Mommy/Prof

Welcome to my world

2012-01-28T11:47:00.001-08:00

Offspring took the SAT this morning as part of a talent search thing she's doing.

She came out beaming, saying "That was fun!"

I'm not dead yet!

2012-01-27T17:32:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the long absence! I did survive the trip (although I was sick pretty much the whole time). Since we came back, my students have had to work 7 days a week to finish their project, so that meant I was working close to that, too (I did take one day off). So I turned in grades this morning.

I'm exhausted, but wow. Every student in our program has to do one of these travel projects, and we had 5 groups of students who went to different countries to do projects about improving baskets and basketry there. My group had extraordinary success. To the point that at the final presentations, my student project manager got to say that we were glad to be getting some recognition. The basket heritage foundation is supporting our project. We have a promotional agreement with the national museum of cool basket stuff. And we ended the presentation by getting on the road to a local affiliate to tape a segment about the baskets in the part of the world where we went for PBS. Truly astounding. (One of my students was a communication major in undergrad, and sent press releases).

I told Spouse I would not be able to do this project again since I don't think it could ever go this well again.

And also, I got my teaching evaluations for last semester and, with the exception of the class that has institutional deficiencies that I can't overcome by myself (basically, I get two different groups of students who have completed completely different sets of pre-requisites), they were great. Comments like "MommyProf is the best professor in basketweaving" and from my freshman distribution requirement "I wish I could have MommyProf again, but she doesn't teach in my major."

Then my chair told me I'm not teaching the pathological class again after the Spring, for at least a year.

I know it's a fluke - a once in a career kind of thing. But right now, I feel pretty darned good.

Blerg

2012-01-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

At the airport waiting for our flight. Woke up this morning with a pretty good fever. There used to be an urgent care in the airport, according to the web site. Now they don't.

Awesome.

I'll most likely be off the grid for a few weeks. So don't think I died.

So I didn't actually eat peas

2012-01-03T05:16:00.001-08:00

But I think I will be ready to leave the country tomorrow. Except for one thing...I am sick as a dog. Bun had croup over Christmas, and I think I must have the same virus. Extremely sore throat. Hideous amounts of coughing.

I am sure this will be just fantastic for going to hang out in a foreign country in a part without good access to medical care.

I just hope I don't make my students sick.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T21:18:00.000-08:00

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.

Roll out the holly...

2011-12-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

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.

Squirrel!

2011-12-21T03:45:00.000-08:00

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.

And the third

2011-12-17T18:52:00.000-08:00

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 second class

2011-12-16T18:07:00.000-08:00

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.

Anybody remember Romper Room?

2011-12-15T06:27:00.001-08:00

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.

Dear world

2011-12-12T11:08:00.001-08:00

Don't vex me when I'm grading. You have been warned.

The turning

2011-12-10T05:32:00.000-08:00

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.

One down

2011-12-09T18:28:00.000-08:00

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.

So shouldn't I be relaxed?

2011-12-07T15:34:00.000-08:00

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 .

Not the ending I wanted

2011-12-07T03:04:00.001-08:00

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.

Two down

2011-12-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

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.

Looking ahead at

2011-12-04T10:35:00.001-08:00

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.

Running with the herd

2011-12-03T03:26:00.001-08:00

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.

It's Dec. 1

2011-12-01T02:54:00.000-08:00

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.

Working on a longer post on the evaluation process

2011-11-30T15:49:00.000-08:00

but it's pretty much in my head at the moment.

Right now, I have had a migraine since 4 a.m., and it is now 7 p.m. We are not amused.

I usually just get visual symptoms - the pain kind is rare for me...maybe once a year. So since the migraines are complex, I can't take typical migraine meds.

This is the pain kind. And it sucks.

Dear semester

2011-11-29T12:11:00.000-08:00

Please end. You are killing me.

Also, I am reading this tonight

That is all.

Two elements of different things

2011-11-28T10:40:00.000-08:00

1. Some people enjoy shopping. I do not. My holiday shopping is nearly done (thanks Amazon and the Old Navy Cyber Monday sale!) - just need a few things for my Father in Law that come from campus book stores and the local people like teachers presents, so that shouldn't be too hard. My sisters in law both L O V E shopping. Like line up at the Mall at 3 a.m. on Black Friday. Like dump the little ones with Spouse's parents so they can spend a weekend at a big mall out of town. I do not understand this at all. If I had a weekend of free babysitting, I sure as heck wouldn't waste it at the mall.

2. It's the last full week of classes, so, you guessed it, folks! Student presentation time. It's amazing how much more focused the audience is if you give them a little piece of paper to fill out on each presenter. Even if the papers don't count for anything.

*Insert title here

2011-11-27T18:37:00.000-08:00

So I was going to call this post "Have you seen my mojo? I seem to have lost it."

But being a freakin' academic, I had to go and look up what it actually means. It doesn't mean potency or motivation (crap!) But whatever the word I am looking for is, I have lost it over the break. I got myself into a pretty good position prior to the break...got nearly caught up on grading. Have solid ideas for next week's classes.

But that little dribble of stuff I still have to do - the easy to grade quizzes? The papers in my "annoying stuff that dribbled in late so you can darn well wait until the end of the semester for it" folder? Calculating "here's how you're doing to date" grades for my students? I just don't want to. I'd love to say I can get up early and do some things, but I won't. I know it. You know it. The American people know it. But I am having the toughest time getting my lazy posterior in gear.

My folks came Tuesday night and left today, and so I didn't do much while they were here, because I'd feel guilty that they took flights just to watch me frowning at the computer.* But I planned to have a small amount to do tonight.

I have a crap week coming up - I know the students will come back having not done anything over the break (like me!) and be thrown into instant OMFG mode. I have meetings up the wazoo (three mornings and two afternoons this week). So time will be short. So where is my [insert word here]?

I think I'll go take a shower. That's productive, right?

*Also, I think my Mom reads this blog. She mentioned several things that I don't think I have discussed with her. Not sure how I feel about that. Any way, hi Mom!

I should be grading something

2011-11-22T07:16:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning with a cold. Yay.

I'm at work - although given the population I saw in the parking lot and right outside my window, I don't think I'll have many takers for my 2:20-4 class today!

I have one full week and then one day of each class after today, and my Freshies are giving presentations next week. So I'm pretty much done in that class.

