BATTLE OF THE ANTS

Last night we watched The Prestige with our students. When this film came out (two years ago), I wanted to see it. I want to see a lot of movies, but rarely actually do for various and sundry reasons. But in 2006 I wanted to see The Prestige (and The Illusionist) if for no other reason than to continue the conversation that Mel started. But I'm not going to do that now (in grading jail).

I will say that I feel I stayed reasonably away from spoilers or any discussion of the film that would give away the secrets...and I found it remarkably easy to figure it all out early on. It was still enjoyable, because who doesn't love Batman vs. Wolverine, and I had a good time mock-threatening T with great bodily harm if any small animals were going to be harmed, but for the most part I thought it was pretty meh.

Then again, who am I to talk...we're showing Harold and Maude on Thursday and I'm pretty sure I'll have to answer for myself quite a bit with that one.

Labels: teacher-like

...and I think that's really cool.

True, it would have been cool to teach Chesnutt any week of the year, any year, because I heart Charles Chesnutt. But it was especially fun to discuss his stories the day before, and the day after, Obama became president-elect.

I am shadowing Donna Campbell's ENGL 481: American Lit 1855-1915 upper division course. "Shadowing" means we come to the class and watch and learn, and teach a few days if we want (duh! do want!). There are only nine students in the class, which is sad, because it is such an awesome class and the DMC is such a good teacher.

Anyway, before the semester began, Dr. Campbell asked which days I'd be interested in teaching, and I said definitely Chesnutt day(s) because I love Chesnutt and the first time I teach literature to upper division students I'd rather it be something I know pretty well and love quite a bit. Right? Luckily she said ok—even though she also loves Chesnutt. I thought that was mighty nice of her. Then it turned out that she had a workshop thing to go to and I would get to teach both days of Chesnutt. Score!

I had everything planned out for the first day—I wanted to avoid any sort of issues with time because I had teased Toria about her inability to tell time when she taught the class she was shadowing (she wrapped her class up after precisely 50 minutes...except T/Th classes are 75 minutes long) because payback's a bitch—including meeting up with DMC 20 minutes before class started to make sure my plan was a good one. Except, um, I wasn't 20 minutes early, I was 5 minutes early...just in time to walk to class. That was dumb. But I did my 20 minute intro/ppt stuff, then 25 minutes of discussing the first story ("The Goophered Grapevine"), and then planted my segue to the second story ("Dave's Neckliss") and...crickets.

None of them got the handout for the second story.

One industrious student looked it up and read it, thank god, so we walked through a summary and talked about stuff anyway. But it was pretty funny.

On the second day, everyone who was there had read both stories (or at least faked it really well), and we had a good conversation about "The Wife of His Youth" and "The Passing of Grandison." Everyone seemed to really dig Chesnutt. No one had read him before. Some of them wrote blog posts for class about the stories. That's cool.

Earlier in the semester, I mentioned very briefly that these students had done some cool stuff with Wordle, and it's true—they did. The other two days I that were "my days" were early in the semester, in the computer lab, and it was all about working with the Dickinson and Whitman archives. Over a couple of days, some looked at editions of Leaves of Grass, or just the covers, and then a bunch of people did word clouds—for Drum Taps, the 1867 Leaves of Grass, the deathbed version of "Song of Myself", and a very interesting one for Dickinson's 1862 poems. Sometimes the simplest tools are the most helpful for students. That's what I learned pretty quickly about word clouds.

Oh wait, this was supposed to be about Chesnutt. Sorry! I just got on an excited little tangent. I'm pretty excitable. I'm also trying to avoid grading papers.

Labels: grad school, teacher-like

...for obvious reasons.

Tonight we are hosting a showing of V for Vendetta for our students (also for obvious reasons, hence the title of this post).

We are very, very happy we don't actually have to go blow shit up afterward.

Labels: misc life, teacher-like

My life is work, then more work, then more work. Then a little sleep.

Repeat.

At some point perhaps I'll talk about all of this work, and maybe the teaching. But right now I have a really large book to finish reading and a class to prep.

In other news, let me tell you how awesome this whole "team teaching" thing is. Well, it's not really team teaching in that we are not always in the classroom together and our classes aren't merged except for certain days when we have the one class in the big room together because they're at the same time (or when we have activities like movies in the dorm)...BUT. Although sometimes a little rough around the edges, the days when one of us teaches all the sections usually works out pretty well for the other as far as personal workloads are concerned. Yesterday, I had a plan and (for better or worse) executed the plan such that my teaching partner just had to play the part of scribe. Since she had a lot of other work on her plate, this worked out well. Tomorrow she'll be in charge (for it is Sartre day, and she hearts Sartre), which is good because I have a ton of stuff to do in my seminar on Weds that is of the utmost importance to me. Friday we'll return to our normal positions. On any other day, our coordination happens via email or IM or on the ride up to campus. Thank god we trust each other with this stuff, otherwise it would be a serious clusterfuck. I actually think it's going well. Teaching the freshmen here is very different than the teaching of freshmen that I've done before. There is a significant amount of "herding cats" that happens. It's tiring. Glad I have a buddy to help!

