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?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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.
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