Category Archives: Teaching

Grades

Tis the season for grade complaints. A complaint can come in many forms, but they never come as self-complaint.

Student A might say: “Sorry about the C+. Next time I’ll really bear down on the course goals, take better notes, really study the journal criteria, and put my nose to the grindstone.”

If we must provide signs, institutions like a range of marks. + signs and – signs. In my area, pluses and minuses can create lots of confusion. If a C+, then why not a B-. Then why not just fudge it up a little more for whatever reason? On the other hand, we could always take a C+ and crank it down a little more to a C. A C+ generally means that a student has met the course goals to some satisfaction. They’ve demonstrated enough knowledge of the material to signal that grasp of a majority of the material but still need lots of work on the substance of the content. In general, a person demonstrates that they understand the concept of prosody or have grasped Shakespeare. They can articulate what happens in a play, but their knowledge of the details is inconsistent and their writing may reflect that. It’s more complicated than this. What’s more complicated is the POV students have vs the POV of the professor not just about the interpretation of a grade but also its meaning.

Grades are neat statistics, but the concepts a student may take from a course are more important in the long run. Other than to limit conversations to the structure of an essay and the elements of poetry I think are significant to thinking about it, I know of no other way of getting away from the borishness of grade discussions.

Education Philosophies

Christopher Coonce-Ewing, a cool dude, provides his personal education philosophy on his weblog. Here’s the final paragraph:

I believe in an educational system which takes the ideals of the Platonic system, the suggestions of Adler, and uses these to help students attain a broad range of knowledge. This same system would embrace the findings of “A Nation at Risk” and would continue to self-evaluate with future reports to track changes in educational results. These national level reports would then tie into a national assessment system based upon a set of standards which would be created by a committee of educational professionals. Only by changing the system to ensure that all of the assessments and standards would be the same can educational equality be achieved in America.

Christopher’s philosophy is complicated and points to issues with inner-city schools, dynamic classrooms, and taking educational assessment seriously. I want to see him get to work on this stuff, even though I disagree with much of it.

Money and Learning

Looks like the next deficit reduction go-round will include further cuts to student loans. In the context of this article, such a decision won’t be good news for college students. Most of the students I work with plan on seeking bachelor’s degrees after completing the associates. After leaving with degrees or quicker tranfer they will, of course, have to pay more than what they’ve become used to paying. What does a tuition crisis mean for students and their families and the intellectual health of a country? Doom in the clouds. But what to do? What is the economic dynamic of access to knowledge and knowledge creation?

I’ve seen lots of people squander their time at the college. Another form of waste. They pay for something they don’t really want. These students could do lots of good with their time. But is doing good reserved only for classroom work and furture study? Of course not.

What will happen if the idea behind a college-bound future becomes less important or less affordable. I see this as similar to the health care question, where relatively common hospital procedures are pretty much out of everyone’s price range. Will people simply stop seeking out care?

Learning Opportunities

In this post I’d written: “Good teaching is about creating the opportunity for learning to happen.” Christopher responded with this in his comment:

Teaching is about telling the story. Yes, I agree that a teacher creates an opportunity for learning. A large part of that (especially for a history teacher) is telling the story in such a way that the students start to learn without even realizing they are.

If teaching is about providing opportunities then we can deapen the argument. If good teaching creates opportunities for learning, then:

1. All questions that relate to learning should be followed by questions.

In some instances, the lit teacher might provide the definition of metaphor then offer some examples. If a student is asked to demonstrate their understanding of metaphor and returns the same examples earlier provided then the submission doesn’t really demonstrate. The rule is to generate original or independent understanding of the concept.

2. Question number 1 above should not be restricted to the classroom square.

One of the frustrating parts of teaching has to do with the attitudes students bring to the classroom about how learning happens and their role in the process. The classroom is a luxury for most people. It can also be a privilege. Yet for others it’s a priority, because without it they won’t make the goal. Some don’t need it; they will make their way regardless. For me the classroom is a big circle and a continuum. I don’t care why a student is in a class. They will all be responded to with inquiry.

3. There are indeed dumb questions.

When’s paper 1 due? Should we study the poem before we discuss it? Do we have to read the syllabus? Will the journal be evaluated? I’ve seen too many people run with the opportunities they’ve been given to start answering questions now. Here’s to you. You know who you are, and you know who you will be.

This is why a game is a good teacher. Level 2 needs level 1. In a hypertext, 2 links mean 2 paths and the choice will lead to a consequence. Story and consequence. Good one Christopher.

When Students ask for More

I don’t know how the subject came up, but the British Literature students have asked me to open discussion forums on the readings in the Vista system. They’re asking for more work. Are they nuts? Or do they want more time to engage? Does it matter. I’m glad to do it.