Labels: misc life, teacher-like

That's what I said to one of my classes the other day. "No one told me about this in teacher school." They laughed. They understood.

Let me tell you a little story. Then tell me your story, about something "they" didn't tell you in teacher school.

The plan for the class [one of my 101 sections:—introductory writing, all brand-new freshmen] was to do a practice peer review in preparation for workshopping their own papers during the next class meeting. We took the time to read a sample essay, then they marked areas they liked, areas of confusion, areas they'd change if it were their paper, and mechanical stuff. Then we were going to get into small groups and discuss common things, and report back to the class. Your standard thing, right? Right.

Except.

[I should pause now and note that I do indeed love my students, despite their occasional chuckleheadedness, and they know that. They also know I'm telling this story.]

One student got a phone call in class. Yes, that's bad enough. I count it as a win that she got up to take the call out in the hall rather than actually in class. We all continued working in our small groups, and were just starting the "report back to the class" phase, with approximately 10 minutes remaining in the class period. One fellow started to say something interesting and smart, and the student who had been outside the class burst back into the classroom and announced to everyone....

"I just dropped my phone in the toilet!"

We all stopped, looked at her, burst out laughing, students looked at me for direction—for which I had none—and then she said...

"And I had to reach into my pee to get it!"

How to deal with that, folks, is something you don't learn in teacher school.

I'm not sure I moved from my spot. I certainly didn't say anything, because the things going through my head weren't appropriate or even really fully formed. The student sat down, said "What do I do?" and, when I was about ready to say "I have no idea, but you can figure it out after class" another student turned to her and said "Oh, see, what you do first is take out your SIM card, then let the phone dry in the sun, then clean it with a qtip and rubbing alcohol and..."

To which I said, "you've done this too??" Several students have done the same thing. Amazing.

Anyway, the class is still in various stages of incredulity and laughter. One student finally just looked at me and said "how do we continue on after that?"

I said, "yeah, when I figure that out, I'll let you know..."

We managed to get class back on track long enough to wrap up and dismiss until next time. One student now has the unfortunate nickname (and this has made it through their dorm) of "pee phone". And me? I'm pretty sure I'm on Candid Camera every single day in that class.

Labels: teacher-like

Today, several undergrads in a class I'm shadowing did cool things with Wordle and the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson.

If I get a moment to crawl out from the rock I'm under, I'll write about it. But it was really wonderful.

Labels: grad school, teacher-like

So the semester started on Monday and already I feel like I've lost a week. Several of my friends commented (and I wholeheartedly agreed) on Wednesday that the semester was three days old and we were already behind.

Holy crap.

Ok, not really, but that is how it felt.

As for me, I'm doing something typically-Julie with regards to my schedule/load. I am:
* teaching three classes: 2 sections of English 101 (see syllabus) and 1 section of English 402 (see syllabus).
* taking two seminars
* shadowing one prof in an upper-division undergrad class
* and then there's the whole job thing

I can answer any questions the new people have about how things work, etc, with the exception of "how many classes should I take" or "how much sleep do you get" and so on. I tell them that I am absolutely not the person to ask that particular type of question.

I admit—and I am still quite happy about it although it makes me shake my head in disbelief at myself—that I asked for three classes. Actually, I dropped a big hint in the office when I said (before the semester) that I would be happy to teach a 3/0 this year instead of a 2/1 because that would give me a semester plus a summer of unfettered exam studying (unfettered except for the typical fettering of two seminars in the spring and my job) for the fall. I knew we were in a little bit of a bind because of some last-minute hiring away (or quitting) of some people who were on the schedule, so I said "hey, you know..." and thus reminded anyone who would listen that I'm a bit of a freak.

I'm a lot more comfortable teaching my 402 than I am the 101, even though Toria and I spent all summer planning it out. It's not the content that I am worried about—it's the people. I haven't taught 18-year-olds for a year and a half; I've taught juniors and seniors since I've been here. Ok, truthfully I'm not even all that worried about it. It's just that some of them seem so very young in the classroom. I say "in the classroom" to differentiate them from "on paper" because I asked them to write a little in-class thing and some of them were funny and thoughtful. Actually, most of them were. But the in-class behavior of some is just...not what I'm used to. After everyone settles down from this first week I'll nip some of that in the bud, but still...I made a mental note to myself about a few things I didn't think I'd have to note.

