Journal: Week II

This week was a shorter week, which was a nice little break from an uneven and mediocre first week of teaching. Still, it was not without its highs and lows.

Monday: Labor Day. Some of the students' writing constructs started trickling in. Many of them were predictable: plagiarism, procrastination, grammar. But some of them were a little bit more thoughtful. I liked their proposals best when they explained their personal experiences with these constructs and how it had negatively affected their own writing. For instance, one student explained how her teacher would cross out whole paragraphs saying because of wordiness, but would provide no further feedback about how to correct such wordiness. I thought this was great start, with implications of a failing on the part of the instructor.

The low point of the proposals came when one student sent me one completely unrelated to writing. I was dismayed and slightly panicky, but since he was the only outlier, I realized it probably wasn't my fault he was off. I spent time with him during Friday's lab time, making sure he had a construct, some good search terms, and possible avenues of exploration.

Wednesday: I was excited for this class because I had a very full class plan. I knew coming off of the first week that my weakest area was class discussion. I knew I had to incorporate more group work and activities rather than just question and answer (because discussion rarely came from the Q &A method). Oddly, although I had two class activities planned for that day, I think the strongest part of Wednesday's class was the discussion. This was the first one in which I didn't put the desks in a circle. I first split them up in 4 groups and gave each group a task. Group 1: Summary Group 2: synthesis Group 3: QD 1,3 Group 4: AE 1, MM. This took a little longer than I would have liked, but I had planned for that (I was okay with not doing the second activity if we ran out of time; it would just be extra). As I asked each group to present what they came up with, I weaved in different points I thought were important: Shirley vs. Alice- what qualities did each have and why were they attributes/weakness? Did you relate to Shirley? etc.; Kinneavy's Triangle Diagram for Identifying the Rhetorical Situation; how to read sources correctly/ identifying the rhetorical gap. I just stood at the blackboard and made lists or diagrams for this part, but the students were the most responsive they'd ever been. I think it was the group activity that sparked more energy.
     We had about 10 minutes left of class, so I had them stay in their groups (and I split up the fourth group into the others) as I passed around their second activity; the goal for this was to practice reading sources using Kantz's strategies for identifying the rhetorical gap. For time, I could only present them with introductions to 3 different scholarly articles, and I asked them to identify: the argument, the encoder, decoder, and situation, and try to answer the questions Kantz presents: "Who is the author writing this for?" "What is the author saying for the problem he or she assumes that I have?" "So What?" etc. They struggled with this (it isn't ideal, because it is only the introduction), but they made a nice attempt, and I hope that it was helpful. The goal was to have them discuss it in groups and then present their thoughts (each group had copies of the other introductions). But of course we ran out of time. I contemplated having them post their findings on the blog, but I decided against it because I didn't want to give them for homework for Friday. I hindsight, I would have liked to have something tangible to show whether the exercise did anything at all. As it is, I can only guess whether they got the idea or not.

Friday: This was a pretty standard class; I wasn't feeling well, so it was hard to muster enthusiasm. One thing I hadn't thought about teaching was how much talking I would have to do, and its affect on my throat. I usually am very quiet and soft-spoken, so I struggle to be heard; as a result, my throat has been very sore as of late.
      A lot of time was eaten up by the students' unfamiliarity with the computers; I posted the powerpoint online and had them follow along on their own computers so they could link to the sites and search along with me. They didn't know how to register their computer for Microsoft PP, so that took forever; so much for this generation being tech savvy. I gave my presentation, and like usual, they were pretty quiet when I asked them if they had any questions. The rest of the time was for them to research, and I went around asking the students what their constructs were and helping them narrow down their topics. With 10 minutes left, I cut in to explain to them their homework for Monday. I did this so I wouldn't forget, and had the expectation that they would go back to researching after I finished, but I should have known better. I showed them where they could find the Berger/McCloud apparatus and the Berger reading as well as where they could find the instructions for which questions to answer. They had no questions to this. Then, with 5 minutes left, they started to log off and pack up. I was dumbfounded at their boldness. I told them that they could still get in some researching, but they said they had already logged off. I let them go, but I was pretty upset.

Cut to Sunday night when many students have emailed me saying they don't understand what they need to do for Monday's readings. I was so exasperated that I sent an email telling them that they need to start writing stuff down, and that professors do not expect to have to give their students instructions more than once. There were, of course, 5 minutes left of class for any questions about the assignment.

This second week taught me the importance of preparedness and a full lesson plan. I am also ready to be a bit more authoritative; some behavior is just unacceptable.