the month of June

It’s the start of week four, and I still feel like I have the semester within my control. It hasn’t slipped away from me yet, but apparently blogging has. It’s been over a week since I’ve attended to this blog, and I made a pact with myself that I had to blog at least as often as my students (once per week minimum; it’s only fair), so I’m overdue. I have one student who has clearly taken to the online writing forum that we know as a blog, and he has blogged nearly everyday since he started his blog two weeks ago. His writing is entertaining — smart and witty — fun to read. All in all, I’m super impressed with my students’ blogs. This semester they are doing themed blogs. The topics they’ve chosen range from social issues to celebrity gossip to sports to biochemistry. I’ve had a good time reading them so far.

Continuing with semester news: I was assigned to teach in a classroom that is slightly larger than my living room (I live in a bungalow in the middle of the city; my living room is NOT large). It is a classroom that is used for religious education for elementary school students (there is a bunch of kid produced artwork along the back wall that begins with “Blessed are the fourth graders…”). The space is clearly meant to hold small children, not a bunch of eighteen year olds and their writing teacher. The room is filled with rows of tables that can’t be moved at all because there simply isn’t enough space. I am accustomed to having students move into a circle/square/rectangle shape, and so was initially baffled by what to do with the space. Ultimately I found that I couldn’t do anything with it, but the space issue seems to be working to our advantage. For some reason it appears that the small (living room size) space has lent a living room type intimacy to the class community. Students seem more willing to participate in class and have shared joking comments with me and their peers about the challenges of the space (to play our ice breaker/name game students had to do a lot of swiveling to see the faces of their peers). I’ve been surprised by how well it has been working out, although I wouldn’t necessarily want to teach in such a cramped space again (not to mention the lack of technology — the neck cramp that results from trying to look at the large LG monitor that acts as both computer monitor and screen for the entire class to view).

I have a series of other blog entries that I’ve been carrying around in my head: adjunct labor, the Ani DiFranco show at the Palace, the dissertation work, seeing and reading Atonement, and recent thoughts about Facebook and Twitter. Coming soon….

For all the anxiety that I had going into each of the three classrooms that I was assigned to teach in yesterday, my students seem — on the whole — to be quite an interesting, entertaining, friendly, thoughtful, and lovely bunch (and I mean none of that in a condescending way). I just finished reading through the three sections worth of questionnaires that I give them to fill out on the first day. Here are a few of the things I have learned:

• Favorite authors among college students (at a four-year, private (Catholic affiliated) liberal arts institution): Nicholas Sparks, Jodi Picoult, John Grisham, J.K. Rowling, Khaled Hosseini (a good number of my students have read or are reading The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns). One book mentioned by a student that caught my attention (having never heard of it) was This Present Darkness — apparently this falls into the genre of “Christian thriller”, which I also never knew existed.
• Approximately 94% of them have Facebook and/or Myspace accounts
• Many (I’d say about a third — maybe slightly more) transferred from community colleges and/or other colleges — mostly state schools
• The majority don’t blog (in fact, only 3% have ever blogged before, and none do currently) but have heard of or are familiar with them.
• Sports (playing) and hanging out with friends lead in the hobbies/activities department

All in all I am hoping to hold onto the magic and enthusiasm with which both students and instructor met the first day.

As I revise last semester’s syllabi to this semester’s schedule, I am trying to rein myself in and not go all nuts trying new things, making major changes, and all of that. I love playing with curriculum and pedagogy, brainstorming all the possibilities and spending time strategizing, but this is my last semester at CSR, as they’re not renewing my contract next semester (I’ve reached the two year mark, which marks the end of contingent faculty contracts), and since I’m basically teaching the same courses as last semester (and as far as I know the semester went relatively well), I don’t see the point in going into total overhaul mode. It’s strange, but I haven’t gotten my evaluations back from last semester, so I also don’t have a lot to go by in terms of feedback about what worked and what didn’t.

I really wanted adopt a new grading system this semester. I have been considering trying contract grading, but I guess I am just one of these “not ready to let go” people. I guess I’m just feeling like it will be a lot of work to pull off for this semester that is starting in less than a week.