The Chronicle published a piece this week by Douglas W. Texter,
"No Tenure? No
Problem." Part-timers, it goes, can now make a pile of money (in the
neighborhood of $100k annually) by stacking teaching gigs at a couple of
different institutions. Texter offers ten principles useful for adjusting
one’s thinking while taking the plunge into the pot of gold that is
"entrepreneurial adjuncting." Among the guiding tenets: care, assume a
mercenary attitude, change what you read, change the company you keep, watch
Risky Business, and so on.
Tag: teaching
Sketchily
Is. inked this furry little creature yesterday. She’s terrific with the white board; a lefty who now erases with her index finger and redoes the facial features until they are precisely to her liking. I have a few other Is.ketches to post, but I’m again prone to thinking that a series of entries is the best way to share them–a sure improvement on the stalled-out Y. series I pursued with such great determination in September. I like this particular sketch because I think Is. is drawing a poofy series of thought balloon interegna: just how many empty cloud-like wisps should there be before the thought balloon itself?
Speaking of wispy thought-trails (empty twirls of air on the way to a full-on thought), I’ve ended up tying in with Blackboad for my spring class. Until today I had a viable concoction brewing: drop.io, Wet Paint, Vanilla (discussion forum), and a standalone web site, but I learned that the only way to put a login in front of Vanilla was to manage it on the server. Not a terrible option, ultimately, but it did mean an extra login (i.e., one login for accessing the URL, a second for posting to the forum), and I was at the same time running into a few hassles with compatibility re: the latest version of Vanilla and dead plugins managed by what appears to be a sluggish developer’s community. By this I mean that the plugins are all old and with no signs of updates on the horizon.
So, with a whimper and a frown, I’ve bowed to Blackboard, even though it makes me throw up a little bit every time I log on. I’m not in any position this semester to push back against its great, hulking inertia, no matter how much it makes my head ache. And the few emails I received in the past couple of days got me thinking that Blackboard is, for this semester, at least, the best option for everyone else with a stake in the course.
Comfort Inventory 6
In typical C.I. fashion, a list:
- Is. asked to play this song over and over and over today. And at
lunch she kept saying, "Tee-ka-lee." - Grades. Check.
- To cap the semester, a meeting tomorrow and a mock in-person interview
on Friday. Mock: I am to sport a turtleneck and then all of my questioners
heckle me about the answers when it’s over. Kidding aside, I’m grateful for
the simulations. - In the spring I will be teaching an online section of WRT205 associated
with University College. I have some decisions to make. Today
I’ve been thinking about a focus on attitude: worldview, manner (a
split of Burkean agency), and so on. I saw something about Carol
Dweck’s Mindset, but it also could tie in with a whole range of stuff:
cool studies, believing/doubting, standpoint theory, perspective.
Due to my insufferable pre-course-configuring nomadism, tomorrow I will be thinking something else, no doubt. The semester begins
January 12, which means I have until 11:30 p.m. on January 11th to make up
my mind. - WRT195ers finished last week with Pecha Kucha presentations–re-makes of
their six week sustained research projects. The switch from the
textually intensive "paper" to the visually intensive and improvised
presentational-performance: a hit, and something I’d definitely like to do
again. - One of the presentations included the uncanny (and unintended)
substitution of "digital naives" for "digital natives" (on a slide). I know
Weinberger has mentioned "digital naives" before, but it was sort of a
surprise fit here in that the point was made in the context of the adeptness
of "digital natives." - My bags are packed and ready for MLA later this month.
- No, no they’re not. That’s a joke (a real side-splitter, I’m sure,
for anyone both type A and on the market). But I do have the itinerary
for a trip embedded in another trip: first to Detroit by car, then to SF by
plane, then back to Detroit by plane, and "home" to Syracuse by car. - Is. has been busy at the whiteboard sketching humanoids.
All My Lifio
Leading the way among my web platform crushes for 2008 is drop.io, simple private sharing. My fondness for this app grows deeper every day. I have an account set up for the section of WRT195 I’m teaching right now, and it couldn’t be much better for uploading and sharing PDFs, slide shows, documents, and audio clips. I simply password protected the account (one of the options when you set up an account), and presto. Students only need the URL and the password. Plus, when students log on to drop.io, they can easily glance the contents of any file by clicking on it. They don’t have to download the files to view the contents. I’m hooked.
Already I can tell that I will be using more slideshow stuff this semester than I have in years past. For one, I am in a cramped space. It wasn’t looking too bad when there were just twelve students enrolled, but within the past week eight more students have added, pushing us to the upper threshold of twenty. On Tuesday, there were a total of nineteen chairs in the room, counting the one my teacherly can was parked on (first come, first served, I say). Really there were only nineteen (counting me) in class that day, and no empty seats; two more have added since, and I had to put in an email request so we will be sure to have enough chairs tomorrow. My point: It’s a cramped space. And rather than shimmy pardon me, excuse me, sorry over to the marker board, I think I will use the projector as a temporary solution. Plus, I can refine my slideshow style with this practice.