My seniors, the class sessions I'm most worried about are next week. But I think I can make it ok.

My sophomores, we have the coolest class of the semester next week. I'll do my evaluations that day, but of course.

Lots of excitement on the home front...most of it unbloggable. My folks are coming for the holidays, and at this point, I think Spouse may need to go down and be with his family because of a crisis down there. Or not. Don't really know yet.

Tomorrow's my birthday, and Bun is super excited, as only a 4-year-old child can be. We were at the grocery store last night and she kept telling me how happy she was that we are keeping her out of school tomorrow to celebrate. "We'll just be two girls out on the town, Mom. Two girls out on the town," she kept telling me. Secretly, we'll be two girls driving her grandparents around to look at neighborhoods, but I guess that's technically out on the town, right?

What a crappy post...maybe I'll end with a list of a few things I'm thankful for:

1. My family. Each and every one of them are just awesome. I so look forward to having some time to spend with them the rest of this week.

2. We both have stable jobs, and have a really great place to live. It's almost creepy how nice it is.

3. I am not celebrating Thanksgiving in Central State and am not at PrettyGood any more.

4. Spouse is in a job he is just thrilled with. So much better than we were last year.

5. The Kindle books I got for my birthday. And the fact that my schedule is finally loosening up, so I think I will get a chance to read some.

Deep thoughts

2011-11-21T05:52:00.000-08:00

Why would my student think it is easier to e-mail me and ask me when the final is than to look on the uni's web site, where that date has been posted since April?

E-mail me:
Open e-mail client
Find my address
Write e-mail
Wait for response

Look it up:
Open web browser
Type in university URL
Type exam schedule in search box
Read answer

At least in the second option I'm not irritated just because you are lazy...

Commercials

2011-11-20T09:43:00.003-08:00

Just saw a Corona commercial with the people on the beach. I want to go there.

Also, I would rather be grading zucchinis than the horrid projects my students have turned in.

Can't we just talk about it?

2011-11-18T02:13:00.000-08:00

So as I've mentioned before, basketweaving is a field that has both scholarly and professional aspects. This is troubling when trying to have a department at a university, in that most people who come to college aren't thinking "Oh goody - I can go to college for 6-8 years, and then I'll have comprehended my field." Doing the scholarly side is pretty technical, and would take at least a good, research master's degree. There are quite good jobs if you do, but again, most undergraduates don't aspire to difficult, technical jobs. The professional side also has a lot of jobs, and, as such, attracts a lot of students to universities.

So here's the rub...while many basketweaving faculty have a small amount of professional experience followed by a doctorate, and a very few have large amounts of basketweaving experience followed by a doctorate, you need that professional experience to adequately prepare people for a very rapidly developing field (baskets! Who knew!)

Departments tend to have one of a couple of ways to handle this.

a) They have adjuncts and sometimes lecturers teach all of the hands-on classes in large numbers (3-4 loads are not uncommon for these folks). These adjuncts are typically working professionals who have master's degrees (as much as the physics of reeds department would like people to believe it, we're not actually devoid of theory...it represents probably at least 1/3 of the most hands-on classes we offer. But that's a story for another day.)

b) They have faculty in tracks. Scholarly types get evaluated on a scholarly track, which means they do traditional scholarly stuff (translation: peer-reviewed scholarship in good journals). Professional types get evaluated on a professional track, which means they do more presentational stuff like designing and making a basket for blind people or having a basket chosen for prominence at something like a trade show.

There's weaknesses in both models. The first major one I see is that you end up having faculty (typically the scholarly types) who can't teach the professional stuff at industry standard and faculty (typically the adjunct/professional type) who can't easily integrate the theoretical, which leads to people thinking of our field as belonging in a technical school. The second major one that I see if that in model a, the professional classes are taught by untenurable, often part-time faculty and, as such, these faculty don't have as much say in things like curriculum design. At PrettyGood, this definitely weakend the program, as many of our more senior faculty seemed intent on graduating students ready for the rigors of being a basketweaver in 1975.

At NewSchool, for some, unknown reason, they made me, in my second, tenure-track, year on campus, the chair of our committee that looks at department policies. This year, the professional activity (which seems to be code language for scholarship) portion of policies is up for review.

The policy in place now was written more than 6 years ago. They tried to make it inclusive of both kinds of faculty. IMO, that's a social good, in that in encourages the egghead types to do some professional-type work that helps to keep them current in the field, and encourages the professional types to try for things like academic conferences, which keeps them exposed to theory.

However (and this is a big however), the statements on "what counts" for tenure include things that are not necessarily going to be fair to the professional faculty. For example, computerized basketry is huge right now. Lots of jobs. Something our program needs to be teaching. We recognize this, and even started a professional masters in it a couple of years ago. You have to have people recently in the profession and continuing to work in the profession in order to offer this masters. So they hired a bunch of faculty into tenure-track jobs to teach in this program. They are not of the scholarly stripe. They have a relevant professional degree that does not include research training. At all. So to ask them to publish a paper in a journal is, in my mind, kind of unreasonable (but not in the minds of some of my colleagues. As one of mine said "Do you mean to tell me you need a Ph.D. to write a paper?") Our present policy says that scholarship that "counts" is peer-reviewed. Does getting it featured in a trade show count as that? Maybe. Policy doesn't say. Our present policy says that scholarship that "counts" is permanent (in other words, journals count. Conferences not so much.) Ok then. If I'm a computerized basketry faculty member, and I write an app that lets you, say, take a picture of a bunch of reeds and will help you figure out what size basket can be sustainably made from that material (sorry - I'm REALLY stretching the analogy at this point), that's great. What if the device I write it for no longer exists 4 years from now when I go up for tenure. It's not permanent. Does it count? Maybe. Policy doesn't say. I am seriously concerned that more than half of the faculty in the new program are not tenurable unless things are made clearer.

I was on the committee last year, and we voted to have listening sessions for faculty this fall to hear what they say about these issues. So I blocked 6 hours in my schedule this week, all at times that all of our faculty are supposed to be free (we have those in our schedule) to hold these sessions. I've done two of the three, and fewer than 10 percent of our faculty have shown up, almost all on the professional side. We all have to vote on this at some point, and I honestly think mostly scholarly-type faculty don't really know what the professional-type faculty can or do, do. I say that, because it has taken a lot of conversations on my part to even kind of understand it myself. So I wish people would come and talk to each other. Or else I think some good people are going to end up getting hurt.

