I love Christmas break, and I had a great time in Chicago and Michigan with family and friends, but when everyone else is back at work and I'm still sitting at home... it kinda sucks. Especially because I didn't have my car for a few days and was stuck at home with nothing to do. I shouldn't say nothing. I have super cleaned my room (dusted, vacuumed, and rearranged some things) and prepped for the semester more than usual. Master copies of ALL assignments and handout have been printed and organized in my brand new binder so all I have to do is make photocopies throughout the semester. I even set up my online gradebooks down to every detailed assignment and participation point and am prepared to give my students access codes to track their grades online. Look at me go.

So with all this great prep - I am ready for classes! Yesterday I went over to one of my schools of employment where I will be an Academic Advisor this semester instead of an instructor. (I'm teaching at two schools and advising at a third. Busy!) Especially after this brief meeting involving paperwork and setting up my advising schedule for the semester, I feel ready. That half hour was the most alive and purposeful I've felt since I got back from my travels a week and a half ago. Part of it was being in a campus environment. Part is the excitement of a new job and challenge. And part was how welcoming and validating the other staff were. I met a few other advisors who all welcomed me warmly. And the head of advising, who I have been training with since Thanksgiving, had some very complimentary things to say. Ordinarily, part time advisors like myself need to also be teaching at the school during the semesters they advise. The way the cards fell this semester left me with no classes at this particular school due to scheduling and low enrollment. I was pretty disappointed. But the head of advising recommended me to the dean as a potentially strong advisor specially because he said I have a welcoming presence. He insisted that you can teach the computer stuff, the rules and details of course scheduling and prerequisites. But you can't teach the heart, the caring for the students. Once in awhile, it's really nice to hear that kind of thing.

On top of that, I've gotten some very kind compliments from colleagues who are writing my reference letters for my ongoing full-time professorship search. I just have to keep crossing my fingers that I land one someday (sooner rather than later). This is what I'm good at. This is what I want to do. Maybe what I'm meant to do. And I feel validated about that regularly. So it has to work out as a full-time career one of these days - right? Here's hoping.

No More Research?

Why don't students know how to cite research anymore? I would estimate that 75% of my students each semester do not know how to put together a bibliography or provide proper in-text citations. I don't just mean that they make small errors, but that they don't even produce anything close!

I get lists of sources at the end in no order whatsoever. I get students who include the entire entry right after the quote and don't put any bibliography at the end at all. Students use Google and Yahoo for research and have no concept of what a scholarly source is.

I expect a certain amount of mistakes, but don't they teach you to alphabetize your list of sources? Don't students at least know to include the author, title, publisher, and date? I know other professors (in history, psych, etc) don't teach research. That's my job as the composition instructor. But freshman comp is about strengthening skills of grammar, essay structure, and thesis statements. Most composition courses include research, but don't focus on it wholly. And why not? I feel like freshman comp should spend about half the semester on research, citations, bibliographies, etc. How else will the students be prepared when other professors expect they know how to do this?

What really blows my mind is that my students who seems to be struggling are not in freshman comp - they're all in the second level of English composition! So I wonder not only what high schools are teaching these kids, but what did their freshman comp professors teach them? And maybe part of the problem is the curriculum, not the teachers or professors themselves.

This is a very scatterbrained dumping of frustration. I just had to pause in my afternoon of essay grading to express a little confusion and frustration over the mistakes I seem to correcting on paper after paper after paper...

I had a strange moment this morning when I learned that some of my past and current students found and read my blog! I'm not sure why this surprises me because I read a blog written by one of my former graduate professors. Sometimes I think no one reads this because I get so few comments, but apparently, there are anonoymous readers out there somewhere! I try to keep some this private, or blocked to friends only, like my Facebook account. But this website and blog is meant to be both personal and professional. So naturally, students may stumble across it. I think one of the advantages about teaching at a college level rather than elementary and high school is that it's ok for students to see me as a "real person." While I certainly try to maintain a tone of professionalism in the classroom, I enjoy the mutual respect that a professor/student relationship offers.

I went off on a bit of a tangent here, and I'm really not sure I'm being very clear in my thoughts. Early class today. I really just wanted to say - hello students! Say hi once in awhile; I always enjoy hearing what former students are up to. :)

refreshing

Kind, unsolicited words about my World Literature 2 class...

