A nice holiday, on the whole, although a LOT of family drama as well.
Just watched the ball drop, as well as the odd thing they drop in the capital of New State (I'll leave that one open to your imagination!)
Tomorrow, to get things ready for Spouse and the girlies to be ok while I am teaching out of the country in January for 10 days.
Oh, and to eat black-eyed peas.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Roll out the holly...
So it was really, really hard to generate any holiday spirit around here this year. It seemed like this semester was a full-on sprint right until the bitter end.
Offspring finished school Tuesday, and then we had a gala day of a doctor's appointment and getting glasses for her yesterday. Today, we kept Bun home (her school actually ran through today), and mostly hung out at the house. Weather was crappy, so we did some cleaning things, made the relative present from the girls and, well, took a nap.
All in all, I feel better.
Also, that recipe is excellent. Highly recommend it. For a gift, coloring the sugar makes it more special. For brownies, well, 2 cups of sugar and a cup of butter mean I won't be eating these every day, but it is pretty fantastic.
Offspring finished school Tuesday, and then we had a gala day of a doctor's appointment and getting glasses for her yesterday. Today, we kept Bun home (her school actually ran through today), and mostly hung out at the house. Weather was crappy, so we did some cleaning things, made the relative present from the girls and, well, took a nap.
All in all, I feel better.
Also, that recipe is excellent. Highly recommend it. For a gift, coloring the sugar makes it more special. For brownies, well, 2 cups of sugar and a cup of butter mean I won't be eating these every day, but it is pretty fantastic.
Squirrel!
Sorry - got distracted there!
In the third class, I tried to make it very hands-on, since, you know, they already know everything. Except, of course, they don't. They know half of everything, and which half depends on the path they took to my class. So I had them do a major group project in mixed groups from between the two kinds of students, and then several smaller labs that were also in combined groups and that related to some of the key skills in basketry that a graduate should know (why they get exposed to this in a basketweaving class is a bit of a mystery to me).
I gave fairly extensive written feedback on all the projects.
They also had a pretty good textbook, which was covered mostly through reading and quizzes.
Results: the design students improved their skills greatly. The others, not so much. They are pretty calcified into their view of the profession by the time I get them, and I feel like I am kind of shouting into the hurricane of everything else they are doing during this class. The applied majors largely thought that what they did in my class was busywork and resented it. The final exam results showed that neither group did a bang-up job on mastering the larger conceptual elements that underlie the field, although the design students were better at it by the end.
Lesson: Not sure. This class is very challenging for me, and clearly I need to build in more reflection opportunities, although I'm not entirely sure how I am going to do that at this point.
In the third class, I tried to make it very hands-on, since, you know, they already know everything. Except, of course, they don't. They know half of everything, and which half depends on the path they took to my class. So I had them do a major group project in mixed groups from between the two kinds of students, and then several smaller labs that were also in combined groups and that related to some of the key skills in basketry that a graduate should know (why they get exposed to this in a basketweaving class is a bit of a mystery to me).
I gave fairly extensive written feedback on all the projects.
They also had a pretty good textbook, which was covered mostly through reading and quizzes.
Results: the design students improved their skills greatly. The others, not so much. They are pretty calcified into their view of the profession by the time I get them, and I feel like I am kind of shouting into the hurricane of everything else they are doing during this class. The applied majors largely thought that what they did in my class was busywork and resented it. The final exam results showed that neither group did a bang-up job on mastering the larger conceptual elements that underlie the field, although the design students were better at it by the end.
Lesson: Not sure. This class is very challenging for me, and clearly I need to build in more reflection opportunities, although I'm not entirely sure how I am going to do that at this point.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
And the third
The third class is my senior capstone in basketry.
The class is a challenge for several reasons. First, I get both the CAD/CAM design students and the applied basket sciences (practical) majors. They take the same classes their first year, and then they are completely divergent until they meet again in my class.
They have all also done a basket internship, so they know everything.
The class is a challenge for several reasons. First, I get both the CAD/CAM design students and the applied basket sciences (practical) majors. They take the same classes their first year, and then they are completely divergent until they meet again in my class.
They have all also done a basket internship, so they know everything.
Friday, December 16, 2011
The second class
So my second class is a little less like Romper Room. It's the foundational class in the major and, although it seems like they are moving heaven and Earth, the students really don't get much beyond constructing a very basic basket and then being able to appreciate elements of basic construction when they see more advanced models.