Dispostion

2011-11-16T19:27:00.000-08:00

So New School's honor code deal has this thing where you tell the student what you believe they did, and they can either sign a form saying "Yes" or "Prove it," which leads to a hearing and other unpleasantries.

I let Prince take the form so he could consult with parents, etc. I told him a hearing was intended to make sure his rights were protected and that he should feel free to take that option.

He returned it to me with the "yes" signature, indicating he admits he did it. So from my perspective, the matter is closed. He gets my class sanction. If it is a first offense (I don't have a way of knowing that), he'll probably get probation from the university. And I think that's fair.

He did some bad things, but I have to say I am impressed with his willingness to take responsibility for his mistakes. He'll fail my class, but I don't think it will be fatal to him.

All is not well in the kingdom

2011-11-15T06:18:00.000-08:00

I'm getting the impression that honor codes are things that people feel like are great for OTHER people to enforce.

So the Prince came in. There were tears, and a novel excuse. See, the Prince is taking a class from a colleague of mine who includes writing about baskets in her course also. And, apparently, the colleague told the Prince's class that it's fine to copy things other people have written...in fact, it's better that way. Makes things more accurate!*

I'm still a bit flummoxed by that one. I called my colleague as soon as the Prince left, just to make sure that's not in fact what she teaches the royalty now. And of course it's not. I felt like I had to call, but I also feel bad for colleague, who I think thought I was questioning HER integrity. But really, it's just the Prince's.

Then, last night, I get an e-mail from Prince saying they went and talked with an administrator in student life who suggested the Prince write me this heartfelt e-mail about how sorry they were, how they'd take an ethics module if I wanted to assign one, and how they were really just confused because of what colleague said. So now I have the Prince's claims in writing.

It just gets weirder.

*She did not tell them to carve zucchinis, but I wouldn't be surprised at this point.

Ack!

2011-11-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

So when we went to new faculty orientation, I was told that cheater reporting was mandatory at NewSchool. I like that, because it puts less onus on me as making decisions to be "nice." What would really be nice would be if you'd do your work, so we wouldn't have to have this discussion, but...bygones.

So I consulted with some colleagues, who said they NEVER report things and that one tried to and ended up with having the department chair give poor princess a hug. Princess who had notes written on her arm DURING a test.

Fan freakin tastic. Now I don't know what to do.

Once upon a time

2011-11-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

Mommy/Prof tried to be nice, and let her students have an easy assignment. Instead of making a basket, they could go to a presentation on basket weaving. Then, they could write a summary. Credit earned. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

Sadly, the prince decided he was too good for even this easy assignment. He turned in a summary that he said was his own. But, when the prince said in his summary that the presentation was in a different building on campus than it, in fact, was, Mommy/Prof thought this sounded suspicious.

She compared the Prince's summary to the preview of the presentation on the basket-weaving department's web site. The tense and a few words were changed, but it was basically the same piece of writing.

Poor Prince! Not only did he plagiarize, but Mommy/Prof has every reason to believe that he did not even bother to attend the event.

And Mommy/Prof's syllabus says that princes who do that get an automatic F in the course.

What a great week Mommy/Prof is sure to have.

The answer is in. I am crazy.

2011-11-10T17:12:00.000-08:00

So today, I left early for work. I went to a group for faculty who are working on new classes for next semester. Sadly, when we set the schedule for the other meetings, I can go to 1/3, so I don't think I'll be able to go again. Went back to my office. Had 10 minutes, before I had to meet my freshies for getting papers for a project. Clearly, I am certifiably insane, as I have now committed to doing a paper with another faculty member AND 2 FRESHMEN for a Dec. 5 deadline. Certifiable. We are heavily incented to do undergraduate research, so that I why I am doing it, but still, bonafide insanity, right there. Did I mention they are first-year students? Been on campus less than 3 months?

Anyway, met with them. Came back to do a quick 15 minutes with Apollo, with whom I am doing no fewer than 5 projects this semester (two of them were discharged with last week's conference, thank goodness!).

Turned out that the person who is the community partner for the overseas project he and I are leading in January wanted to Skype with us prior to his skyping with our students this afternoon. Did that. Had 15 minutes to get ready for class. One of those days when I'm cursing at the copier for not printing my g-d handouts fast enough (in my defense, it's also a networked printer and sometimes will get in this mode where it will take 15 minutes to print 20 copies of a handout that is just words on paper. )

Anyway, run off to class. Teach 2 classes AND THEN do the skype sessions for both mine and Apollo's groups (it's his kids' birthday, so he left early).

Second skype runs long, and I am running to get Bun from daycare before it closes. Get home. Forgot to tell Spouse I had this late obligation, so he's all worried. Offspring is off school tomorrow, so she wants me to play computer games with her. Tell her I'm not sure I'll have time. She gets all offended. So I play with her, even though I know full well that I suck at games (I play, because I am crazy) and get to listen to my whole family, including the 4 year old, making fun of me. Manage to not lose it.

Have I mentioned how I have seemed to acquire another 2 inches of papers to grade?

Yep. Crazy. Tonight, in addition to the 2 inches of papers, I have to cull through and get the things ready for my FRESHMEN to code.

Nightmare du jour (or du nuit, I guess?)

2011-11-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

I have a recurring work nightmare involving having a paper to give at a conference and being unable to find the room in the soul-less morass of the conference hotel. My paper's in Icicle 6, and it seems to skip from Icicle 5 to Icicle 8, for example. I usually have this one near the start of a new semester.

Last night was a new one.

We have this applied basketweaving project where our students go overseas in groups with a faculty member and work with an NGO to develop basket competency or market their baskets, or improve their materials choices or whatever might be appropriate. I am taking one of these trips, as are 4 other faculty.

Well, I dreamed that one of the other faculty told my students that the outcome of the trip was going to be an elaborately carved zucchini, and that they could go ahead and carve the zucchini, and then enjoy the trip as a vacation.

So they carved a zucchini. It was very nicely done (and this is a literal zucchini carving, mind you), but of course there ere a couple of problems. First, that's not the project and my colleague (who I usually get along with quite well) has no business telling my students that it is. Second, after all the groups complete the projects in the january term, we have this big presentation where they show their work in front of all of the other students, the entire faculty, the president of the university and invited guests, including potential employers for our students. It's November. The presentation is at the of January. Even if a zucchini was what was required, it would not be in a state to show by the end of January. Madness!

