Between Classes

I have mumbled, grumbled, and struggled to design interactive media that appeals to my Generation-So-Don’t-Think-Like-Me students who thrive in a non-linear environment. Yet I feel about teaching the way the dancers on So You Think You Can Dance describe movement—I just have to do it. (They would use an exclamation point. I certainly gush less than they do.) I’m a teaching creature, truly. So I have sucked it up and taken my linear laden self and waded into the world of online education and media. This effort has born my own blogging and the development of my online reading. As I read a recent article on Time Magazine’s website, I realized I have become more similar to that which I once could not understand…

Listen, I have trash taste in media. » Read the rest of this entry …

So, um, I haven’t been blogging much lately. I’m teaching three classes (two preps) this summer as well as working on some curriculum projects, so I have fodder for ideas, but each time I’ve started an entry, I’ve decided against posting it. See, I’ve been..ahem…a little cranky about my students lately. I decided I wanted to blog about the process of teaching, about solving problems, and the past few weeks, I’ve been swallowing irritation more than inspiration.

It happens. Teachers get cranky. I know how to keep it out of my classroom and my interactions with students, but it is more difficult to keep crankiness from coloring self-reflective writing. While I don’t want to write a complaining blog, I also don’t want to represent myself as a teaching Pollyanna. Therefore, I thought I’d share the titles of my rejected blog postings with everyone, and let readers’ imaginations fill in the blanks. Frankly, anyone who has taught for a while knows how these entries go:

• Seriously? Seriously? No Book Again?

• I’m Rubber; They’re Glue: How to Keep Students from Bouncing All the Thinking Back on the Teacher

• Summer Students: A Breed all Their Own

• Yes, Virginia, When You Repeat a Class, the Content is the Same

I’ll get over it; certainly, it’s not as if I just met these education problems! Sometimes, thinking about teaching yields the results I need, and sometimes, a cognitive break is in order. To everything there is a season, and frankly, June may be the season for a break whether we stop teaching or not…

co-posted on NCTE.org

Recently, I had an experience where a student clearly appeared to have cheated. Turnitin.com showed that the student’s essay matched a classmate’s essay by 47%. The classmate and the student in question had been in the same peer review group, and the classmate’s draft contained the material first.

My body reacts to such discoveries. I get hot. I bite the inside of my cheeks. My mind swirls with a mix of emotion: shock, disgust, embarrassment, and anger. My gut wants to lash out at such a student, to explain at length how such a blatant act of stealing violates our writing community and insults me as an instructor. Then the worry and guilt sets in: What kind of class have I created where a student feels such desperation when confused? » Read the rest of this entry …

‘Tis that special time of year when teachers of all shapes, sizes, and ideological persuasions find themselves humming Alice Cooper. Even for those of us who teach summer programs, June, July, and August just feel more relaxed.

Part of my summer recreation is catching up on all the television I miss during the year because it comes on after 9 p.m. I feel secure enough in this education forum to confess that I cannot watch television shows that begin after 9 p.m. » Read the rest of this entry …

When I first heard the news that MLA launched an updated system, I felt a little sick. I’ve created tons of interactive online and hard copy activities to help my students navigate reading and writing MLA Works Cited entries. Because of the hanging indent spacing and variability of monitor size, each online Works Cited entry needs to be imported as an image. (I cheated with my samples here, so if the spacing looks funky, please forgive me.  The OWL Purdue link above is dandy!)  Days of work await me. Yikes.

Once I looked at the new MLA, however, I began to feel better. The changes make tons of sense, and I think students will understand the format more. » Read the rest of this entry …

I won a teaching award, and I want to celebrate with you because much of how I teach today has come from things you taught me about this, our family craft. In this blog, I’m trying to make permanent the insights, the perspectives, the attitudes about students and teaching that you gave me. Those gifts led me to become the teacher that I am today, a teacher my school saw fit to recognize formally. I’m grateful. Good teachers work in anonymity everywhere, everyday. Most days, teaching well is its own reward, but for the days when Oprah gives some teacher in some small town a new car and I feel jealous, this recognition hits the spot.

