8 posts tagged “this teacher's process”

Today/night:

Ok, today, I have:

1. My tooth hurts. Again.
2. Gotta get some dental insurance, or maybe just some magically found money in an old purse.
3. Just over half a stack of papers done; two and a half stacks to go.
4. Shouldn't have spent so much time on the phone, but I got to catch up with friends, which I should always spend more time doing.
5. Mostly clean house, which is nice. Did tons of dishes and microwave cleaning and whatnot today.
6. New pajama pants, very softy nice.
7. Cat peace continues to hold.
8. Almost all of tomorrow off to play more catch-up.
9. And SLP will be home. :)

Ahhhhh....

At the very, very good advice of my dear, dear friends Heartswater and PTM, I have canceled my classes at My Institution for tomorrow. I will teach at The Community College, but then I shall go home and grade, grade, grade allllllllllllll day and return, caught up-ish and refreshed-ish, on Tuesday. Or maybe on Wednesday. ;)

Well, my deep-fried twinkie TV didn't help as much as I'd like. grrrrr...

I'm just locked in a mental wrestling match with the people in my professional writing class. They're simply maddenning. You could, and I almost have, tapdance naked with flowers growing out of your ass, and these people would simply sit there and look at you, expressionless. Today was just ridiculous---it makes me so steamed, I'm not even going to dip a toe into describing it here. Otherwise, I think this post could easily turn into a rabbit-hole of bitching. But it was. Ridiculous. Rimotherfuckingdiculous.

Makes me nuts---they don't ask questions, they won't ask questions, they barely answer them, they almost never laugh. I'm going a little extreme in my description out of emotionality---we have had some good days. But, still. Cripes. It's like being stuck waiting tables in the non-smoking section on a real drag of a night for an entire semester.

And it burns me up no end that I know that the main thing I'm tied up in is struggling hard with feeling like I haven't done as good a job as I could have as a teacher. I hate, hate, hate letting students down; hate it. And I haven't done so here, which makes me extra NUTS. I definitely haven't done the best job of teaching this course, at all, but it's my first time out with it. I have worked hard at planning and assignment design, assessment and feedback, and developing classroom community and practices for doing the work. I have actually brought a pretty genuinely welcoming heart to every fucking class section, even though I've been pretty pissed off at other times. Given all the variables, I'd give myself a B-/B for the term for this one.

A B-/B is an absolutely fine grade for a first-time class, for God's sake. And yet, I am just all snared up in evil because they just aren't stepping up to their end of the relationship. Which makes nothing but sense, because if I have ever had a serious problem with my relationshipping, it's been with taking too much responsibility for other people not stepping up to their end of a relationship.

I mean the answer to my problem is to just stop being so sure I know anything about what these people are thinking or feeling. They do not talk to me, for God's sake; how could I possibly have any idea??? If I accept that I don't know what's going on behind their expressions (or lack thereof), then I have to stop being so ego-driven and taking it all so fucking personally. I have to accept that their discomfort or whatever could be about a zillion other things that are not me. As the old saying goes, the world does not revolve around me.

Ok, I write that, and I start to feel a little ease, a little spaciousness opening up.

And it's not that dramatic, either, is it? No. In my experience, really genuinely dramatic stuff doesn't happen in my life. A person's life rarely depends on the outcome of my actions---nothing in my world is that big a deal. Right. I remember this. I know this often, lately. I'm a fan of knowing this.

And yet more spaciousness opens up. And I realize that out of a class of 12, I only have 3 people who are actually actively resistant/aggressive. I have 1 that's really just lovely and brave, 5 that are good, hardworking, sweet people who are just very, very shy, 1 that is sooooo dear, in the few moments that he connects and lights up, and 2 who kind of just hang out. Also, all of them, even the really obnoxious little shit, have grown as writers this term, at least in some measure, and some, really, quite a bit.

And we only meet 3 more times. And 2 of those are presentation days. And then it's over, and I get to go on and do a better job next time.

