• Students seem more interesting in listening to audio comments or having conversations with me than in reading my comments. (I say “seem” because I haven’t collected data in any organized fashion, so my conclusions are based on purely anecdotal data.)
• Students seem more likely to engage with my audio comments or comments made in conferences than with written comments. In other words, students’ main concern with written comments seems to be to find out what their grade is. With audio comments and comments made in conferences, students seem more likely to perceive the situation as a dialog in which they can—and must—participate.
• Audio comments and comments made in conferences seem to come across as less directive than written commentary, resulting in students being more likely to carefully consider my comments and less likely to simply “do what the teacher said.”

This semester, I am not writing a single “final comment” on any of the three classes’ worth of projects I’ve collected in the past week. Instead, I am reading everything, making notes on my laptop, and holding “extended office hours” next week during which students can drop by and talk about their projects. Students who don’t want to talk about their projects can either not come by or can come by and just pick up their work.

Reading the projects in anticipation of the discussions I’ll have when students stop by is much more fun than reading them and writing copious comments and then being irritated when a large minority of students don’t bother to pick up their projects (and my comments) or wondering if the students ever read or thought about what I said. And I much prefer to spend the last few days of the semester having in-depth discussions with students rather than shutting myself up in my office and getting hand cramps.

My class meets in a regular classroom, rather than a computer lab, but I arranged to have a laptop cart in class everyday (there were three days during the semester when we couldn’t have the laptop cart because another instructor had requested it). I had students create free blogs using wordpress on the first day of class. I created a class blogroll on the class blog.

I gave students ten minutes out of almost every class period to blog. Sometimes the blogging was at the beginning of class, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes at the end. One reason I didn’t want to make blogging always be at the same time is that I didn’t want any students showing up ten minutes late every time and missing the blogging, or leaving early every time and saying, “I’ll do the blogging on my own.”

I gave specific prompts connected to their research and writing processes. These are the topics for the blog prompts I used this semester:

• Day 1 – start blogs and post an introduction to yourself
• Day 2 – ten potential research topics
• Day 3 – potential research questions
• Days 4, 5 – critiquing sources
• Day 6 – summarize, paraphrase, and quote
• Day 7 – blog about a source and use parenthetical notes; group members check
• Day 8 – research methodologies
• Day 9 – ideas for primary research
• Day 10 – no blogging
• Days 11, 12 – blog about purpose, audience, context, and choices made by creator for genre pieces I brought in
• Day 13 - blog about your genre pieces
• Days 14, 15 – no blogging
• Days 16 - 28 – next actions on genre projects (my students create, workshop, and revise four genre pieces about their research topics during this time)
• Days 29 - 30 – blog in response to at least one presentation from class

I had originally wanted students to also post comments to classmates’ blogs, but once the semester got going, I felt that students were accomplishing what the comments would accomplish in class, so I told students that they could post comments but that there were no points associated with the comments. A few times during the semester, I gave students time in class to read and respond to classmates’ blogs.

I subscribed to all my students’ blogs through bloglines, which makes it fairly easy to read them and keep track of who’s blogging and who’s not. As far as grading goes, I made the blogs worth 15% of the course grade. To earn a B, blogs have to be complete and, for an A, blogs must be complete and, as I explain on the syllabus, “I should be able to tell that you have used your blog entries to challenge and stretch yourself as a researcher and writer (for example, your blog entries may be exceptionally detailed, specific, thoughtful, and probing).” The grading criteria are pretty soft, but still, there’s a wide range of grades students earn on the blogs.

What I like about the blogs is that they are a public record of a student’s thoughts about research and writing. Although I didn’t require that students read and comment on their classmates’ blogs, some did. Many students liked that they could access their blogs from any computer with an Internet connection to record thoughts and ideas or refresh their memory of something discussed in class.