"I absolutely love your class. I love our readings and I love how you go into so much detail about each and every one of them without making it terribly boring, which is a very refreshing thing."

purpose

i've been meaning to post this for awhile now... but life (and laziness) gets the best of me. 

this semester i've been teaching 2 sections of English 100 and one section of English 101. it makes me realize how much i enjoy 101. not that my 100 kids are bad, it's just a different level of writing. it's a real challenge to get them connect with the material and keep their attention through class. (and now that the semester is over and i'm reading their final exam essays, i'm seeing lots of small sentence structure issues we should have spent more time on. why didn't i notice this before??) but my 101 class this semester was overall more advanced than sections i've taught in the past. there were a few kids that lagged behind, but no one was a really awful writer. and they all grew. the students who struggled on the first essay stepped up leaps and bounds for the rest of the class.

one of the reasons i like teaching 101 is because i feel it's the most important class any college student will ever take. learning to present yourself on paper in a clear, concise manner will lead to better grades in other classes, and more importantly, can help you get a job or succeed at your job later in life. if you can't write an essay, how can you possibly survive college? get into grad school? get your resume noticed? 

there was one student in particular whose first essay was... scatterbrained. i could tell she had alot of passionate ideas about the world, but that was just it - all passion. no structure. no clarity. her paragraphs were long and unfocused. her syntax was trying too hard to sound smart. her topics were much too broad for the length of the assignment. heck, her essay was a few pages longer than i asked for!

so i told her to focus. to scale back. to try to explain one point as in depth as possible instead of skimming the surface on twenty points. her second essay was worlds better. and when we started working on the third (research) i looked over her ideas and warned her against that old problem of too much information to present a clear, focused essay. when we met for a one-on-one meeting to discuss her draft, she listened thoughtfully and wanted to make sure she was staying on focus. and as she got up to leave she thanked me and told me i was a good teacher. (keep in mind, this is a student who sits in the back corner, is easily annoyed by chatty students in class, and who i might have thought was bored). she had just gotten back an essay from another class and received an A. she told me she applied what i'd been teaching her about focus to her other subjects.

this last week of class, she told me she'd received another A on an essay in yet a different subject.

this is what teaching English is all about.

back to school...

once again, i've become a writer who doesn't write. life gets busy and filled with work, and work, and tv, and internet, and books, and friends, and laundry, and dishes, and cleaning, and errands, and... no writing. tomorrow i go back to teaching - three classes this semester. i don't feel at all mentally prepared for this, but i'm just trusting that i'll walk into my first class of the day and feel renewed again. that's how i felt last fall, after a whole summer off i went back to teaching and felt my heart fill up a little more. i like teaching. i think i'm getting good at it. i hope it'll be a good semester.

and with it, i hope i can still somehow find time to read and write in the midst of it. i keep saying i look forward to some day down the road when i have my own office and a full time position and i can write poems and read books for fun and mentor students and focus on all of that and built my life on it. but why does that need to wait? i don't want my other part time work or my need to make money to pay the bills to get in the way of the things i believe in, the things i want to devote my life to. isn't that why i decided to get an mfa? why i decided to start adjunct teaching in the first place? to fill some sort of crazy dream that i can have a career i love and not be a "sell out" just pushing buttons all day trying to make millions?

hopefully more regular blogs can help me keep that writing going. i know i've said that before, but i really am going to try this time. honest.

i've been working like a mad woman to try to stay financially ahead of the game. (or more realistically, financially afloat). the downside to having jobs i LOVE is that they aren't six-digit salary jobs. i teach at a community college, work at a cultural center, and teach tap. that makes it sound busy enough. but keep in mind that at the cultural center, i am THE admin and i help in the cafe.

i've really enjoyed working sundays in the cafe lately. it's definitely good extra money. this pay period looked more like it should, as opposed to all my pay periods since christmas which have been low. but i'm also starting to feel little overwhelmed in the office, so i've been working long days. i'm still not getting everything done there that i would like to.

and the worst part is, my teaching is falling through the cracks. i JUST realized (thanks to an email from a student) that i have first drafts for a class to give back tomorrow. except that i haven't looked at them yet. i've worked 24 hours in the last 2 days, and i'm exhausted. but now, instead of zoning out to sitcoms and going to bed early... i have to read and comment on all these essays. nevermind lesson planning. or reading the stories i've assigned. and i have NO idea when i'm going to update the discussion board questions for the last half of the semester.

i really don't want to give up the hours and the money, but i think i'm going to have to work every other sunday at the cafe or something. once the semester ends, summer will be a piece of cake. but right now, i'm going crazy. i don't want to do a half assed job at all these places. ugh. can't there be just a few more hours in the day?