There's a surprising amount to learn in order to do that - everything from what a basket is, really, to the characteristics of basket afficionados of various types, the types of material and to select, use and care for them, etc.
In this class, most of the new content is learned by reading, writing summaries of the reading, and doing questions in the chapters. For some of the especially tricky stuff, I'll go over it in class, but pretty much, there's a reading quiz plus summaries due each and every week. I just counted, and I graded about 510 individual pieces of work in that class last semester. But the time in class is largely spent doing stuff as well. We look at each other's baskets. We talk about techniques. We actively think through the basket process, up through the step we are on very frequently. You get better at this with practice, so I try to give them as much guided practice as possible.
End result - on the final, I had two students who I would call at low-intermediate proficiency. The others were all proficient or highly proficient.
The grading is a killer in this class, however.
There's a surprising amount to learn in order to do that - everything from what a basket is, really, to the characteristics of basket afficionados of various types, the types of material and to select, use and care for them, etc.
In this class, most of the new content is learned by reading, writing summaries of the reading, and doing questions in the chapters. For some of the especially tricky stuff, I'll go over it in class, but pretty much, there's a reading quiz plus summaries due each and every week. I just counted, and I graded about 510 individual pieces of work in that class last semester. But the time in class is largely spent doing stuff as well. We look at each other's baskets. We talk about techniques. We actively think through the basket process, up through the step we are on very frequently. You get better at this with practice, so I try to give them as much guided practice as possible.
End result - on the final, I had two students who I would call at low-intermediate proficiency. The others were all proficient or highly proficient.
The grading is a killer in this class, however.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Anybody remember Romper Room?
I don't know if that is a Northeast thing, but when I was a kid, there was this show called Romper Room on TV that was kind of like sitting in your house and watching other kids go to preschool. My parents were very much of the "Look, she's quiet when she watches TV" school of parenting, so I saw this show regularly as a kid.
I have been trying different things with my classes to make them more engaging for the students, and this semester I really felt like I was teaching Romper Room. Sometimes called flipping the classroom, the idea is that the students learn factual content on their own through readings, or watching videos or using web sites or something, and then class time is used for actively working through those ideas. I'm partly interested in it because my students have a very low tolerance for lecture now. I get about 8 minutes before they start glazing over, and, in some cases literally falling asleep. I haven't had this problem my whole career, so I believe that it's not that I am inherently boring, but more that the people sitting in my classroom are used to continuous stimulation with all the multitasking and fancy social media that they have grown up with. Say what you want about the sad state of students today (like most of mine never, ever take notes?!?!), but the fact of the matter is that these are the humans that I have sitting before me, so I have to to deal with this the way it is. It is also worth noting that our classes are 4 credit hour, so they meet for an hour and 40 minutes at a time if twice a week and an hour and 10 if three times.
I had three classes this semester, and essentially three models with three outcomes.
My first class was my freshman class. This class is a general ed requirement for all students, and they are arbitrarily assigned into the sections. Faculty from across the university teach it, and they have a set of common outcomes, but the way to reach them is kind of up to you. So I did a topic related to the overarching theme and then looked at the relation of that topic to baskets in society. As I've posted before, they did quite a bit of work. But so did I, because out of 28 class meetings, I lectured for three. All of the others were activity-based in some way. Here's a bunch of quotes from the readings...let's put them in categories. Here's an article, let's read and discuss. Here's the parts for a basket factory. Build one in a group (markers and gluesticks!), and then we'll discuss. Let's look at a bunch of baskets and learn what we can about them. I ended up modifying lesson plans from everything from PBS to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. With this group, I was careful to have the class activities very explicitly tie into the readings through some time spent in class reflections and through weekly written reflection papers (the way I covered the fact that the class is supposed to be writing intensive). The results - about 4 out of 24 students did not complete the final with what i would consider an adequate to high understanding of the course themes, relative to their standing in college. So generally, they are ready for their next classes.
I'll talk about class #2 tomorrow.
I have been trying different things with my classes to make them more engaging for the students, and this semester I really felt like I was teaching Romper Room. Sometimes called flipping the classroom, the idea is that the students learn factual content on their own through readings, or watching videos or using web sites or something, and then class time is used for actively working through those ideas. I'm partly interested in it because my students have a very low tolerance for lecture now. I get about 8 minutes before they start glazing over, and, in some cases literally falling asleep. I haven't had this problem my whole career, so I believe that it's not that I am inherently boring, but more that the people sitting in my classroom are used to continuous stimulation with all the multitasking and fancy social media that they have grown up with. Say what you want about the sad state of students today (like most of mine never, ever take notes?!?!), but the fact of the matter is that these are the humans that I have sitting before me, so I have to to deal with this the way it is. It is also worth noting that our classes are 4 credit hour, so they meet for an hour and 40 minutes at a time if twice a week and an hour and 10 if three times.