My nightmare ended with me chasing the other faculty member down the hall waving the zucchini saying "You can't expect me to show a rotten zucchini to all these people." He called back over his shoulder "Too late! They already carved it!" and disappeared through the door at the end of the hall right as I woke up.

Why is this semester so freakin' busy?

2011-11-08T03:29:00.000-08:00

So here I am at 6:30 in the morning checking my work e-mail and feeling guilty because I didn't work last night. Oh yeah, except for driving Bun home and driving back to school (hour and twenty in the car round trip) to go to a speech I made my students go to (55 minute speech and Q & A which was extremely interesting).

But no grading or lesson planning, so I feel guilty now.

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses

2011-11-07T15:26:00.001-08:00

I got a call on Friday from Offspring's homeroom teacher saying we had to come in for a conference today (it was a scheduled conference day) because they wanted to talk with the parents of everyone new to the district.

What a difference middle school is. First, the number of people - 4 core subject teachers, the counselor, the Spanish teacher, the PE teacher. (They didn't make the band teacher or the track coach come, but I think that was pretty much it).

And it wasn't so much as talk with as it was a talk at. Offspring's doing great academically - straight As the first quarter. I had expected that they'd want to talk about her interests, what might be challenging to her, etc. But no, it was mostly that they are concerned about her socially and she is disruptive in class because she's a blurter - she wants to share her knowledge when it comes up in class.

I didn't really say much of anything, in part because they insisted that Offspring be there, and I don't feel right talking about her in the third person when she is sitting right there. If I want to talk to her, I have plenty of opportunity to do that.

It really felt like they wanted to air grievances with Offspring while we were there to witness it.

And I thought she was doing as well as can be expected this year.

You win some, you don't win some

2011-11-05T18:57:00.001-07:00

Got e-mail from my mother tonight. She found me on Amazon, and thinks I wrote a book.

Turns out, some dude vanity published a book in which he refutes an article I wrote several years ago that I don't think he read very carefully, or maybe at all...

That's a complicated one to explain to the parental units...

There and back again

2011-11-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

Well, as of 1 a.m. I'm back from my conference. It was in a city that's typically a good bit colder than New State, and Thursday it was cold and gloomy, but yesterday was stunning beautiful, so in the afternoon, Apollo and I walked out to a fairly well-known tourist attraction in the city. I think my tolerance for the soul-sucking sensory deprivation of hotel/conference centers is declining by the year. I just have to get outside after a while. Sadly, a 30-minute walk in dress boots = a blister the size of Montana. I was glad to get to the airport and be able to slip into the bathroom and change my clothes/shoes.

The conference is one I've never been to before, and is fairly far outside of my field, but we did some research on using their glassblowing techniques in weaving our baskets, and it really worked well. We had two papers accepted on different aspects of the project, one with me as the lead, and one with Apollo, and they both got accepted. I was surprised to get there and find that there were about 70 people in the room - by far the biggest at any conference presentation I've given (15-20 is a good number at the big baskets conference). I think they were there to hear the other paper in the session, but I'll take it. I also found out from the other New School faculty member there that our big glassblowing lady, who has an international reputation and actually edits one of the journals, has been rejected from this conference before, so I was especially surprised to hear that.

It was a crappy, crappy time to be away from my classes, though, and a crappy, crappy time to try to polish a paper. I got pretty behind on my grading last week and had to take a 2-inch stack of it with me. This was complicated by the fact that my first flight back, people used all the overhead space before I got on the plane, so they forced me to check it through both flights. So I had to quick pull out that 2" stack of papers and shepherd it through two flights and an airport in order to be able to work on it.

So to all you flyers out there in America who think that a very large roll aboard, a backpack, a purse, a coat and a couple of full shopping bags fits within the definition of one small carryon and a personal item, I see what you are doing. I also dislike you intensely.

You should to it

2011-11-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

National blog post month. I know I can't (conference), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try : )

The corruption of references

2011-10-31T05:18:00.000-07:00

New School has a pretty extensive study abroad program, and students have to get recommendations from faculty in order to participate. I have a student who has had mono and missed a great deal of class. She's been pretty good about making up work, but she's also the kind of kid who will argue with you about two points on a quiz that doesn't really count very much anyway.

So she asked me for a recommendation. Actually, she didn't even ask me, she just put my name in with the Overseas Center, assuming I would do it.

Sadly, this student has quite a few friends in the class, so if she doesn't get picked or if I politely refuse, it could affect my all-important student evaluations.

Blerg.

The agony of defeat

2011-10-30T19:17:00.001-07:00

So the article Apollo and I wrote was rejected. By the editor. Without even being sent out for review.

It's his first article, so I think he's taking it harder than I am. I think it's still salvageable. The editor's concerns are mostly, imo, on target, including one flaw I hadn't thought of. The most serious one, I think is overcomeable. She was even complimentary about the part I put the most effort in to.

But I'd like to know what YOU do after a rejection.

Cleaning, work and guilt

2011-10-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

Vis a vis this parenting blog post in the New York Times, BOY do I feel guilt over all of these things. It's a little crazy - right now I am feeling guilty about

a) The shlocky job I am going to do on this paper I'm presenting next week
b) Staying in university town with Bun last night since I had an evening work obligation that went until 8:30 (on the plus side, since Bun goes to bed early, I got a couple of good hours in on the shlocky paper)
c) Writing this blog post instead of working on the shlocky paper
d) We haven't finished unpacking
e) I'm keeping everyone fed and clothed, but the housecleaning has been kind of minimal
f) My kids leave stuff everywhere, and I don't have the house together enough yet to get clear places for things to go
g) I have a late meeting at work today that is super mandatory and they are checking attendance (long story and not as bad as it sounds) so Spouse is having to drive from his job to get Bun from daycare before it closes
h) I don't exercise, unless you count fidgeting (the fact that my stupid toe is still healing is not helping with this)
i) Offspring's Girl Scout meetings are on the worst possible side of town at the worst possible time, traffic-wise, so I HATE driving her with a burning, fiery passion that can almost not be described.