• I have required my comp I students to keep response logs for four or five years now. Students have to record—as close to verbatim as possible—the reader feedback they get, then respond thoughtfully to that feedback. Students inevitably complain about the assignment, and yet, every semester, several students admit to me that the response log was crucial in helping them remember the feedback they got and think critically about it. I want to find a way to make the assignment one that inspires less complaining, though. It’s clear to me and to some students that the response log is worth doing; but I never seem to be able to communicate that to a significant portion of the class.
• My composition II students are working with a broader range of genres this semester than I’ve seen in the past, and parody is more popular this semester than before. I spent less time this semester “selling” the multigenre concept and more time simply working with the students on reading and discussing works in different genres. I think I did a better job this semester than in previous semesters of keeping students from procrastinating during the seven weeks of workshopping; doing more whole class workshopping helped with this, as did having students blog more consistently about what they needed to do to get their next project done.
• The poetry workshop class hated the Mary Kinzie book I assigned, and I doubt I’ll use the book again. The biggest surprise success of the semester: taking the class outside, giving each group of three students a poetry anthology, and telling the groups to go find a comfortable place and take turns reading poetry to each other. Whoever had the book in each group was “in charge” as long as they had the book; they could decide what to read, how to read it, and how many times to read it. Once they were done reading one poem (as many times as they wanted), they had to pass the book on.

Today would have been completely average if not for two wonderfully random incidents:

• A former student made me a fantastic CD of Josh Ritter songs, which I pretty much listened to all day.
• A great friend who I haven’t spoken to in a couple of weeks IMed me tonight and we chatted for a while. She’s more a phone person, I’m more a text or email person—IM is a good compromise.

• Lily, knowing that she shouldn’t say a curse word, spelled out shit in a conversation the other day, the same way T and I spell things out when we don’t want her to know what we’re talking about (that hasn’t actually worked in a while).
• I sat in on a colleague’s economics class today and happened to catch a lesson on the Nash Equilibrium, which of course I knew a little bit about because of the film A Beautiful Mind. See, watching movies really is educational.
• Spent some time today on a list of things to do around Denver for the WPA Planning Committee. Nice to surf the Internet for information on Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, hikes around Evergreen, and other similarly non-academic topics and legitimately call it work.
• I’m trying to figure out if I can manage to go to my krav maga class and catch a colleague’s art show opening on Friday night. Krav maga is 6-7 and the art opening runs until 9, so I should have just enough time to shower after class and still get to the gallery in a timely fashion, right?
• A student is planning a summer trip to Italy, which has gotten me reminiscing about Vivoli, a great gelato place in Florence, on an alley with a porn theatre. How often to great frozen desserts share alleys with port theaters? Has anyone ever studied this? Would make a fine dissertation topic for someone, I’m sure.

from Academom.

Five things in each of the following categories:

10 years ago, I was:

1. Learning how to meditate.
2. Attacked on the street.
3. Teaching English as an adjunct at RRCC and CCA.
4. Living next door to my two best friends.
5. Wondering if I would eventually get brain cancer from a radiation treatment I had the year before.

Today’s to do list: (**since I blogged yesterday about today’s to do list, I’m going to modify this one and list the three things that didn’t get done from today’s to do list and then add two more things that I didn't list but want/need to do)

1. Write a survey for instructors and tutors who participated in an online embedded tutor pilot.
2. Work on graduation speech.
3. Record responses to eight student poems.
4. Finish Michael Carter’s article on WAC in CCC 
5. Weed the front yard.

Snacks I enjoy:

1. Hummus with carrots, peppers, and cucumbers
2. Greek yogurt with fresh fruit
3. Apples and peanut butter
4. Cheese
5. Fresh cherries

If I was a billionaire, I would:

1. Pay off my mortgage and all my family members’ mortgages
2. Set up a charitable foundation to pay for prison inmates to take distance college courses
3. Give money to NPR, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, the Feminist Majority Foundation, FAMM, and other charitable organizations
4. Travel around the world (first stop: Machu Picchu; second stop: Namibia; third stop: Hawaii)
5. Buy up prairie land so it couldn’t be developed

My bad habits:

1. I’m not good at answering questions that ask for a yes/no response or a “best answer”—I want to discuss everything.
2. I’m uncoordinated. (not really a bad habit—oh, well)
3. I’m lazy unless I have a clear goal.
4. I often forget to not get my daughter excited before bedtime.
5. I know exactly how to make my husband’s weak stomach kick off his gag reflex and I occasionally use that to my advantage.

