Day: April 16, 2017

2714. On Me

admin

So, why not post the blog I wrote yesterday–yesterday? Lazy is the quick answer, but the more measured and thoughtful response is that I knew my one reader wouldn’t completely flip out for it being late to post and likely would read several in a bunch. More to the point, I know I have but one dear reader.

Thank you.

I started publishing these thoughts in an effort to keep myself honest about my craft. It was an open space to write about anything that stuck to my brain over the course of a day. A lot came down to rants. I’d secretly imagined publishing the mess of it a la Allie Brosh and letting folks in on the warped mind of this writer while drawing a slight profit. My wonderful partner published a year’s worth for me and it was a clear reminder of how much effort I do put into the blog on somedays and what I can be capable of on a semi-regular basis. This is of course before I let life kick me in the teeth and hold my head under water. Life is a bully. I’ve played the victim for a while now.

Preparing to move has enlightened me to several facts about myself and habits and shortcomings. It also reminded me that my brain, though aging, ain’t dead and that I need to force more space into my life for words. I recently took a writing gig solely because I needed a deadline to force me to do what I love doing. I love writing and teaching and planing to write and planning to teach. Just today I devised a new strategy to make my novel classes successful. I am going to create notebooks for the students with all the handout and work they did to plan and structure their novel all organized in a way that brings their novel to the writing stage. It’s gonna be dope.

2713. On Teaching and Learning

admin

*Note: This post didn’t get uploaded on Friday because I was too lazy. I’ll explain in tonight’s post.

Spending some time away from division meetings at the collegiate level has reminded me of the disconnect between how colleges are run/assessed and how students are taught. While teaching is/should be at the heart of what we do at any school, it feels like the administration of and analysis/reporting of that teaching is a larger part of what teachers actually do.

In teaching writing I often talk about the 60/40 and 80/20 rules In critical analysis I invite the students to structure their work as 60% evidence and 40% analysis and argumentation. Science pushes that evidence vs. analysis spread to 80/20. This is merely my rule and doesn’t reflect the actual functioning of the multiverse. It does, on the other hand, create a fair comparison to the to what the functioning role of a community college professor feels like. 60-80% of these meetings have little to do with the actual teaching.

We are focused on collecting and reporting data. We are focused on assessing individuals, classes, and programs. We speak a jargon-filled language that inevitably bleeds into the classroom and into how we communicate with students who don’t really need to hear or learn our language.

A part of this meeting/working time is about building community amongst the teachers. Now a lot of that community is forged in the mutual disdain for such meetings, but beyond this we do effort to create real communication and real differences and consistency between what is taught between the levels and classes and how that is carried out. I would love to see a school where the classes offer the same basic content from top flight instructors who all approach it from a very different angle–so much so that variants of students would be super engaged in both class and community. Jargon free: I want good teaching that looks different in each class.

One can dream.