories about post-secondary education today. We’ll explore topics from tests to textbooks to technology (good and bad) in the classroom.
And I’ll take you out of the classroom into what’s left of my life (not that there’s much of it left) and dispel some of the myths of that ivory tower world everyone keeps talking about. Thanks for dropping by.
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