E for effort

today is one of those rare occasions when i feel like i must be improving somehow as a teacher. i'm sitting here on my lunch break grading the latest essays (compare/contrast) and so far they're GOOD. i've only been through about 6, but i've already written A on 4 essays. that never happens! last year my students' compare/contrast essays were so off the mark i had to offer them ALL the opportunity to further revise or rewrite the essay in order to raise their grades. never a good sign. so i'm doing something right. i look forward to the day when i don't have to do much prep work. when the lessons are so well planned out i don't need a sheet in front of me reminding me what to do. when i can stand and walk around the room and feel like we're all participating in a meaningful discussion. when i see the benefit of all my exercises and feel like i'm not just trying to fill the class time. *sigh* someday.

fall looks good on me

i'm having a lovely day. today is one of those calm, wonderful days when i'm confident about myself, my life, and everything that goes with it. i say fall looks good on me because, well, it does! today i'm wearing brown tights with flat brown boots that have buckles and lace up to just below my knees. a short frayed jean skirt. a tan vneck light sweater that is low enough to show my white tshirt with the camp logo on it. my olive green pashmina scarf from london. and i walked around carrying my dark green barnes and noble tote bag with literature quotes on it. i think i look good in earthy tones, and i feel pretty good about this artsy, eclectic outfit i put together today. fall looks (and feels!) good on me.

i slept in a bit this morning (which was NOT in the plan) but i forced myself to get dressed and walk down the street to a cafe called "the perfect cup." i passed a few other cafes on the way, but i chose this one because it looked cute, and it's close to the el stop and in an area with more foot traffic. i wanted to be somewhere crowded with activity. after spending a few hours there, i love this cafe. it's cozy, dark bold painted walls, thick crown molding, art on the walls, bookshelves, a few cozy chairs and couches. the coffee and scones were great. the ONLY downside is, no free wireless. this was good for me today, because i managed to focus on my students' essays without the distraction of the computer. but i'm sure there will be days in the future when a laptop is necessary and i'll need to visit a cafe with a less fabulous vibe. ah well. or i could just pay for the internet there.

i think this was the most productive 3.5 hours i've had since the semester started. AND i was really pleased with my students' work! overall good sentence structure and well written essays. not all a's, by any means, and a few people missed a huge requirement of the assignment. but i'm hopeful that the rest of the essays for the class will be good as well. i should have all a writers by the end of the semester!

this weather is truly lovely. i wish the leaves would change colors already though! i'm a little afraid they will just die and fall off before giving me a decorative show. such is life in chicago. how are the leaves in michigan, friends? maybe i'm due for a visit...

i'm sitting outside on my porch now enjoying the cool air. i know i always say i love summer and tank tops, but i think it's a lie. i REALLY love scarves and sweaters and this time when it's nice to be outside but not cold yet. i'm not looking forward to cold. if i had a dog, now is when i'd be taking him for long walks everyday. i know it's not practical to think about. i'm much too busy to take proper care of a dog. plus my building doesn't allow them, and i just painted and have every intention of staying here at LEAST 2 years (if not a little longer). but i have two big goals. well, three i guess, because the last two depend on the first. #1 to get a full time teaching job and stop this 3 job nonsense (although i do love all 3 jobs right now). #2 to buy a new car before stanley kicks the bucket. which should be several more years. #3 to get a dog. and name him jack. :)

check me out!

http://boocoo.org/katie_b_w.php
http://boocoo.org/katie_b.php

evals

my students filled out class evaluations today... eek! what if they know i've been faking it this whole semester? what if they know i haven't read more than 2 of the assigned stories for class discussion? what if no one wants me to teach anymore because the evaluations say terrible things??

ok, i know i'm overreacting. none of those things are going to happen. truthfully, i think i'm a pretty good faker. and i haven't totally bombed this semester, but i do feel like i'll get better as time goes on. i feel like i conduct class pretty well, and i think the kids all like me. even if they don't think i'm the greatest teacher ever, i'm fairly confident no one DISlikes or doesn't respect me.

however, i'm afraid i haven't taught them much that they'll remember. i want them to leave my class feeling better equipped for the world. ready to take on any academic essay they might be assigned. ready to compose a decent cover letter to apply for jobs. ready to write emails and memos and proposals and whatever other documents they will use in their career. i truly believe coherent writing is essential for success in the world. if you can't present yourself well on paper, you'll never get your foot in the door. no one will give you a second glance. these kids don't need to be shakespeare, but they need to understand structure and concision and effective use of writing tools.

oh i just hope they remember SOMETHING. and i hope i can find the time early this summer to revise my syllabus and lesson plans, because i have a MILLION ideas in my head how i can make this class better. just give me another year or two, i'll beat this composition thing yet!

(speaking of, i'm surprised how much i'm enjoying teaching composition instead of creative writing! weird...)