But at least I know approximately 30% of their names after two class meetings. In my other class, not so much yet. I have a total of 77 students and I think that my brain will explode trying to remember everyone.

Labels: grad school, teacher-like

My two 101 classes are part of the Freshman Focus program, which means the 52 students in my two sections, plus the 52 students in (in this case) my pal Toria's sections all live together and take one other class together (World Civ II taught by a fellow who focuses on philosophical issues). Toria's undergrad degree was in philosophy, and I was almost a philosophy major (and thanks to Janet I got to grade philosophy of science discussions), so this grouping has really worked out well.

The three of us also firmly believe that we can expect more out of our students, and that if we push them most of them will step up (instead of fall off a cliff or something horrible like that). We're all about rising to the challenge.

That being said, we spent a good deal of time structuring our 101 (we are using the exact same syllabus and calendar) to include thought-provoking readings and movies that they can then write about in awesome ways. Since we're working with moral issues and what it means to be human, they're reading things like Daniel Dennett's "brain in a vat" piece ("Where Am I?") and watching The Matrix. Other movies on the list—we're showing eight and they only have to see four—are: Harold and Maude, Gattaca, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I ♥ Huckabees, Minority Report, The Prestige, and Wanted. Yes, the Angelina Jolie/James McAvoy assassin movie. There are at least eight moral issues we can talk about in that one, plus we just really, really, really liked it.

But the reading I'm particularly fond of came from a random Facebook status message. At the beginning of June, George Williams posted a status that said something like "Harriet McBryde Johnson has died." I didn't know who Harriet McBryde Johnson was, but knew that if George was mentioning her then she had to be important. I used teh google and found her New York Times article from 2003, Unspeakable Conversations". We're pairing it with a Peter Singer piece. I expect it will be painful, but I am also hoping for fruitful.

The course syllabus and readings are all online if anyone wants to take a look. The PDFs are password protected (highlight here: stephenson / north).

Labels: teacher-like

Just finished week 1 of my summer session class. The students are great. They're funny and smart—my favorite kind. In this class, Project #1 is a how-to/instructional document. They came up with ideas on Tuesday and started working on it in lab on Wednesday. One student is writing a how-to for Beer Pong—don't laugh (ok, do, because it's funny)—she's on page six and isn't done yet. Hooray! Writing! One student is writing a funny piece about surviving long distance relationships. One student is writing about how to set up an aquarium. One student is writing about how to master the Asian stereotype (he's from Hong Kong). Good stuff. I am really looking forward to reading their drafts tomorrow!

And then there's the fellow who got really excited about his how-to, "How to Fish," that he and another student in the class (who isn't even writing about fishing, but just likes to do it) ran right out and went fishing that evening and took a bunch of photos for the step-by-step procedures.

And along came an officer of the law (not sure yet if city/county/state/forest/etc) and asked them how they were doing, and how many fish they caught. "Two!" they answered, before realizing "oh crap, we don't have a license." One fellow did...last year. The officer started writing them a ticket...for over $500.

They pleaded ignorance of the law, being poor international students, said they were going fishing for a class project, they'll throw the fish back, etc. Hey, I'd have done the same once I realized that my exuberance was going to cost me $500. The officer knocked it down to $109/each, which is doable for them but still really sucky.

The good news is that they were laughing about it, in that "we did a really stupid thing unintentionally, and it's kind of funny in its absurdity" way. I told them to being the ticket to class on Monday because I want to see it—if the have the ablity to fight it in court (and the court is local), I'm going to help them prep something—a pitch, a document, something—to plead their case and see if they can't just get their fine knocked down to the price of a license.

Everything's a teaching moment...

And in this instance it's a teaching moment and really, really funny.

Labels: teacher-like

* This is the first week of Summer Session II. I already know that the students in my class are smart, funny, and quite proficient. I hope it will be a painless, yet interesting and in some ways challenging, summer session for them all. A few of the students have already walked in graduation, so this really is their last class, yet they all have good get-the-work-done/learn-something attitudes about being here. At least so far. I've already achieved my goal of making each person laugh at me, and I'm 90% sure of all the names.

* Got the evaluation numbers from last semester's class—two thumbs up. I love me some statistical validation.

