Summer 2019 Grading: DONE!

22 June 2019: Just hit "submit" on my final grades for my summer class. The class went really well--even better than I could have hoped. But, as always, it feels good to be done.

It's a gorgeous day out there and I've got some "fun" reading to do, some plans for a good long walk and a movie, and an urge to do some good old chilling. First, of course, comes the chair-dancing.

Wrapping up the summer class...

18 June 2019: There's a lot going on here today. My new floors are being installed (funding courtesy of my WV POY award) and the cats have been locked up in my bedroom or bathroom since about 7:00 a.m.

Here's BabyCat hiding in the closet before I moved her to the bathroom.

I also spent a portion of the day grading Major Projects from my summer students who are wrapping up all of their work this week. That "wrapping up" includes some closing blog posts, which have been so good. Check out this one, full of writing tips I might use in my classes going forward.

Doing my own reflecting on the class, I think it went very well. So much of that is due to the terrific (and funny) students I had who responded so well to the material and to the online environment.

Teaching online will never be my favorite--not even close--but I am grateful for this experience with these students.

Morning inspiration...

12 June 2019: Graded short papers from my summer class students this morning and was delighted by these sentences that had me pumping my fist in the air: "It’s nice that they’re nice, sure, but people have been calling women 'nice' for centuries. What they need to start calling us is strong."

(The paper is an analysis of this piece.)

Fringe benefits...

22 May 2019: It's only the second official day of the summer session, but students are already hard at work in my class. One fringe benefit? By making them talk about funny things, they are introducing me to funny things. Here's an example that made me laugh a lot.

Here's hoping they keep 'em coming!

Why Not Me?

20 May 2019: "And these days, I find I'm caring less and less about what people think of me. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's my security in my career, maybe it's because I'm skrilla flush with that dollah-dollah-bill-y'all, but if I had to identify my overall feeling these days, it's much more 'Eh, screw it. Here's how I really feel'" (4).

Just digging into Mindy Kaling's Why Not Me?, trying to pick excerpts for the summer class. The bit quoted above really speaks to my mindset these days. It is strange and kind of liberating. (And sometimes still abandons me in an instant I am right back to living the complete opposite way.)

Work Cited

Kaling, Mindy. Why Not Me? Three Rivers Press, 2015.

Already posting...

19 May 2019: My summer class includes a blog component. We don't officially start until Tuesday, but I gave them the first set of assignments a few days ago and some are always posting. Good stuff so far!

Back to Bossypants

17 May 2019: Re-reading Bossypants for my summer class and struck once again by how smart it is. Here's one passage that stood out to me today: "This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with one another. 'You're up for a promotion. If they go with a woman, it'll be between you and Barbara.' Don't be fooled. You're not in competition with other women. You're in competition with everyone."

Thinking about laughter...

14 May 2019: "...Dr. Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire...discusses gender differences in humor citing research showing that 71 percent of women laugh when men tell a joke (based on recorded conversations at parties) and 39 percent of men laugh when a woman tells a joke." --Rebeccca Krefting, All Joking Aside : American Humor and Its Discontents

Now that's a depressing sentence from a depressing chapter about the ridiculous yet complicated idea that women aren't funny. Reading it has me thinking about my own laughter...

(Still preparing for that summer class, in case that wasn't clear...)

Summer syllabizing...

12 May 2019: “But humor is different. The humorist is at odds with the publicly espoused values of the culture, overturning its sacred cows, pointing out the nakedness of not only the Emperor, but also the politician, the pious, and the pompous. For women to adopt this role means that they must break out of the passive, subordinate position mandated for them by centuries of patriarchal tradition and take on the power accruing to those who reveal the shams, hypocrisies, and incongruities of the dominant culture. To be a woman and a humorist is to confront and subvert the very power that keeps women powerless.” Nancy Walker, A Very Serious Thing:  Women’s Humor and American Culture

Yes, graduation was only yesterday, but no rest for the wicked. I've already actually been working a bit on this class--a fully online version of Advanced Composition--for a bit now, but got some serious work done this morning. This section will be about women and comedy, with a particular focus on the last 10 years or so. The Walker quotation above (from her 1988 book) is good food for thought.

Back to Rewriting

30 April 2019: As this semester wraps up, I find myself looking towards the summer session and the (online!) section of Advanced Composition I'll be teaching in just a few weeks. Like the first time I taught the class (in 2011!), I am using Joseph Harris's Rewriting. There's a new-ish edition and I've been (re)reading it this morning. Once again, I am so charmed by his voice in this piece, particularly the way he frames the rhetorical act: charitable, gracious, fair, even hopeful. Just one example, from the Introduction: "For while the point of academic writing is never merely to explain what someone else has said, to respond to others you need also to offer an accurate account of their work. Effective use begins in generous understanding" (5).

I mean, isn't that also just good advice for talking, working, and living with others?

