Frustrated

It's hard to work with someone when they don't listen to you. I guess telling a colleague that he needs to just shut up for a second would be bad form...

That is all.

Damn

Manipulation check shows experiment didn't work.

Just in time

Back when I used to teach as a grad student, I was meticulous, but inefficient in planning for my classes. I remember well spending the Christmas break in a back bedroom planning what was going to happen in each class session. It was meticulous, but it was also inefficient, in that I had a really poor conception of how long it would take to give a particular lecture or how long an in-class activity would take.

I've always been a planner, I think, because it helps me to manage stress. For example, I plan all the meals and snacks for the coming week. That way, I buy what I need when I go to the store, and I just have to look to know what's going down for the day. The girls like it too, especially since they can both read now.

Spouse is not that way, so much. He has always planned his class sessions very last minute - often getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning to do the work for that day's class. He says it helps him to have the material fresh in his head.

Of course, what usually ends up happening is that I end up having to go through/flesh out my pre-made plans right before class.

Now that I'm older and have more classes under my belt, it's a little different.

First, classes I've been teaching for a long time, I have most of the ideas/materials/lectures/activities done, so in a sense, it's a matter of picking what's needed for a particular session out of a bank I've created myself.

Even for classes that are newer (like everything at NewSchool, unfortunately), the closer-to-class preparation is pretty important because I'm less comfortable with the material, the students are a little different, and it's just harder to wing it.

I have one extremely new prep (not even really in my field), and I did spend quite a bit of time this summer outlining everything, adding suggested activities to each class session in a personal version of the syllabus.

But now I find myself in an odd position from day-to-day, as I sit and look at what needs to be done for upcoming weeks. I'd like to get ahead when I have extra time, but I know that it will likely not be all that productive, as things are changing after every class session, so it's better to wait or work on other things.

How do you like to prep for class?

Things I wish I hadn't done

1. Agreed to chaperone the Girl Scout campout this weekend
2. Said "Sure, I'll teach intro to Freshman-ness" even though that gives me 3 preps, all writing intensive
3. Volunteered to do a snack for the 70 kids on Offspring's cross country team tomorrow
4. Gotten involved in 5 research projects with colleagues here (and two with colleagues at other schools)
5. Agreed to chaperone the Girl Scout campout this weekend
6. Assigned major projects in two of my classes that are coming in Thursday and Friday (I see some grading by flashlight coming on).

If it's Sunday...

A typical Sunday for me:

1. Get up late (7:30, on a good day)


2. Kids start asking what's for breakfast.


3. I tell them.


4. They complain.


5. They get it anyway.


6. Put kids in kidwash (shower) while I clean up.


7. Put items on to-do list.


8. Shudder.


9. Kids get out of shower. Get kids dressed.


10. Get stuff ready for lunch.


11. Get dressed myself.


12. Church.


13. Lunch.


14. Grade something.


15. Kids bored. Do something entertaining.


16. Start laundry.


17. Make menu and shopping list for week.


18. Grade something.


19. Check to see if research collaborator has done anything.


20. Sigh.


21. Discuss with Spouse which grocery store to go to.


22. Go to the one I want to go to.


23. Get gas.


24. Come home. Unload groceries.


25. Make dinner while grading something.


26. Spouse and Offspring go running.


27. Delay dinner.


28. Wish I had time to exercise.


29. Eat dinner.


30. Family short video over dessert (we're rewatching the Avatar animated series right now)


31. Argue with kids about bed.


32. Shove Bun into bed


33. Offspring does her prep work on the family lunches for the week (so far so good on her making the family lunches, btw)


34. Fold laundry.


35. Put Bun back into bed.


36. Class prep.


37. Tell Offspring to go to bed.


38. Grade something


39. Grade something else.


40. Update calendar for the week.


41. Shudder.


42. Put Offspring back into bed.


43. Fold laundry.


44. Make sure our stuff is next to the relevant bags.


45. Go to bed myself.

Just breathe

Actually, I can't. I don't know what is blooming here, but apparently my dormant-for-3-years asthma is not happy about it. So I started steroids today. Bonus - Prednisone makes me oddly euphoric, so I guess the weekend will be a good one.

Having a hard time figuring out how to go to the doctor, what with the drive and teaching the middle of every day and having to take Bun to school in the town where I work if I want child care and spouse working in a city in another direction.

The wellness office at my uni has a nurse practitioner that comes in a few hours a week, so I ran over to see him yesterday, but basically had to say what was wrong with me and what I thought I needed, which didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Really need to get a real doctor.