On the flip side, most days I do 1/2 hour of cooking in the morning, and when I get home, I literally don't get to sit down until family dinner time at 6:30 or so because of the minimal domestic stuff I do get done. Although my mom was a lousy housekeeper, and my kids aren't getting much of a better example from me, Spouse and I have jobs that use our brains and actually make a difference in the world.

Finally, in better news, this. I hope most people who see it will recognize the sarcasm.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Weathering Fights - Science: What's It Up To?

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Maybe I'm just being bitchy

2011-10-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

So if you are working on projects with someone and they say several times "Do you not sleep?" is it wrong to ask them to stop saying that?

I know she doesn't mean it to be rude, but it bothers me.

Shouldn't have looked

2011-10-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

You know how you see headlines and know you shouldn't read the story because it will just upset you? I usually look anyway, so no surprise when I find it upsetting.

I had a similar experience with PrettyGood's alumni magazine. Under the "we have to have all faculty give money to the school so we can tell potential donors that they do" mantra, Spouse and I used to make small donations. So now we get the homecoming edition of the alumni magazine in hopes, I guess that we'll pony up again in the future (outlook - not good).

I shouldn't have looked at it, but, of course, I did.

As one might expect from an alumni magazine, it was chipper and full of amazing accomplishments. Really, it was well done. So much so that, for a moment as I was flipping through it, I thought to myself "Maybe we shouldn't have left." Then I remembered why we left - because I couldn't stay.

And I was bummed.

Car trouble

2011-10-23T07:55:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting here on Sunday morning at the car shop because my check engine light came on this morning. Having the commute, this is one of my biggest worries - car trouble, as Spouse and my schedules and places to go are so opposite. THe shop I am at is not my favorite, but it's open on Sunday, which is good thing for me. Plus, they didn't try to upsell me too much today, which happened last time I was here.

I have AAA and the distance isn't that great, but both of our cars have pretty high mileage (over 130,000). If I'm just going to commute in it, I'm not extremely excited about getting something nice/newer, and it's not like we have a lot of extra cash sitting around after buying the new house, anyway. I think in most cases, we'd just be looking at some inconvenience, but I do worry a lot.

I'm blogging in my head, but I guess that doesn't count

2011-10-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

Getting more behind in the posting. I have about an hour to and from work now, and I have a lot of good post ideas in the car, when I can't do anything about them. Then when I am quiet and in front of a computer, I have a hard time thinking about anything other than my to-do list. So, sorry about that.

Even now, I’m trying, but I have a lot of random thoughts. My boss just came in. His wife has a very serious form of cancer that took a downturn. They started a new, harsher treatment, but it has a possibly life-threatening side effect. You might or might not experience it, and she is. Such bad news. I wish I could do more for him, since, really, everything that happens here is so very unimportant in comparison with that. I don’t teach in his area, and I can’t do his administrative stuff.

How am I still behind?

2011-10-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

That's what I want to know.

Research

2011-10-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

Funny how research gets better when you have time to work on it.

Paper #1 with Apollo finally went to the journal. It's his first, and he's quite excited.
Paper #2 with (have to think of a good name for this colleague): fixed the coding issue and Houston - we have results. And they're quite interesting. This paper may go farther than I thought.

I got a two solicitations from editors in the last month. The second one was something I thought a paper that was in pretty good shape could go to fairly quickly. This evening, I learn that a) the paper's not in that good of a shape and b) the journal is, shall we say, sketchy. GRRRRRR

Sadly, classes resume again tomorrow, so I need to get to work planning for this week and next. Oh, and I have to finish paper #2 with Apollo as well. If I could find the draft I started with, that would sure help...

Wish I had something good to say

2011-10-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

It's Fall Break. Today was a little unfun. Research work. Phone call to guest speaker for November (going to rock!). Research work. Take grad student to lunch. Research work. Get two fillings. Watch Offspring's disappointing performance in track meet. Comfort Offspring. Make dinner. Take Offspring to scouts. Watch depressing episode of Glee. Feel guilty about how little is accomplished about research work.

Here's a little interesting tidbit:

This year's profgirls' Halloween costume:

Plants vs. zombies (a really fun app, if you haven't tried it).

Offspring is going to be a pea shooter, and Bun is going to be the zombie. She had her heart set on being a zombie this year (I was really pushing for Angry Bird and Pig, but Bun would have none of it).

Honest to goodness

2011-10-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Just finished my midterm grades, and I had a situation I haven't had in about 8 years. On one of the essay questions on the midterm my seniors took last night, pretty much everyone got it wrong. It's 30 points on the test, and it's important, so I ended up just grading the test out of 70. I'm going to re-teach that material and let them attempt an answer again.

I don't know why, but final averaging really stresses me out. I don't mind giving grades on individual assignments, but the figuring out what to convert an A- to for averaging and writing and rechecking Excel formulas is awful for me. I give a TON of small assignments, so it's not like I'm averaging 3 test grades together, either.

But it's done. We have two days off next week for a Fall Break, and I will definitely be working for both of them, as I have TWO paper presentations coming up in the next 3 weeks. Plus, I need to figure out what the heck I'm doing with my classes for the rest of the semester.

But hey, I'm caught up on grading : )

Note to self

2011-10-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

When you work at a school where you have to assign midterm grades, don't give a midterm exam with essay questions the afternoon before those grades are due.

The more you know.

In my inbox today

2011-10-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

Restaurant.com is having a sale - $25 restaurant gift certificates for $2

UNICEF needs help with an urgent nutrition crisis

Truth

2011-10-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

We made it.

Sometimes it seems like things go so well here that what we see as catastrophic issues are minor inconveniences elsewhere. And things really do go well here.

Today, I am so glad we moved on.

Truth or untruth

2011-10-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

So my unit at NewSchool is up for reaccreditation this year, and the accreditation team is here and one of them decided to talk to meeeeeee today.

It's my second year. What do I know?

Then again, I've been doing this for 15 years, so maybe I do know something? The accreditation is program by program, and I'm worried that one of our programs is not going to make it.

Clean up, clean up

2011-10-11T05:33:00.000-07:00

So we have 23 boxes left to unpack, and NewSchool has grades issues at MidTerms, so I have a little bit of clean-up grading to do of things that came in late, etc. I give a midterm test tomorrow and Thursday, so I'll have to grade those as well.

Also, I woke the girls with "I'm still alive" this morning, and the link goes to a fun, new version, complete with Theremin intro.

Sunday night and

2011-10-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

I've unpacked several boxes, but written no midterms.