Nice about drop.io is that I can drop the slidshow into the quick-drop plugin in Firefox, and there it is: viewable online. It’s slick.
Another thing: drop.io is founded on the idea of limited shelf life: after a year of inactivity, the drop evaporates and with it all of the content uploaded to it. A good match for certain course materials in that it doesn’t flirt with all the niceties (and idealisms) of permanent archivization.
Washback
D. asked me about this term yesterday, and I had never heard of it before,
perhaps because I haven’t taught many courses where tests were involved.
As I now understand it (freshly, sketchily), washback describes
pedagogical revision, the on-the-fly adjustments teachers make after they have
evaluated a set of exams. The test, depending largely upon how well it is
designed, should report general strengths and weaknesses among the group;
washback is how the future lessons and activities are adapted in light of the
patterns indicated by the test.
I don’t know whether I will get much use out of the term, but it did get me
thinking about similar phenomena in writing courses. There is a kind of
going back over things–something like washback–that sometimes happens
depending on how a sequence of assignments is envisioned. It reminded me of a
mild tension in my MA program between those who thought a complete course of
study–including all writing assignments, prompts, and activities–ought to be
laid out from the outset and those who thought a course of study should be
designed to allow for those inevitable contingencies. To the extremes: the
first type is top-down, water-tight and risks being inflexible; the second type
is like taking to the air without a flight plan: improvisatory and roomy.
The first regards the contextual peculiarities (and surprises!) very little; the
second sets out with the proposition, "How can I devise the second unit of the
course until I know what happened with the first?". One values teaching
everything as if it is channeling toward week fifteen; the other lives and
teaches for today and wants not to overdetermine the what’s-to-come.
I am, at times, drawn to each of these extreme positions; they appeal to me
for different reasons. What I have come to understand is that, in moderate
forms, both are simultaneously possible, and good teachers understand–and
perform–them–a balancing act of managed flexibility. By now I have
wandered away from washback as it relates directly to tests and measurements,
but I only wanted to generalize it to the scenes of teaching I know best.
Feed Reader Live
Back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back consulting appointments in the Writing Center today. Nine of them; every time slot filled between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., although my third appointment (slotted for a half hour) was a no-show. Just now I had to check my “tutor utilization” report in Tutortrac to make sure I had the count right. By about 3 p.m., I was beginning to feel a little over-utilized. Simple fatigue more than disappointment or dissatisfaction. I singed up for this, and longish Fridays keep a couple of other days of the week free (free-ish) for pure, uninterrupted work on the blissertation.
The conversations went as follows:
- WRT205 inquiry essay on the constraints on graffiti as it is co-opted by corporations trying to appeal to a market niche while it also faces scorn as a vulgar form relative to more traditional and legitimized art forms.
- WRT205 cultural memory essay on the iconic force of MLK Jr.’s photograph in front of Lincoln Memorial. The claims and propositions have been a struggle in the essays about popular photos and American cultural memory; they risk tumbling into the abyss of grand sweeping declarations about what most Americans think.
- No show.
- First regular meeting with a student enrolled in WRT220: Writing Enrichment. This one-credit course pairs a student (who opts in) for weekly meetings with a consultant throughout the term. It is taken for pass-fail credit, and in the meetings we are concerned with writing across the student’s full set of courses (the focus is not exclusive to WRT courses, in other words).
- Break. But for the first half hour of it, I joined a conversation with an SU alum (recently finished undergrad) who set an appointment in the WC to talk with her former WRT instructor about how best to approach admissions to an MA in a comp-rhet program that would allow her to explore interests in creative nonfiction, TESOL, and professional/technical communication. I don’t know whether I helped matters any by carrying on about stuff to consider. Any thoughts?
- A SOC101 paper on the “sociological imagination.” Lots of references to “society”, which is, I take it, a major issue in today’s introductory sociology curriculum.
- A GEO paper on push-pull theories of migration.
- A follow-up (returner from last Friday) with an essay for WRT205 on food politics: the burst in organic goods.
- The rough half-draft of a 1000-word personal statement for a McNair Scholarship application.
- Another WRT205 inquiry essay: explain how specific examples of humor deepen and complicate a pressing social issue. Here the focus was on Moore’s Sicko and private health care.