I hope the superdrugs start working soon.

From my students*

Dear Dr. MommyProf,

I just wanted to make sure I get a good grade on this paper. Is what i written good?

Stu Dent

Except it didn't actually have a greeting or a signature.

What to say...

Just a few minutes

So here's what's going on:

• Offspring went and met with her teachers yesterday, and I think she's got things worked out. She also shaved a minute off her running time. She's not at the top by any means, but is encouraged that she's making progress, I think.


• We sort of got the house stuff fixed that we needed to (finally!) and are just about to book a mover. That's good, because my neck is tired of the air mattress and has been letting me know.


• The class I am half expecting to blow up spectacularly hasn't yet, although I think this might be the week.


• My intro to freshmanness class seems to be going well so far. Knock wood.


• I have to take a teaching only sabbatical (meaning I still have to do advising/meetings/etc.) next spring (2013) so my application for that is due today. As if I know what I want to doing research-wise nearly two years from now. I'm making something up.

Slippin

Well, it's that time of year again. That time where the honeymoon of the new school year is over and we start having Offspring issues again. She got one thing she did in class in science and then put in her folder instead of turning in, so she failed it. And then she didn't bring her Spanish book home, so she couldn't do the homework one night last week. So a 0 on that, too.

I never can figure out my role as a parent anymore. This new school is really pro-active about the parent communication, so I get a list of all of the homework in my e-mail every single day. And the online grade checking system really works.

So is it my job to look on the grade system and see that Offspring missed an assignment in science. And if I do, is it my job to deal with it, or Offspring's? If I know that she has math homework and she doesn't seem to know that, should I tell her? Or should I let her live with the consequences of not having it done?

It's a different situation than last year where her program was way oversubscribed and so they were looking for reasons to remove kids back to their home schools. But I don't know what I should do. And I don't want to irritate her teachers (at least not this early in the year). There are a lot of aggressive SAHMs in this district, and I would imagine the sound of Blackhawks is heard pretty regularly, so the teacher reaction might well be instantly defensive. And I understand that.

At the moment, my plan is to send her to talk to the relevant teachers and see what happens.

Did you know the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has lesson plans?

There are surprisingly many and some are modifiable to be college appropriate.

Who knew?

Despite it all, it went well

So I did the session on racism today in my class. I made it fit in with the general topic and used the jigsaw discussion technique which I saw in action at a workshop I went to this summer.

Students have a home group with a question they are expected to answer. My question was "What is the correct response to verbal intolerance?" They first make a list of what they need to learn in order to have an educated answer to the question. Then, they assign ambassadors to each of several topic groups. The topic groups have materials to consider relating to aspects of the overarching question. They look at those and, collaboratively, come up with take-aways to take back to their main groups. The main groups meet, hear from everyone and discuss the big question, coming up with an answer that is shared with the whole class for discussion.

It was one of only a few times in my career when my students didn't want to leave when we had run out of time. So I'd call it a success - more so than the button I wore yesterday.

Today, they made me wear a button

We had a hate speech event on our campus last week, and today, they were passing out buttons for people to wear decrying bigotry.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a fan of bigotry. Really, I'm not. I don't see anything good or defensible about it.

But I'm also not a fan of getting encouragement from a) my suitemate, b) the provost and c) the president of my university telling me I had to respond to this incident in a particular way. The button says something to the effect that NewSchool doesn't tolerate bigotry. And I'm glad NewSchool doesn't tolerate bigotry. We shouldn't and students should not have to put up with crap like that just to go to school.

But students are also students, and it seems to me that one way to address bigotry is through education. Rather than inflaming a fight and making reference to police (when as best I can tell, no crime was committed, and yes, I did look it up) as a way to handle this, might it not be useful to take a chance to educate these students in our charge about attitudes, their impacts, etc?

That's what I'm doing tomorrow in my freshman class. And I'd like to believe that maybe that can be my contribution. But I'm wearing a button. And I feel dirty.

Also, I can't talk about this at work. And I hate that.

My daughter the jock

So neither Spouse or I were involved in athletics in school. I was more the clumsy, asthmatic type, although being pretty tall for a girl, I was asked at pretty much every college visit if I was here to play on the basketball team (including at schools that ended up challenging for the NCAA championship, so that's pretty funny).