I let Bun talk me into staying in New Town tonight. I have a 7:30 meeting tomorrow, so I'll (we'll) be up at 5 to make it in time.

In more college-related news, I had the folks from NewU's teaching center come in an do a focus group in my problem class last week. When I met with them for the debrief, the comment I got was "I've never seen this before, but they hate the class. But they like you."

Future - ho!

2011-10-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

Like tally-ho or kites-ho.

Anyway, I am sitting on an actual non-folding chair in my house. That's right - the movers came today and we FINALLY have our furniture in our new place.

Tomorrow looks to be a day of homework for me (writing midterms), Spouse (grading midterms) and Offspring. I have under my nameplate a picture bun drew of me last year, and I am trying to get her to do a new model this year, so perhaps she will work on this while we are working.

Oh, and 23 more boxes left to unpack. But I get to sleep in my bed, in my house tonight.

Tomorrow, Bun and stay at the townhouse, since I have a 7:30 a.m. meeting Monday and have to get Bun to school as soon as it opens. So that's a little bit of a bummer.

But we're here. And we have our furniture. So the house feels a little bit more like it is ours.

Nothing like posting at 3 a.m.

2011-10-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

That's what you get when you fall asleep at 8:30, I guess.

Spouse is on Fall Break yesterday and today. He spent yesterday at our old house supervising the packers (we get our actual furniture on Saturday!). Today, he has to supervise a massive grading party for his class of thousands' midterms.

Speaking of midterms, I have now finished writing the descriptions of mine. I don't give out a comprehensive study guide, and if I do, it's the evil sort where I basically write down everything I have covered and tell them some of it will be on the test, or, I write a bank of 30 questions that I give them and tell them I will ask 3. But I do tell them what kinds of questions there will be and give them a sample question or two. I give two tests next week, and one the week after.

I also generally let the students bring an index card or cheat sheet. I feel like memorization is over-rated in a lot of things, and having to boil everything down to fit on a card is actually a useful studying exercise. Plus, it relieves some stress for the students (makes them think I'm "fair" and lets me put things on the test that are more synthesis than recall. So it's a win-win.

I have my Fall Break the week after next. I am going to try to maybe get ahead a little for my classes (!) and I definitely want to get one paper sent off that's pretty much done, and possibly get two sent off. We shall see. It's only 2 days.

Deep thought

2011-10-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

NewSchool has 4 credit hour classes, which means 4 instructional hours per week.

Students are very resistant to lectures at this point. Honestly, they start to glaze over after about 5 minutes - some of them immediately.

So I have my students learn the facts on their own (lots of reading, daily reading quizzes so they do it) and we have activities in class pretty much every day.

I feel like a pre-school party planner, trying to come up with enough activities to keep the little dears engaged for an hour and 40 minute class session.

There's something wrong with this picture.

Things rattling around in my head at the moment

2011-10-05T03:18:00.001-07:00

1. I finished those freshman term papers. Thank. Goodness. I also had the good sense to try really hard to not assign anything hard to grade this week.

2. I had one of said freshman write me to ask if she can leave early for the two-day Fall Break. As in miss a whole week Without penalty.

3. While I was freezing at Girl Scout campout (so very cold!), Spouse was doing stuff in the house and put a chair where it didn't used to be. Dark + unexpected chair = black toe that hurts a whole lot to walk on. I am telling people I am hobbling because it looks so cool. But seriously, I have to leave for my classes (all of which are in other buildings this semester) about 10 minutes early for limp time. Fantastic.

4. In the last week, I had two different journal editors solicit articles from me (woot!). I need to get some things out the door, so I am considering reinstating the research goal with political contribution consequence plan from a few years ago. I discussed this with Spouse, and he said I should do it with Rick Perry because he a) terrifies me and b) is electable. Michelle Bachmann just terrifies me.

the only thing better

2011-10-04T18:22:00.001-07:00

than having to walk out of a faculty meeting that is running over when daycare is closing, while the dean is speaking,

is

limping out of the faculty meeting.

#conspicuousmuch

Frustrated

2011-09-30T07:30:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-29T05:48:00.001-07:00

Manipulation check shows experiment didn't work.

Just in time

2011-09-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-27T09:05:00.001-07:00

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...

2011-09-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

A typical Sunday for me:

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

Kids start asking what's for breakfast.

I tell them.

They complain.

They get it anyway.

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

Put items on to-do list.

Shudder.

Kids get out of shower. Get kids dressed.

Get stuff ready for lunch.

Get dressed myself.

Church.

Lunch.

Grade something.

Kids bored. Do something entertaining.

Start laundry.

Make menu and shopping list for week.

Grade something.

Check to see if research collaborator has done anything.

Sigh.

Discuss with Spouse which grocery store to go to.

Go to the one I want to go to.

Get gas.

Come home. Unload groceries.

Make dinner while grading something.

Spouse and Offspring go running.

Delay dinner.

Wish I had time to exercise.

Eat dinner.

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

Argue with kids about bed.

Shove Bun into bed

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

Fold laundry.

Put Bun back into bed.

Class prep.

Tell Offspring to go to bed.

Grade something

Grade something else.

Update calendar for the week.

Shudder.

Put Offspring back into bed.

Fold laundry.

Make sure our stuff is next to the relevant bags.

Go to bed myself.

Just breathe

2011-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

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*

2011-09-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-09-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

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

Who knew?

Despite it all, it went well

2011-09-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-12T18:25:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-09T11:45:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-04T04:38:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Met all of my classes and...

2011-08-31T15:36:00.001-07:00

I feel like I am already behind.

Blerg.

In an aside

2011-08-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

I have to complete this online training thingie for IRB issues for NewSchool. I am being a very, very bad student by skipping straight to the quizzes that you can re-take. The IRB chair encouraged this, saying "well, you are learning by seeing the wrong and right answers." In hir defense, it is new questions each time, so I guess i am learning. However, to do the course properly would take 10 hours. 10. hours.

Other side of the desk

2011-08-30T06:11:00.000-07:00

So I was contacted by a grad student asking me to do an interview related to her dissertation research on academic bloggers. I did it yesterday, and it was an interesting experience, mostly because a lot of the questions, I hadn't really thought about before.

East coasters and afflictions

2011-08-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

So my folks, being somewhere on the upper East coast, are right in the line of fire for Irene.