I had three classes this semester, and essentially three models with three outcomes.
My first class was my freshman class. This class is a general ed requirement for all students, and they are arbitrarily assigned into the sections. Faculty from across the university teach it, and they have a set of common outcomes, but the way to reach them is kind of up to you. So I did a topic related to the overarching theme and then looked at the relation of that topic to baskets in society. As I've posted before, they did quite a bit of work. But so did I, because out of 28 class meetings, I lectured for three. All of the others were activity-based in some way. Here's a bunch of quotes from the readings...let's put them in categories. Here's an article, let's read and discuss. Here's the parts for a basket factory. Build one in a group (markers and gluesticks!), and then we'll discuss. Let's look at a bunch of baskets and learn what we can about them. I ended up modifying lesson plans from everything from PBS to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. With this group, I was careful to have the class activities very explicitly tie into the readings through some time spent in class reflections and through weekly written reflection papers (the way I covered the fact that the class is supposed to be writing intensive). The results - about 4 out of 24 students did not complete the final with what i would consider an adequate to high understanding of the course themes, relative to their standing in college. So generally, they are ready for their next classes.
I'll talk about class #2 tomorrow.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
The turning
So I am sitting in my freshman general ed class and they are taking the final. I graded their final papers last night, and some of them were really great. Like surprisingly so. And better than the things I got from most of my seniors. I was kind of excited to teach first-semester freshmen, since they haven't formed opinions about what college is like or what is reasonable to expect from them. And I was right...these guys have done a ton of work...read 4 books we all read plus one in reading groups (one of which was 950 pages). Took weekly quizzes and a midterm. Wrote 50 pages including original research. Were generally fun to have in class.
I'll miss them.
I'll miss them.
Friday, December 09, 2011
One down
One assignment graded, that is.
This class takes its final tomorrow morning, but that should be pretty easy to grade, so I am hoping to wrap them up this weekend.
Two more after that, but grades are due Thursday, and then next week perhaps some quality time with the fam and perhaps wrap up some research projects. Perhaps.
This class takes its final tomorrow morning, but that should be pretty easy to grade, so I am hoping to wrap them up this weekend.
Two more after that, but grades are due Thursday, and then next week perhaps some quality time with the fam and perhaps wrap up some research projects. Perhaps.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
So shouldn't I be relaxed?
Classes done.
Car had issues yesterday which ended up with me renting a car to drive home yesterday and getting Apollo to drop me at the shop to pick mine up at the end of the day (ick - really don't like doing this to a colleague! The city where NewSchool is has literally no public transportation.). Sincerely hoping to not have to buy a house and a car the same year.
Meeting with study abroad group at lunch. Search committee meeting. Research meeting (with Apollo, so maybe that makes sense?)
Drove home in severe weather. Yay. Took twice as long.
Huge list of crap to do tonight.
Why? I am ready to relax! Or at least spend some quality time with my family .
Car had issues yesterday which ended up with me renting a car to drive home yesterday and getting Apollo to drop me at the shop to pick mine up at the end of the day (ick - really don't like doing this to a colleague! The city where NewSchool is has literally no public transportation.). Sincerely hoping to not have to buy a house and a car the same year.
Meeting with study abroad group at lunch. Search committee meeting. Research meeting (with Apollo, so maybe that makes sense?)
Drove home in severe weather. Yay. Took twice as long.
Huge list of crap to do tonight.
Why? I am ready to relax! Or at least spend some quality time with my family .
Not the ending I wanted
I'll have a longer post, soon I promise - the schedule eases up a lot after Friday.
In the meantime, my last two class sessions of the semester.
In basketweaving 101, our first hands-on with the reeds class, we had a good semester. As I do on the last day in that class, I did a sort of a regular review exercise and I also did a game, which is a sort of Jeopardy-style review. As part of my ongoing campaign to trick out the evaluations, I did them the previous class, when I have a session that I know my students find one of the best of the semester, so we finished about 20 minutes early. That was fine with me on the last day. But my students wouldn't leave. It's a hard class, and they've been through a lot together, so I think they weren't ready to let it go. Or something.