* I still haven't taken my new computer out of its box, but I did install Firefox 3 on this machine. I will write a post about it. It's very fast. You know something is speedier than its predecessor when an actual, live human can tell the difference (as opposed to using tools and working in microtime). This Firefox 3 Memory Usage post talks about a lot of the improvements, and I would just like to note that I am personally two degrees of separation from all this awesomeness. You see, my friend/fellow PhD student/soon-to-be office-mate, Donna, is the mother of the fine fellow, Jason Evans, who wrote the jemalloc memory allocator. That's cool.

* Um...how to segue to something not-technical?

* I've cooked a bunch of good food this week. The next One Local Summer post will be full of stuff and pictures. Hooray!

Labels: teacher-like, technical interlude

[This is the first of the two posts about the week of awesomeness I mentioned at the beginning of April. Click to embiggen the images, especially the one of the actual news clipping.]

I taught English 403 in the Spring semester: Professional and Technical Writing for ESL Students (English 402 is the non-ESL version, although for various reasons that I hope to have a hand in changing, 403 and 402 tend to focus on different things). One of the four projects in the course was a translation project. You might say "Wha?? But this is an English course!" to which I say "and boy howdy did they write a lot in English."

I'll backtrack.

The person who regularly teaches ESL courses got in touch with the university's recycling office about a possible translation project for the instructions/poster/handout on the new single-stream recycling program offered here. Couple that with the time I spent as documentation i18n/l10n manager for a really big tech company oh so many years ago (and my abilities in working with non-English documents and application i18n/l10n as part of my daily work anyway), and it seemed like a good thing to do. I could totally teach the processes and documentation that go into doing a translation project. And I did.

Students worked in language groups across the two sections of this class. Groups ranged in size from 1 (guess that's not a group) to 10, but each group did at least the one page poster and most groups also did a second batch of text that can be used as needed. The documents were translated into Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Arabic, Farsi, and Spanish. Throughout the course of the project, students wrote the following documents in English (individually): a Memo of Understanding, a Progress Report, and a final Translator's Report. So, while the translation is what you see in the image above, each student might only have translated a hundred words (if even that) from English into their preferred non-English language—and the same student will have written a few thousand words about the translation.

NOTE: Here is the assignment overview document, and if you want to see any of the individual assignment sheets just let me know.

Clearly, the students put a lot of work into this project. Their documents are going to be distributed by WSU as a public service throughout the western United States, and will help recycling stations communicate important information about what can/cannot be recycled in single-stream recycling projects. I also wanted to provide them with some knowledge about how to do this sort of thing because it is likely that somewhere down the line in their engineering or marketing or whatever jobs, someone is going to find out about their language multicompetencies and ask them to pitch in and help out on a translation—outsourcing translations is very expensive so a lot of it stays in-house.

Anyway, we threw them a little party and had the "client" (head of university recycling) come in and talk to them/thank them/etc. We provided food. We displayed all the work. We invited the press. A lovely student reporter came to the event and talked to the client, to us, and most importantly to the students in the class. Please click through and read the article (you might have to view the large size first).

I was so happy for (and proud of) the students and what they did for the community (and the environment). WSU is not the most diverse school, and it was A Good Thing to get information out there that international and/or ESL students have unique and valuable skills.

Labels: teacher-like

I am proud to know this guy. This is just 9:52 of awesomeness. Good job, Critter!

Actual info for the movie: "Chris Ritter's philosophy on teaching with technology, with advice for other teachers. Delights and instructs!" and is teh hawesome



[click here if the embed doesn't work]

Labels: teacher-like

Discuss.

Ok, so this was one of the potential interview questions one of my students drew out of the hat today in class. My class isn't all reports and memos, people!

We have fun. Well, at least I have fun...

Labels: teacher-like

Okey doke. I'm ready. Let's get this party started!

* Syllabus...check.
* Set up a core amount of stuff in eLearning/Blackboard/WebCT/whatever the hell it's called now...check.
* E-mailed students with link to above...check.
* Checked out the classroom, got a set of the correct type of A/V cables to carry around with me, reserved days for class in the computer lab...check.
* Gave syllabus to the office folks to copy...check.
* Got all the books for my own seminars...check.
* Set up my master "seminar assignments" document with all the stuff I have to do for each class for each week...check-ish (I only have 2 of the 4 syllabi).
* Got a new bag even though I don't need one and I can only use it on non-computer-carrying days but I love bags and it was on sale...check.
* Got new shoes, for all the reasons listed above except the one about carrying my computer...check.
* Got a haircut.

See? All ready!
******************************

When I read New Kid's post the other day, I read the opening lines and thought "yes! that's so true!"