They're not worried...the family has owned the house since 1954, and it has never in that time flooded above the basement (although it did get to the top step once, and that was a little scary.

Meanwhile, my department at work has seen a huge number of afflictions including:

Secretary in main office's husband had a heart attack
Other secretary in the main office's daughter hit by a car while on her bicycle
One associate dean had to have suspicious lesions cut out of his mouth
The other associate dean's mother died
One co-worker had emergency appendectomy
Another had an aneurysm discovered and had a quite invasive repair
Another's husband had a recurrence of brain cancer they though was in remission

And they had some kind of student rally outside my office with a lot of clapping and cheering. I'm not ready for youthful exuberance, yet.

First days

2011-08-25T06:23:00.001-07:00

Today was the first day of school for both Offspring and Bun, who got back from grandma's at about 9:30 last night.

Offspring was excited, but very nervous, as you might expect. I think the large group of girls her age at the bus stop (6 in her grade, 4 in others, plus one poor 8th grade boy) was encouraging, though.

I have a 4-hour faculty meeting this afternoon, which means I won't see her until she's been home for quite a while.

I am taking advantage of a couple of meeting-free hours this morning (hurray!) and no kids to get some serious work done on my courses.

The Prof. Family voting heuristic

2011-08-24T19:51:00.001-07:00

Unless they are clearly evil, vote for the smartest candidate.

A wee ray of hope

2011-08-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

We had a grad faculty meeting today. Remember those classes I was teaching to them last fall? Where the students were wanting to me teach all this stuff that I didn't even know myself? Where I really thought I was dying? Where my evaluations were beyond horrible?

We got results from our assessment in student learning that we're putting in for accreditation, and guess what? They did learn what they were supposed to.

So I feel a little better.

Comfort

2011-08-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

I just put Offspring back in bed today. She's nervous about starting a new school this week, which I completely understand, since I switched schools in seventh grade, and it really took me two years to sort of find my place.

The most amazing thing happened today, though.

We had heard from our realtor that there were a lot of girls Offspring's age in our neighborhood. We were out walking one evening, and met one of them out with her family, who confirmed that they are 7 of them at the same bus stop, in the same grade at the same school.

Well. tonight I got home and Spouse was there working outside and told us a group of girls had come by to meet Offspring, and they were just up the road. She ran and caught up with them and chatted for a bit (and told them about her current D & D obsession, which is not the conversation starter I would have suggested, but what are you going to do?) I think it went pretty well, and I am so impressed by a group of 13 year olds who would do this.

I wouldn't have at that age.

I hope it bodes well.

I don't feel better

2011-08-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

But I do feel excited, so that's good right? I just have to spread that excitement to my students.

The community partner works with refugee resettlement in a city about 20 miles (30 mins) from my university. That's definitely my biggest concern. That, plus the fact that although the connection between what we are doing and the objectives for the class are very clear to me, I am not at all sure about how to make them clear to my students. By ridiculous comparison, it would be like I'm teaching radiology, and I am having my students X-Ray animals, when it is obvious that their jobs will involve X-raying people.

So that's going to be a hard sell.

That said, it's a very worthwhile project, and I know my students will get useful things from it, so in that sense, I guess it's worth doing.

Any tips from anyone who's worked with service learning would be much appreciated!

Discombobulated

2011-08-22T19:15:00.001-07:00

Today was the first "wear a tie" day back at work of the semester. It was a reception, lots o' speeches, a department meeting.

I find my self growing concerned about preparing for the upcoming semester. Also, the mean course evaluation score on 3 questions that matter for my department is 4.21/5. Apparently, we are all, in fact, above average. Except me, that is. I wonder what this says about the students, department and school.

Tonight was "meet the teacher" night at Offspring's school.

She has not made it into the computer system yet, so she was not on any class lists and we were pretty confused the entire time. I think her first couple of days are going to be pretty rough.

Tomorrow, Apollo and I have to go to meet with the community partner for some service learning two of our classes are doing (one of mine and one of his). I am worried that it's going to be a spectacular train wreck. Hopefully, I'll feel better after tomorrow. At least I'll have enough dates to get my syllabus finished.

Wanna/Don't Wanna

2011-08-20T04:36:00.000-07:00

Wanna

Have five or six concentrated hours to work on classes for next semester
Spend some quality end-of-summer time with my family
Have all my stuff moved into the new place
Go have a nice, long lunch
Blog more of the items rolling around in my head right now
See this (takeway - science=good; history of drug abuse = bad):

Don't Wanna

Sit in largely pointless meetings every day next week
Sit in welcome freshies for several hours today
Use AdSense (although thanks for calling my blog popular, Google!)
Pack/weed out to get stuff moved to the new place
Have the girlies start school this week
See this:

Back, not in black

2011-08-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

I wore green today, but I feel a bit like a chump, since at the all-day retreat I had to go to today, at least 3/4 of the faculty were in shorts.

So I got the girlies dropped off, and here I am back at work. The retreat went about like I would have expected it to, made worst by the fact that it was for a class I haven't taught before, so I didn't really have a lot to add.

Tomorrow, an all-day teaching conference thingie (also pointless, but looks good on the annual report).

Friday, all-day school retreat. At least I'm interested in the subject matter there.

I have started making lists again. And I set an alarm this morning, and then realized we've moved the the coffee maker to our new town, Granolaville.

I think that was the worst part.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 in the car

2011-08-16T05:10:00.000-07:00

So Spouse's classes are starting tomorrow, and I start our pre-class, endless meetings. We are taking the girls down to their grandparents (3 hours, each way) tonight. I also need to make a trip to our house in the city where I work to get some more things (1 hour each way) to get some more things. Then, I'll spend the night there (with our furniture!), go to retreat #1, and drive back down here. Round trip drive Thursday. Friday, back to grandparents to give them a break and to bring Offspring back.

And so it begins

2011-08-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

I was away at the big conference in my field last week (in a dreary city that I don't care if I ever revisit), got back Saturday night, and we are pretty much jumping back into full swing of the year.

Today: Close on the house at 9 a.m. We went over last night for the final walk-through and the sellers were there moving a few more things out. We are getting such a good deal on the house that I was afraid they'd be kind of mad at us, but I think seeing our girls made them feel better. They are an older couple who has moved into a continuous care kind of place, and I think that since they had raised their family there, they were happy to see another family where the kids would grow up there. Or maybe I am reading too much into it.