We wanted to give Offspring every opportunity to make new friends with the return to school, so we encouraged her to give cross country a try. She's been running with her dad since she was six, and is surprisingly not a bad road runner. Google her name and the first link about her is from the Runner's World forums about her doing the half marathon when she was nine. All fine, and, since her skill at sport that involve balls rivals mine (afraid of projectiles), cross country seemed like a natural fit.

She'd distinctly mediocre. They had a meet today and she improved her place to 18th out of about 40 7th and 8th graders. She was pretty bummed at the last meet, and I reminded her that a) just because you try hard at some things doesn't mean you will succeed at them and b) cross country is pretty different from road running. They started really late, so I was able to see her run today, and having me and Bun there to cheer for her was a big morale boost.

Spouse and I have always kind of looked for things that are a challenge for her, since so much of her academics comes really easily, and this fits the bill well, I think. I asked her if she was enjoying it, and she said she really was.

Except the schedule is killing us. Oh well. It ends next month, and if she does track in the spring, they only have meets weekly.

Sept. 11

So I was working in Central State the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. It was not a regular day, not in the least because my brother-in-law was at work in the Pentagon when the plane hit. He was fine, but it was quite a few hours before we were able to find that out because the DC cellular network was immediately overwhelmed.

My Mom said you could see the smoke from a place near where I grew up.

But I think the biggest impression on me came when I took some students to a conference in New York the following March. It was the St. Patrick's Day parade while we were there, and if you haven't seen it, it goes on for many, many hours. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I was out at noon, when the Cardinal of New York had asked for the parade to stop for a minute of silence in memory of the fallen. It was more like time stopped during that minute. Every person on the street and the sidewalk stopped what they were doing and turned towards where the towers. Cars and trucks cut their engines. You could hear the wind blowing and birds singing in midtown Manhattan. It lasted a little more than a minute, and the city came back to life.

Took 3 hours, but might have been worth it

So I have freshmen this semester for the first time in about 14 years. I know there are issues for them with understanding the expectations at a college level, and so for their first major research project I tried something different. In addition to the grotesquely overspecified project description, I did a version of the project myself.

I passed out the description and the grading criteria, and then I passed out my version and asked them what grade they thought I would give it. B was pretty much the consensus. Imagine their disappointment when I told them it would actually be a C or a C- because it was distinctly average work. We went through the criteria and talked about ways my work fell short and then about ways I could have done a better job. I reminded them of resources like my office hours and the tutoring center and the library.

I think this was very helpful to them.

Things I don't want to do

1. Grade quizzes
2. Write an IRB proposal
3. Outline a lit review
4. Grade other quizzes
5. Write a grotesquely over-specified assignment for my freshies
6. Enter grades and file papers to give back
7. Read the research protocol for the nice grad student I foolishly told I would help.
8. Feel sympathetic for the "hard" life of an undergraduate
9. Make my classes a "fun" "performance"

Look...there's only 9, so it can't be THAT bad, right?

Mommy/Prof FTW

Great class today in Intro to Freshman-ness...

We had class today on Labor Day (Boo!) so I did a class on labor. Talked about the history of the town here where NewU is (actually built by a railroad as a company town. Talked about the history of the labor movement and its effect on modern day jobs (thanks union-requiring job in college!). Talked about the clothes they wear and how many are made by child labor.

This class is WAY outside of my field, and the students are freshies, but today was really good.

And I had the timing down for once.

Long weekend

Well, for some people anyway. We don't get Monday off, so I am doing a lesson about Labor Day - a brief history of the holiday in America and then some activity on child labor.

It's 7:30 on Sunday morning, and I have been laboring myself for about half an hour on the huge mess of research projects I've gotten myself into this semester. It's funny - at PrettyGood, most of my publications seemed to be single-author, mostly because a lot of my colleagues weren't really into this research thing. But here, I have things going on with 3 different colleagues (3 just with Apollo), plus a paper I'm working on with Spouse. It's good and bad - I still am the person who "gets the methodology stuff" and knows the language for an academic paper, so more burden on me, but good in that I'm accountable to someone, and I hope that will help me get stuff out the door faster.

First week is over

Why is it so hard to plan the time in new preps? I am teaching "Intro to Freshmanness," which is a reading and writing intensive course that, other than that, you can pretty much select the focus of. So mine is about basketweaving in society.

Our classes here at NewSchool are all 4 credit hours. This seems to be a trend in moderately good SLACs, and it has been very hard for me to get used to. So IoF meets for an hour and 10 minutes three times a week. I have a good set of topics, but it is really hard to plan that much content and to know how long things will take.

I think it's worse with freshies, but I have that problem with my seniors, too.