Three messages from students

First two good ones, the kind that feel so very validating:

1) A recent graduate and English minor contacts me with some updates from his post-Shepherd life, including the news that he got a job (yay!). I really like this student--he's smart, hard-working, polite. He was also willing to ask the hard questions, like "Why are we doing this?" (albeit in a respectful way). That's not easy to pull off. I was sort of an unofficial adviser for him as he worked his way through the English minor and the job search. Anyway, here's the best part of his message: "Believe it or not, it wasn't my business degree that they [his new employers] wanted, but my writing skills (way to go English)." I've told him to tell everyone that. 

2) Student #2, also a recent graduate, recently had an interview with a local paper and brought writing samples from this past semester's Advanced Composition class. Here's the good part: the editor, looking over the pieces, told her, "I don't know who your professor is, but I'm glad he had you write a lot!" Now sexism aside (as the student pointed out to me, the patriarchy earns a point for his assumption that her professor was male), this comment made me quite happy. That class was terrific--we had a lot of fun, but man, did the students write a lot and their writing really did improve.

Now the third message...funny in a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me kind of way: A student who I only know because I was his/her adviser in his/her brief time here (a semester and a half), emails me. I am surprised to hear from this student because A) again, I barely know him/her and B) the last I spoke to him/her it was about his/her withdrawing from school in one of those withdraw-before-you-are-expelled situations (let's just say he/she had something in his/her car that is a no-no). Anyway, he/she explains that he/she is moving back to town and would like me to send a recommendation email to a colleague of mine who is renting out a room in his/her house. 

Let's review the facts: all I know about this student is that he/she had failed just about every class during his/her brief time here and then left before he/she would have been thrown out. And he/she wants ME to be a reference? 

My response: "I could certainly email [my colleague] and tell her that I was your adviser, but beyond that, I don’t have much I could say. We’ve only met once or twice, after all, and the circumstances of those meetings were less than ideal. Let me know if you still want me to contact her."

That pretty much put an end to the conversation.

A couple of quick cross-posts (sort of) from my advanced comp class's blog...

1) I am THRILLED about Fringe's renewal. Take a look at this interesting piece about it. The piece's author explores how the TV landscape has changed since the days of Firefly. He also discusses the roles fans can play in "saving" a show.

Some important selections:

"Not so long ago, TV shows like 'Firefly,' 'Wonderfalls,' 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' and 'Dollhouse' were mourned by science fiction fans as having been canceled before their time, due -- as it always is -- to low ratings.

Another thing each had in common: They aired on Fox on Friday nights.

So observers of the TV world were surprised Thursday to learn of the network's renewal of the series 'Fringe' for a full fourth season after two months in a Friday timeslot."

 

2) Because there's a Buffy reference in it...

and because it's a very funny piece...

and because I love Adrianne Palicki (formerly of Friday Night Lights, one of the best TV shows ever...), who will be playing the new Wonder Woman...

and because it makes some great points about woman super heroes...

I am linking to this column about Wonder Woman's wardrobe. (Yeah--it's a doozy.) Good stuff.

Acknowledgments

Just a brief post to sing the praises of Joseph Harris' Rewriting, the book we're using in my Advanced Composition class. The students (and I) have enjoyed this book quite a bit. It's so very practical and still theoretical and mercifully jargon-free. Harris has such a lovely, non-cynical, charitable view of writing. It's quite refreshing.

We've just covered Chapter 4, "Taking an Approach," which Harris calls "at once generous and critical," in which "you adopt, extend, and rework the driving questions and concerns of another writer" (7). One of my favorite suggestions from this chapter is that students consider adding an "acknowledgments" section to their papers:

"I advise students to form the habit of writing a note of acknowledgments at the end of an essay, and in such notes not only to name the people they wish to thank but the specify what they want to thank them for. The classmates who talked through your ideas with you, the colleague who recommended a certain book, the professor whose lecture suggested a useful perspective, the librarian who helped you locate key texts, the roommate who assisted with proofreading, the tech person who showed you how to scan images into documents, the organization that provided support for your research, the friends and family who put up with you when you could think and talk about nothing else but what you were writing--all of these people merit your thanks. Writing is real labor. It requires real time and resources to research, read, draft, revise, and prepare the final copy of a text. And this material work of writing, of the making of texts, almost always involves the help of others" (95).

Isn't that a great idea? We talked about it in class, and I am considering making an acknowledgment section an optional (for some credit) part of their final papers (although it won't count towards the required length).

Anyway, I've just completed grading my students' weekly responses and was excited to see at least one student putting Harris' idea into action, as she wrote an acknowledgment section for her paper, noting specifically "everyone in the class who helped me hash out all my questions on the blog, especially those who responded to my [entry]. To [Classmate 1 and Classmate 2] who always make me happy and excited to talk about my ideas, and to Dr. H, who gave me not only this cool idea, but also gives us to the best forum to find our voices." Yeah, moments like that--where it all seems to come together--really make me remember how much this job rocks.

So here's my own acknowledgment: thanks to Joseph Harris for writing Rewriting. What a great book!

Work Cited

Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How to Do Things With Texts. Logan: Utah State UP, 2006. Print.