Pet peeves:

1. People who talk on their cell phones while driving.
2. People who think that their poor planning should make me hurry.
3. People who choose to not recycle.
4. Companies that use much more packaging than is necessary.
5. People who don’t clean up after their dogs.

Places I’ve lived:

1. Northport, NY
2. Reston, VA
3. Peoria, IL
4. Amherst, MA
5. Denver, CO

Jobs I’ve had:

1. Ghostwriter
2. Telemarketer
3. Administrative assistant
4. Restaurant Jane of All Trades (server, bartender, manager, cook)
5. English instructor

Just like other instructors, I have students who are flaking out right now, whining, complaining, plagiarizing, you name it. But they are a tiny minority. The vast majority of my students are doing their best work of the semester right now. They are coming to class prepared and ready to work. They are coming to my office hours with thoughtful questions. They are emailing me with drafts and asking me to challenge their logic and evidence.

My theory is that instructors-who-complain-about-students don’t actually like students in general. It wouldn’t matter how persistent and devoted a student was, the instructor-who-complains-about-students is going to complain because he/she simply doesn’t enjoy the company of students. Perhaps the instructor-who-complains-about-students would prefer to be working with graduate students rather than undergrads or honors students rather than “regular” students. Or perhaps the instructor-who-complains-about-students would rather be researching than teaching. Whatever the case may be, I doubt that the instructor-who-complains-about-students enjoys interacting with students.

By instructor-who-complains-about-students, I don’t mean the instructor who has an obnoxious case of plagiarism in a class and gripes about that case. I mean the instructor who has an obnoxious case of plagiarism in a class and generalizes his/her anger or frustration with that one case to all students. I gripe about students, but I gripe about particular students who have irritated me in particular ways. I try hard not to generalize from one irritating student incident about all my students.

I’ve noticed that instructors-who-complain-about-students seem to have more plagiarism, more “bad writing,” more slackers, and more complainers in their classes. Or at least that’s what instructors-who-complain-about-students seem to believe. Only those same troublesome students come into my classes and are generally hard-working and good-natured. Every semester, an instructor-who-complains-about-students visits my classroom and comments that a student in my class “is much worse” or “like a different person” in their class. Hmmm, I wonder why.

I find my students, in general, to be interesting, thoughtful, engaged, funny, and hard-working. I enjoy spending time with them, in the classroom and out. I look forward to seeing them, and I suspect that when I enter the classroom, students can tell that I’m happy to be there and I’m happy that they are there. I expect that this makes a difference in how students behave in my classes. I imagine that instructors-who-complain-about-students do not appear happy to be in the classroom, and that their unhappiness is evident to students, who consequently behave like unhappy students.

All of this is a long winded way of getting to the thought that got me started on this blog entry. I had coffee with a former student today and we had a great conversation for an hour, and when I mentioned that I’d had coffee with a former student to another faculty member, s/he said, “What on earth could you talk about for an hour with a 20-something kid?” (I’m not even going to get into how a 20-something person is not a kid.) Well, hmmmm, we talked about politics, the economy, where we grew up, families, the Man, and a whole lot more. And it was good conversation. And I wish I had more time to have conversations like the one I had today with current and former students.

• Have coffee and unbelievably delicious cinnamon rolls with a friend.
• Attend a four hour working lunch for the Honors Program.
• Have coffee with a former student.
• Find a really great translation exercise my poetry teacher from ISU, Lucia Getsi, introduced me to years ago. I want to have my poetry workshop students do the exercise next Tuesday. I have the exercise in my office somewhere—I am pretty sure I know where.
• Write a survey for instructors and tutors who participated in an online embedded tutor pilot.
• Work on graduation speech.
• Record responses to eight student poems. (I’m using gabcast to record my responses instead of recording mp3s this semester.)
• Print out and copy release forms for my comp 2 students who give me permission to use their work on the book Amy and I are writing.
• Do weekly review.
• Take krav maga class.

Someone left this outside my office a couple weeks ago:

The accompanying typed note read

Liz, This is just a small token of my gratitude, for all the support and education you have given me in the past classes. Anonymous.