In honor of this event in my life, I had a bracelet made with some of your words. I wanted a talisman I could see when I struggled for the right words with a student or thought about my answer in an interview setting. I wanted to create something my son would see as a natural part of my hand and ask me about as he grows older, “What’s that say, Mommy?” Also, I wanted something that said “KJ” on it; seven and a half years after your death I realize no one will call me that again. I miss it. I miss you.

I’ve joked with people that my father said lots of things that would not be appropriate to inscribe into a piece of jewelry, so I chose your ubiquitous “Only the names change to protect the innocent.”

Daddy, lots of people say “Only the names change,” but I don’t think I’ve heard anybody else use the “to protect the innocent” part. How could a crusty old guy who’d seen everything before still believe there are innocents?

Your thorough disgust for education’s repackaging of vocabulary without incorporating any genuine change never tainted your view of students. Students, the innocents, benefited from your belief that every kid deserves a chance to make a better choice each day. Your ability to see past a kid’s cumulative bad choices to a better version of him or herself touched hundreds of students in your lifetime and hundreds more through my sisters and me. When I look at this bracelet, I see your face, and I hear your voice telling me, “Forget the bullshit, KJ. Focus on the kids.” It comforts me to have it with me. Thank you, Daddy.

Love,

KJ

I’m a lucky girl. When I create content for online learning activities, the educational technology experts who work for my school system collaborate with me. Last week, I went to them with a dream. My students still struggle with reading their Turnitin.com reports; they don’t understand when a “match” constitutes plagiarism and when it’s incidental. To help them practice, I imagined creating an activity that branched. » Read the rest of this entry …

This summer, I’ll be teaching a literature survey course. I expect my students to be ready for the course to be over the day it begins. I’m sure they’ll also be pleasant about it, but I can imagine their palms facing me, thought bubbles above their heads saying, “Nothing personal here, lady. I just want this course to be over.”

Dragging students through literature that I love makes me nutty, so I’m already ruminating about how to approach the course. I construct all my teaching around student ownership, but » Read the rest of this entry …

Oh, wait.  I’m the cook!  Yeah, well, nothing drives the desire to prepare meals out of me more than grading research essays.  The kitchen went dark this past week, my friends.  I hard boiled some eggs and gestured at them with irritation if anyone else in my house mentioned hunger.  But I can’t go whole hog protein when I grade at such volume…I need carbohydrates!

I’m sure I varied this recipe off of something by Jamie Oliver, but I couldn’t find it on his site.  It flirts with nutrition, buzzes my lip with spice, and satisfies my need for consolation with cheese.  When grading at high volume, I need rewards for every five papers I complete.  This meal fits the bill.

I’d like to refute any reports that I ate this every day for a week.  I’m pretty confident I ordered out for pizza the day I finished the pile.

Kate’s “Just Five More” Pasta

1/4 to 1/3 cup of almonds

1/3 to 1/2 cup parmesan cheese

several good glugs of extra virgin olive oil

red pepper flakes, ground pepper and kosher salt to taste

Grind everything up in a small food processor.  I use it to dress whole wheat rotini and add more parmesan as needed.  I often add some broccoli florets to the pasta water for the last two minutes of cooking.

Another semester’s research essays have been drafted, revised, and graded. I haven’t run a marathon, but I imagine the months of preparing and then the grueling mile after mile with “just five more” miles than seems possible might be a physical facsimile to the mental task of grading multiple class sections of six to eight page research essays. It feels good to be on this side of the finish line!

I’ve shared my trusty research essay grading tool before, but my students remarked that they found my comments especially helpful this semester, so I’ve been thinking about the evolution of my written feedback to students on how to improve their writing. » Read the rest of this entry …