Course Goals and Evaluation

This semester I’m really leaning on specific articulations of where and how students meet course outcomes in evaluation and systematically expressing where a student needs to concentrate their pickups after an evaluation occurs. I will be doing a great deal of contact and in that contact specifying where a students needs to focus their energy.

For example, if I asked a student to identify a specific element of Old English prosody, a likely answer would be alliteration. The next step would be to identify in a well organized essay examples of alliteration in a few works, not just one. In this examination, multiple criteria are being assessed: an understanding of terminology, association between concept and example, term application, identification, reading and writing acumen. Analysis is a minimal issue here. At a more conceptual level, where analysis becomes key, a question could involve the idea of the journey and how Gawain expresses it. What are the criteria? What is the Christian journey (the consequence of temptation means different things here to Sir Gawain and Odysseus)? What was the context of the hero’s acceptance of the proposition (in Gawain it is intensely legalistic and ritualized); what are the tests? How do they reflect different psychological panoramas?

What do grades mean in this scenario? I’d love to do away with grades, but since I can’t, I must define them as symbolic representation of the degree to which a student demonstrates understanding of a standard. It’s easy to do, but the real work comes on the pickup, in challenging people to listen better and to take notes that can be searched, ordered, linked, and refined. Additionally, this calls for a better job on my part to be more assistive in lecture and discussion and to negotiate the texts with more skill. It’s a big problem. How do I teach prosody without revealing too much? Why should a student remark on metaphors I’ve already discussed in class?

Literature and Notes

Tonight in BL Uno, I spoke to students at the board and routined by taking on a persona who referred to things the teacher said. Teacher said that since the color black follows throughout Astrophel and Stella, then black must have some significance to the sonnet sequence. I wrote lines of poetry on the board and disentangled them with scribbles of notes. The lines go

Louing in trueth, and fayne in verse my loue to show,
That she, deare Shee, might take som pleasure of my paine,
Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pittie winne, and pity grace obtaine,
I sought fit wordes to paint the blackest face of woe;

Here we have “blackest face” and here we have all of sonnet 7

When Nature made her chief worke, Stellas eyes,
In colour blacke why wrapt she beames so bright?
Would she in beamy blacke, like Painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mixt of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue deuise,
In obiect best to knitt and strength our sight;
Least, if no vaile these braue gleames did disguise,
They, sunlike, should more dazle then delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That, whereas blacke seems Beauties contrary,
She euen in black doth make all beauties flow?
Both so, and thus, she, minding Loue should be
Plac’d euer there, gaue him this mourning weede
To honour all their deaths who for her bleed.

In this sonnet “black” returns. It’s not a strong link, because the black of Stella’s eyes doesn’t necessarily bleed from the “woe” of sonnet 1. But in terms of reading for literal understanding, the final line of 7 points back to “woefullness” and connects (links) to the deaths we die for love. Sidney is all over the contraries, spelling out love and desire in terms of pain and longing. There’s a darkness to love, a dark power, sweatly luminous and marvelously painful.

The notes on the board and the connections made through paraphrase indicate the importance of notes to study, learning, and organizing ideas, which fly and bonk about like bubbles. Why do the PCers wait for Tinderbox for PC? Because we need powerful tools for visualizing connections and making then accessible and sharable. Notebooks are cool, and embodying by writing in books as a means of response to ideas is cool too. We already know that the flexibility of weblog systems make for excellent ways of organizing whatever needs organizing. They’re wonderful tools for portfolios, if the thinker can conceptualize the space, understand the machine, and keep up the energy.

Note-taking while reading or in a state of reflection (the hypertext at work) is a critical procedure. At the board, while in that odd-ball state of character, I found myself learning before the crowd, learning more about a work that I’ve experienced many times. Sidney isn’t over by a long shot.

Hats

One of the best things about teaching at a community college is all the hats you have to wear. One of the worst things about teaching at a community college is all the hats you have to wear. Abilities and outcomes, online learning, literature, poetry and fiction, new media, transfer, pedagogy, hiring, novels, games and other systems. What else?

Online Talk Styles

It’s about day three of online lit and comp. It’s my first semester using the forum tools provided by WebCT Vista and I can already see that using them is going to be a pain in the rear. I’m used to more customizable set of conferencing tools, such as WebBoard and PhPBB, which, in my view, provide a better teaching environment complimentary to discussion of poetry and the like.

In Vista, the moderator can’t pick and choose replies to go after in a scroll pane. Often a student will make a particularly interesting entry or blunder and then can provide a focus. In threaded displays, it’s hard to tell what has been written given a thread title. It’s not about quick reading; it’s about use-discrimination and pointing people in a given direction, take it or leave it.

Perhaps it’s an interface issue. I don’t know.