Then I had my senior class (known as the class that will vex me until I die). The students had final presentations on their projects. Some worked in groups (they had a choice), so there were about 12 presentations, which I thought we could easily complete in the nearly 2 hours that that class meets for.
Nope.
The last student finished right at TIME, so I had to kind of creepily beg them to stay to finish the evaluations, and didn't get to say everything I wanted. Not my most graceful, and I am sure it will hurt my scores some. On the plus side, not all of the work presented was fantastic, it was pretty evident that the students got quite a bit out of it.
In the meantime, my last two class sessions of the semester.
In basketweaving 101, our first hands-on with the reeds class, we had a good semester. As I do on the last day in that class, I did a sort of a regular review exercise and I also did a game, which is a sort of Jeopardy-style review. As part of my ongoing campaign to trick out the evaluations, I did them the previous class, when I have a session that I know my students find one of the best of the semester, so we finished about 20 minutes early. That was fine with me on the last day. But my students wouldn't leave. It's a hard class, and they've been through a lot together, so I think they weren't ready to let it go. Or something.
Then I had my senior class (known as the class that will vex me until I die). The students had final presentations on their projects. Some worked in groups (they had a choice), so there were about 12 presentations, which I thought we could easily complete in the nearly 2 hours that that class meets for.
Nope.
The last student finished right at TIME, so I had to kind of creepily beg them to stay to finish the evaluations, and didn't get to say everything I wanted. Not my most graceful, and I am sure it will hurt my scores some. On the plus side, not all of the work presented was fantastic, it was pretty evident that the students got quite a bit out of it.
Monday, December 05, 2011
Two down
Two classes have evaluated. The one I dread most is tomorrow. But, it will end. I am thinking tonight if there is a way to tie up everything related to that class in a nice package.
I'm probably thinking too much.
I'm probably thinking too much.
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Looking ahead at
a list of things to do that has several herculean tasks (like grading 30 major basketweaving portfolio projects!), but is still a finite list.
I think I'm winning.
I think I'm winning.
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Running with the herd
So I am at the annual convention programming meeting for my scholarly organization, since I'm a division officer this year.
There are X slots on the program, and you get X/numberofdivisions opportunities to select program slots, which is done in a round fashion with a random start.
We had a meeting yesterday, and afterwords, I went to dinner at local place with several officers from other divisions. We were a little loud. About halfway through, I realized what a huge, enormous bunch of nerds we must have looked like to the poor locals who were just there to grab a burger and a beer after work.
That is all.
There are X slots on the program, and you get X/numberofdivisions opportunities to select program slots, which is done in a round fashion with a random start.
We had a meeting yesterday, and afterwords, I went to dinner at local place with several officers from other divisions. We were a little loud. About halfway through, I realized what a huge, enormous bunch of nerds we must have looked like to the poor locals who were just there to grab a burger and a beer after work.
That is all.
Thursday, December 01, 2011
It's Dec. 1
That means it's Bun's birthday (she's 5). This isn't a full-on Mommy blog, so I'll spare you all the details about what an independent little lady she is, but trust me, it's been a blast.
It also means I should have the Advent calendar out as well as our Christmas book. I got a book when Offpsring was 2 that is a beautifully illustrated book with the text of Luke 2 (the thing Linus says at the end of Charlie Brown Christmas, fwiw) and we read it every night until Christmas. The year Bun was born, we actually had Christmas in our own house (one of three times since we have been married), and Offspring read it during the Christmas Eve service at church.
Today is going to be pretty crappy, though. I have a meeting that goes until 5:15, so I'll be getting Bun from daycare late. The organizational meeting for Model UN for Offspring is at 6:30, so we should have just enough time to swing by the house and pick Offspring up and get there. It will be close to bedtime when we get home.
So, Christmas spirit today? Not so much.
It also means I should have the Advent calendar out as well as our Christmas book. I got a book when Offpsring was 2 that is a beautifully illustrated book with the text of Luke 2 (the thing Linus says at the end of Charlie Brown Christmas, fwiw) and we read it every night until Christmas. The year Bun was born, we actually had Christmas in our own house (one of three times since we have been married), and Offspring read it during the Christmas Eve service at church.
Today is going to be pretty crappy, though. I have a meeting that goes until 5:15, so I'll be getting Bun from daycare late. The organizational meeting for Model UN for Offspring is at 6:30, so we should have just enough time to swing by the house and pick Offspring up and get there. It will be close to bedtime when we get home.
So, Christmas spirit today? Not so much.
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