And now I really start to feel better. Nicer. Less like a total asshole teacher. Which is nice.

I'm just going to go in on Thursday, bring them what they need to do, and be as nice to them as I can. I won't try to save the class, or them, or anything. I'll just show up and do my part and have as light a touch as possible. I'm just gonna get out of the way...

I got another class today, from the community college. So that brings the winter total to four classes, 2 that pay a reasonable amount and 2 that pay about 2/3 of that. I do believe it's just barely enough to make the bills, and that ain't nothing to sneeze at. :)

Winter will be interesting. Two more sections of the research-writing course at My Institution will give me a solid foundation of the known. They'll be like a nice, comfortable breathing room, while I figure out the other two that I've never taught. From the community college, I've got an Intro to Workplace Writing--email, memo, letter of inquiry, resume, etc. Soooo looking forward to that one. I see it as helping a student population grow some much-needed sharp-teeth-and-claws of the rhetorical variety. It's all personal marketing, framing the self in terms of strengths and potential, and surface conventions glitz-n-glam. Fun stuff fer a wild textual outlaw/nerd like me. And I've got a freshman comp from them, which should be really pretty fun.

I'm still a little nervous, but in a nice way. Instead of the total panic I felt when I was brand-new at this gig, the surging pressure not to botch the whole thing completely for 25 paying-customer students, I just kind of feel like, "Sweet--I could use something new to think about and play around with." I do believe I can say that I finally feel like I've got the beginning of some professional teaching chops, some solid ground under me, and like I can trust myself to at least do no harm.

Or at least not much harm.

Glad to Say.

Ok, here's the intro to process I just wrote up for my students, along with the responsive writing I'm assigning with it. The reading assignment is intended to get us all on the more or less same page about the practices we'll be using for the rest of the term. The writing assignment is low-stakes, largely a Stock-Taking exercise for them to use to start positioning themselves as researchers with an existing set of expertise and model of attack.

Read/Write Assignment, DUE 6/12, typed, double-spaced
First, the Read part:
 
The Un- and Re-Searched Argument: A Journey
 
In the next two months of English 226, we’re going to work through a process of research-writing, in two, overlapping units. In the first unit, the Un-Searched Argument, you’ll begin to develop your thinking about an issue that’s important to you. In the second unit, the Re-Searched Argument, you’ll engage with outside sources to enrich, deepen, and refine your thinking about said issue.
 
As we begin this process, I think it’s helpful to spend a minute thinking about what research is in the first place. The word “research” comes from the French word rechercher, meaning “to search again; to examine anew” (emphasis mine). Like writing, research doesn’t begin with us knowing nothing, nor does it begin with us knowing everything. Like writing, research is an ongoing process, not an event or a task. In fact, in my experience, reading and writing (and viewing and listening and whatever) are all one great, big, lifelong research process.
 
Generally, writing doesn’t mean having a brain full of a perfectly, completely thought-through essay and then just taking it out of the brain and putting it on the page. Instead, writing usually begins with having a brainful of interesting ideas, images, and memories percolating and beginning to make a bunch of cool connections. We don’t actually figure all that out until we work on translating it into words, sentences, and paragraphs. Of course, the writing process doesn’t stop there. Once we’ve got a draft going, we take a break, get some feedback from real readers, i.e. teachers and class colleagues. Then, we sit back down at the keyboard and make some cool changes to our draft. Sometimes we repeat the last two steps a number of times. 
 
Research-writing works much the same way. In fact, the writing process generally is usually a research-writing process anyway, even if it doesn’t seem like one. We start out the same way—with the same mess of ideas, images, and memories—we start out with what we already know and are interested in. At this point, we usually do some Stock-Taking Writing—writing where the whole point is just to get clear about what we do know already, and what we think we probably don’t know yet, and probably should find out more about. If we’re lucky, we get some feedback on this Stock-Taking. This kind of feedback is about the thinking we’re doing, not about the writing, per se.
 