"There are things I hate about the first day of class. I hate walking into a room full of strangers; I find students in the anonymous collective kind of intimidating"

Then I immediately said, "Wait, that's not true at all." I focused on the phrase that is true for me: "I hate walking into a room full of strangers."

When I stopped for half a second and thought about it, I realized that while it is true that I hate walking into a room full of strangers [In college, I ate alone in the dining hall exactly once in three years. I would have rather gone hungry than walk in alone. I've gotten over that extreme position.], I do not mind walking into a room full of students (who are strangers). I don't find it the least bit intimidating. I wondered why that is, for just a moment, and then moved onto other things like trying to figure out what the hell to wear on the first day of school.

Labels: teacher-like

[Look! I'm actually writing one of the posts in my list! Amazing.]

I might have mentioned before that I'm a grader for World Civ this semester. Why, you're right—I am in the English department.... But here, World Civ I and II are required courses for freshmen, and they fall under the General Education department, which "borrows" (buys) graders from English (and other departments like American Studies, History, and maybe a few others). The good news is that being a grader is relatively easy—relative to actually teaching an entire class—and being a grader replaces one of our required teaching slots for our TAships. In other words, I only have to teach one comp course next semester because I was a grader this semester. Sometimes people request grader positions during exam semesters so that they can lighten their load while studying.

I should begin by saying that I'm a grader for a good prof. She asks good questions. Unfortunately, the students are not yet up to speed when it comes to thinking or writing like college students. Or, in the case of many of the students in my section, even up to speed in reading like college students—namely, reading the assignment sheet (and correctly). The first essays were, to put it mildly, trainwrecks. Something like 102 of the 110 essays were Ds or Fs (the class average was a 66). The majority of the Fs were simply because they failed to read and write on the assigned topic. The majority of the Ds were because they came close to writing on the assigned topic but then failed to do something (anything!) close to analysis. I almost cried when I got to the lone A- paper. The clouds parted, angels sang, etc.

Bardiac has a post about stamps for grading. I could have used ones that said "thesis?" and "and...?" and "generalization!" and "cite your source" and (my fave) "essay does not address assigned topic."

In the three sections of composition that I have under my belt, I've graded something like 500 essays. I think I gave 5 Fs out of those 500. I hate giving Fs. I hate even more that the students earn Fs. I don't hate the students, of course. Hell no. I just want to teach them something.

Students who have complaints have to come see me before they go to the prof. Lucky me, eh? I had seventeen students make appointments. I had more student conferences in one set of office hours than I had in two semesters of teaching. I only had two loud, belligerant, "but I'm an A student so you must be mistaken" fellows. I would have preferred more of them if it meant that more than seventeen came to see me.

I also made a handout that diffused most of the situations. It was three pages of bullet items: what the assignment asked, what the assignment specifically said not to do, examples of bad theses and why, a template of a good thesis for this assignment, and then numerous fallacies they clearly forgot (or never learned) from high school English. The first thing I did in these meetings was go through the handout. By the time I was through with it and let them yell/ask their questions, very few of them had a thing to say. Except for the one or two students who, of course, are just now finding out they're not the big fish in the little pond anymore, and that they can't rest on their high school laurels, and that yeah, while they might be A students, they wrote F essays. Get over it. It happens. Learn from it.

But I admit I felt like absolute crap for an entire week because so many students did poorly. Not that I did anything wrong—I graded to the rubric, the prof backed me up, and some people who came to see me did learn from their mistakes. We'll see how the next set of papers look when I get them this Friday...

Labels: grad school, teacher-like

Labels: teacher-like

Today was the last class I'll ever teach at SJSU (barring some strange twist of fate in which I earn my PhD and come back). In this photo [click to embiggen], we see students hard at work on what was supposed to be a really easy 25-matching-items extra credit test-like thing. The highest score was a 23! As you can see in the photo, they were all really concentrating...it was kind of funny!

I honestly didn't think many people would show up (the final exam was on Saturday), despite the extra credit test-like thing and the free doughnuts. But all except a few showed up. Hooray!

I don't blame the ones who didn't. It's lame to have the final exam and then still one more class period. That's just the way we do it here for this class (and 1B) because of the way the final is given (to everyone) and graded (holistic scoring in a day-long extravaganza before exam week really begins).

Holistic grading day is tomorrow. My responsibilities as a teacher will end after tomorrow's fun and then an hour or so on Friday (I hope) when I drop their grades into my Super Awesome Grading Spreadsheet, get the results, put them all into the PeopleSoft system, and email the students with their exam and class grades.

I'm a little sad.

Sadness is mitigated by the thesis and language exam looming over me.

Labels: teacher-like

Labels: teacher-like

Labels: teacher-like

Labels: teacher-like