I was warned that Fridays might be light and breezy, with few students checking in because it’s the spring semester and, well, it’s Friday. Need more reason than that to steer clear of the Writing Center? The packed Friday doesn’t leave any room at the end of my week for double-dipping (working while at work), but it definitely has its advantages. The conversations are focused and time-bound. Today someone suggested that my Friday hours were freakishly demanding, but I tend to think of it more along the lines of seven hours with an RSS reader, only the feeds are embodied differently; the writers of the works are sitting down with me and having a conversation: Writing Center work as a nine-scene Google Reader Live skit with a clearly defined “Mark all as read” at the end of the day.
Multiple, Sequential, Reciprocal
This one is from the same Nagi Noda who made
"Sentimental Journey,"
the other when I’m observed, I watch this.
I think these three–multiple, sequential, reciprocal–ought to apply to teaching observations. Were I a WPA, I would prefer an approach to classrooms observations that involved
multiple visits in a sequence of classes, if at all possible. I would also
prefer to see teaching observations arranged reciprocally, where each person
involved observes the other.
One-time teaching observations are good for verification, for affirming that
one’s work checks off as acceptable on a list of program, department, and
institutional expectations. But that is the end. Until next cycle. This is
the typical approach, right?, the automobile inspection version of teaching
observations.
A preferable (perhaps also idealistic) model is one where senior teachers (i.e., those with experience)
opt in and enter into a mentorship arrangement with new, inexperienced teachers.
This could work for new and returning TAs, too, depending on the nature of the
program. Each would observe the other three times in a semester.
They would also sit down to talk about their impressions, about in-class
happenings, about the shape of the course, its successes, its shortcomings, its
surprises, and maybe even student writing. Much of this interchange could
be handled via email, if schedules conflict. The culminating piece would
be a brief (few pages) record of the conversation representing both
participants, with some evidence of what materialized in their conversations.
It could even be formatted as a dialogue. This would go to the WPA would would,
in turn, sign off on a small stipend (oh, say, $50 or $100
bucks). These conversation pieces could also be circulated internally, turned
into a resource for future practicums, colloquia, and so on. There is not money
for this? Then it isn’t important enough to do. But this is a weak
defense when money (or release time, other forms of compensation) are already
offered for some form of observation and reporting. I’m sure I’m
oversimplifying. I’ve just been thinking about teaching observations over the
past couple of days.
Ulmer, Teletheory
Ulmer,
Gregory. Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video. New York:
Routledge, 1989.
Assorted Preparations
Making preparations for the fall, I have posted the
syllabus
and in-progress schedule for the course I will start teaching later this
month. Most of what is posted
comes from the shared syllabus for new
TAs. I decided to use the shared syllabus because it connects with a lot
of the extracurricular programming throughout the fall, it synchs up in
explicit ways (demanding very little justification) with the program’s goals for
this particular course, and it will mean for me just the second time in seven
semesters (since Fall ’04) that I don’t have to prep a course I haven’t taught
once before (the two WRT205s I taught two years apart were very
different).
Yesterday I fused two del.icio.us accounts into one. I set up
dnmexams last summer so that I would
have a dedicated space for tagging and exploring linkages among my notes entries
related to qualifying exams. At a much slower pace, I have continued to
post notes to the Dissarray blog
(formerly "Exam Sitting"), but the separate del.icio.us account no longer made
sense. Reading for exams was relatively contained; reading and notes for the
diss–at this stage–feel somewhat more sprawling and dispersed. Plus,
it’s more convenient to keep just one del.icio.us account and, with it, just one
login. I’ve also switched from subscribing to individual del.icio.us accounts to
subscribing to one feed for my
entire
network. With this switch there has been a marked improvement in the
steady flow of materials into the aggregator over the past few weeks.
Finally, in anticipation of a narrow job search in the year ahead, I have been
mulling over my web site at the
behest of our job seekers group. I’m fairly satisfied with the site and all that
it includes, but I would be tremendously appreciative of thoughts anyone is willing to share–recommendations, critical asides, feedback about design,
presentation, navigability, and so on. At the next job seekers meeting we will be
taking a look at
teaching philosophy statements, but I won’t be able to attend, so I’d love
to hear your reactions to what I say there, too (either in the comments or via
email).
Plotting Intensities
I first caught word over at
Junk Charts of
this infographical rendering (in the
Sunday Times) of a week of concert-going. The spread includes profound
thoughts, counts of the people on stage, quality arcs of each show, more
profound thoughts, entertaining phrases, profound guests on stage, and best
parts, all convoluted into charts, graphs, stacked bars, and bubbles. When
I first saw the quality arcs, I thought it would be cool to throw something like
that together to suggest rising and falling intensities over the course of a
graduate program of study. But heck, it took me four days to get around to
posting on these few pieces that churned through the aggregator on Sunday, so
it’ll be a few more days before I get around to drawing up quality arcs of my
own.