Journal III

     Something interesting happened over the weekend before entering week 3: the weather dropped several degrees; evenings are colder- fall has arrived. Unfortunately, this resulted in me being sick for most of this week. Anytime there is a temperature change, it ends with me being sick for about 2 weeks. The first couple days are the worst, and then it is just a waiting game for it to be over.
    Going into Monday, the last thing I wanted to do was get up and lead a discussion. It's easier being a student and enduring an hour or two-long class and just sitting there taking notes. But to have to teach students- and be enthusiastic about the material- ugh! I didn't think I could do it.

    But despite my apprehension, Monday's class went well. I brought in some magazines and for the first couple minutes of class I had them flip through to find some images that supported Berger's argument and some that challenged it. They found a mixture of both, and in general seemed to really enjoy the exercise, even though they liked the McCloud reading better. I was sort of anticipating some challengers to Berger's argument (maybe because the apparatus sort of led them in that direction), but everyone agreed that what Berger said about women being surveyed had not changed. My feminist heart fluttered. I will say that there are only 5 males in my class, so maybe they felt outnumbered and just didn't want to get into an argument. But based on the images they found, I guess it would be hard to dispute. The discussion for the rest of Berger and McCloud was mediocre. It may have been because I was feeling under the weather, but it might have gone that way even if I was feeling my normal self. I'm learning more and more how important and valuable class activities are- they really generate discussion. I used up the rest of Monday's class to introduce the dialectical notebook to them. I think I will oscillate between the regular reading responses and maybe have them do DNs for texts I know they will hate or not understand- though I will also make them do a summary and synthesis in addition, because those two are their weak areas. They were a little confused about the assignment because I was changing it again from what was on the schedule. I felt bad, but assured them that they would definitely prefer doing the DNs to the RRs. For Wednesday, I had them do a regular RR for Allen and a DN for Berkenkotter/Murray.

   Wednesday's class was the best so far, in terms of discussion. They talked more than they ever had (in response to the Allen piece) and more importantly, people who I hadn't heard speak up before were making comments. I was so pleased. I may have let the class get a little more off-topic than I should have, but I didn't want to cut them off since they were talking so much. I was able to bring it back after awhile. They really didn't like the Berkenkotter/Murray pieces, even though I thought, paired with the Allen piece, it worked quite well. They did say that they definitely liked doing the dialectical notebook.

   By Wednesday I was thinking that they needed to do some in-class work with their sources before their introduction/synthesis is due on the 21st. I wasn't sure when I would do it, but I kept getting emails from students saying they didn't know if their sources were okay. When I reread the Elbow piece, I thought that was the reading I would scrap. I'm not a fan of it, and I knew that my students would just hate it. After our 5890 discussion, I felt sort of bad cutting it, because it does have valuable points, but I told myself I could always assign it to them later. For Friday their homework was to find one scholarly source, do a dialectical notebook on it, and then email it to me and their assigned partner (I gave them a partner based on their paper topics). They were to be familiar with both their own source and their partner's for Friday.

    Friday's class was mostly in-class work on their source. I'm glad I did it because some of them clearly just did not know what a scholarly article was. Despite our time in the computer lab and going over the databases, they brought in blogposts and opinion pieces. I told them that if they were having trouble doing the in-class assignment, then their source was not scholarly.
Here is what they had to do: Class Plan 9/14

This went pretty well, although many of them didn't get to complete the second part, mostly because their sources weren't scholarly sources. I think this assignment helped them realize what is expected of the type of sources they include, and hopefully it has also helped them read their sources (and, relatedly, their class readings) better.