Then, we go out looking for sources of information and perspectives that can help us learn more about the topic we’re writing about. We usually go to the library, looking for articles in scholarly journals, reliable popular magazines, and reliable web sites. We skim a lot of stuff that doesn’t quite fit our needs/interests, until we find a few really awesome sources that are rich in the kinds of information and perspectives we want to learn more about.
 
When we find these, we read them deeply, really putting them into dialogue with our existing thinking. We open up our own ideas and allow the new stuff we’re reading to come in and change things up. Of course, since at this point we’re kind of all-ears and all-eyes for anything that connects to our research interest, we also find sources in unexpected places. We see a television program that turns out to be relevant to our thinking. We overhear a conversation at work about the issue we’re investigating, and ask our co-workers a bunch of questions. Whatever—the point is we’re sucking relevant information in from every opportunity, and mixing it into our initial ideas. Then, we sit down and do some more writing—Dialogue/Analysis/Reflection Writing—to help us put the old and new together and figure out how things have come out. Again, if we’re lucky, we get some more feedback at this point.
 
Finally, after a bunch of this, we feel ready to start getting to work on Drafting. We re-read all the Stock-Taking and Dialogue/Analysis/Reflection we’ve done so far. We take a break and just do other stuff for a day or two, and let everything percolate in our heads. We start doing some more thinking about Primary Audience, Behavior Change, and Primary Claim, as we begin to organize our thinking. And then, finally, we sit down at the keyboard and hammer out a Reader Review Draft of our essay. And after that, you already know what happens—feedback, revision, and so on.
 
Phew.
 
Ok, this, in a nutshell, is what we’re going to be doing for the rest of the term.
 
 

And now, the Write part:
 
Having read the above ramblings, please respond to the following prompts, in a paragraph or so each (typed, double-spaced):

Ok, I've put my work off to the very last possible moment, so it's time to get busy on revising and tweaking the second-half schedule for my Argumentative Writing course. I've never taught this course before, nor have I taught at My Community College before, so the course I originally prepped is alright, but it ain't great, and I want to make the most of the last of our work together.

Un-Searched Argument Reader Review Draft, DUE 6/19, at least 3 full pages of writing, typed, double-spaced.
Un-Searched Argument, DUE 6/24, 3-5 full pages of writing, typed, double-spaced.
 
In your Un-Searched Argument, you’re going to start developing the thinking you’ll focus, deepen, and refine in your Re-Searched Argument. In your Un-Searched Arg, it is not essential that you really know anything—what matters is what you think. What you need to do in this essay is develop an argument about an issue that is important to you, without doing any outside research at all. You’ll use this essay as a starting point for your research later. Here’s what you have to do:

• You’ll need to richly explain the issue you’re dealing with, and get as specific as you can about which aspects of it you’re most interested in. You also need to thoroughly analyze why you, personally, are invested or interested in it. This means thinking through what personal experience you or people you know have had that connects to this issue, how your career or academic trajectory does or does not connect, and so on.
• You’ll also need to provide an analysis of who you think are the stakeholders and powerbrokers involved with this issue. What main groups of people do you think are affected by this issue? In what way(s)? Why? What main groups of people do you think have the greatest power to create change in this issue? In what way(s)? Why?
• Finally, you’ll need to think through what you think you don’t already know about this issue. What do you think you need to learn about why this issue is an issue, about its history? What other perspectives on this issue do you think you need to learn more about? What kinds of clinical or statistical data do you think you need to discover? What do you want to know about how other people have grappled with this issue? About how other people have problem-solved this issue? About why this issue is hard for people to come together on? And so on…

 
Remember, you may not do any outside research on this essay. This means that you’ll need to provide plenty of explanation, examples, and/or evidence to show why you think what you think.
 
Issues that are off-limits for this assignment: abortion, the death penalty, and issues of religion. (FYI: If you’re interested in best practices for Sunday School education, for example, that is not an issue of religion, it’s an issue of education.)