After that, I am going to register Offspring for school.

We aren't moving the bulk of our stuff for perhaps several weeks, so we are moving enough down to kind of camp out there, since Spouse will stay down there after this. He has his pre-semester faculty meeting this afternoon, and his classes start on Wednesday.

Tomorrow: The house needs some work that would be good to get done before we move furniture in (see above) so we are meeting the contractor there to work out final details. I think I'll also be making a run to our present home to get another carload of stuff. That evening, I'm taking the girls to Spouse's parents. Their school doesn't start until nearer the end of the month, and

Wednesday: I have the first of 3 all-day retreats this week. And, we're back.

transitions

2011-08-09T04:19:00.000-07:00

So we are closing on the new place on Monday (!). The appraisal on the house came back, and priced it about 10 percent below what we are paying, and this town is still a hot market because the schools are apparently fantabulous, so we really got a fantastic deal. (Other houses in the city and in the area where we are tend to go for 3-5% below asking).

Now begins the process of getting everything together to move down there. Since we just got a closing date yesterday, and I am leaving town this afternoon for the big conference in my field (lousy location this year, so the fam is not coming), we have not engaged a mover yet. Spouse's classes start on Wednesday, so we brought down some of the furniture from Nice State - a folding table and chairs, a couple of air mattresses and some sitting chairs. Spouse and Offspring are going to go ahead and move down there, and Bun and I will stay in the our present place until we get movers, since our work/school is close to here. We're hoping to be moved by the start of September.

I'm going to register Offspring in school there right after the closing. She has her annual physical on Friday, and we will get an updated shot record then, and that's the last piece we need. I've already been in touch with the guidance counselor for her grade. One thing that surprised me was how few school supplies were required, compared with every other year she has been in school. Usually, I spend $50-$100 on all the stuff that is on the list, but this year, it was about $20, which included a couple of PE outfits. I guess this is a benefit of the high property taxes in InBetween (our new city) - the school is able to provide more of the supplies. I am sure this makes the teachers happy, since there's more consistency in what the kids had available. In MidSized City, they tried to do this by having a very explicit list with brands of everything, which could really make you crazy because, or course, the same store that sells Faber-Castell pencils doesn't sell 4-inch, rounded tip Fiskars scissors and that store doesn't sell poly pocket folders with brads in purple - one of the 5 required colors. Things are a lot better now - you can even order a lot of supplies on-line (pro-tip for those of you with children starting school for the first time: I would totally do this. Or, if the PTA offers a program where you can write one check and they buy and package all the supplies, do it. If they don't, it's a good fundraiser idea that people might actually want to buy).

I was checking the teacher websites at her new school, and apparently, none of the seventh grade math teachers teach algebra, so I think she's going to be in a class with eighth graders for that one, which should be interesting.

Let's see...need to sign up for utilities at the new place and figure out how the heck to take care of wood floors. I remember we had them as a kid, but I don't remember doing much beside sweeping them. My sister-in-law has hardwood she is very proud of, and she cleans them with dry and wet Swiffer, but that seems a little environmentally iffy to me. We don't wear shoes in the house, so I think that will help?

I'm hoping I can get a lot done for the new semester in the evenings when I am at the conference. I am too cheap to pay $11/night for Internet at the hotel, so that should help : )

This is long and rambly, so I think I'll stop.

Spanky pants

2011-08-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

In the not a fun day at the mall category:

This weekend was tax-free in NewState. We got all of Offspring's school supplies (and some for me too...I love me some school supplies) and some clothes for both girls.

I found a pair of jeans that actually fits me and after dinner tonight went to the mall to see if I could get another pair.

They no longer fit me.

Also, I have an extremely fabulous outfit that I had made for me when we did exchange teaching in an exotic foreign land when Offpsring was 2. Really beautiful stuff.

Sadly, I had it made at the end of a summer where I had had a mild case of tummy crummies brought about by the local food that had lasted pretty much all summer, and had lost quite a bit of weight.

So I can still get that outfit on, but it shows all of me that has redeveloped in the hip area for the last 9 years. So while I was at the department store, I tried on some "shapewear" to see if I could get something that would let me wear my super outfit and be decent at my upcoming conference.

No dice.

So bummer.

Someday I will post longer

2011-08-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

So one of the things we wanted to get done before we move and start commuting is to get our cars gone over thoroughly for any problems, since it's a lot higher stakes now.

Took Apa, our station wagon, in to the AAA garage that we like on Thursday, only to be told that it's odd problem (signals flashing on the instrument panel) was a wiring problem and it had to go to the dealer because AAA doesn't have wiring diagrams for it. Oh, and it's a pretty serious problem, so don't dilly dally.

I didn't want to stick Spouse with dealing with it while I am conferencing next week, so I drove to Capital City, where his new gig is, and we took it to a dealer down there. Problem? There was mold on the instrument panel, which was shorting things out.

A little gross, but a much cheaper repair than a new instrument cluster, so good for us.

Things are moving apace on the house, and it looks like we will close on the 15th.

I have 3 papers at this conference, so I've made the poster for that session, and have to finish making materials for the live presentations this weekend. Then maybe I can think about next semester again.

Updates

2011-08-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

So the structural engineer found issues that could cause problems down the road, but they can be remedied, and the seller agreed to reduce the price by the amount of the remedies. So it looks like we are full speed ahead.

The second/third author issue is dragging on and stressing me out.

Spouse has orientation at his new school tomorrow and the next 4 days. I am very excited for him.

That is all.

And so the inspection was mostly pretty good...

2011-07-27T04:21:00.000-07:00

Except the weirdness in the basement, which is going to require us to get a structural engineer to evaluate it.

Ugh.

Inspection

2011-07-25T17:35:00.001-07:00

So tomorrow is our house inspection. If everything goes well, I think we'll be moving in within a month.

That's about the time the new semester starts - where has the summer gone?

In process

2011-07-22T04:24:00.001-07:00

**Update: we got for very close to our low offer. Yay!

We made an offer on #1 that, at the encouragement of our realtor, is pretty low (and thus not a stretch). Apparently, the sellers are pretty motivated (already left town, had a previous sale fall through late in the process), so maybe they'll take it.

Appreciate all the advice! If we can get #1, it would be among the fastest in terms of re-sale, so that was a factor.