Juggling 101

• Planning for Fall Already: My, Oh My….Syllabi

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  16 May 2010 /  organization, teaching
  I’m already planning my Fall courses.

  I start with the syllabus. It’s a question about how many rules I want to put in the syllabus. I hate to start the class on such a negative point; but when I don’t include rules it always comes back to haunt me.

  One of the elements I struggle with is my “no late work” policy. In a perfect world I would absolutely never accept late work. I haven’t been as married to the policy, though, these past two semesters and it’s caused me untold problems getting all of the grading done. I won’t tell you how behind I’ve been because I know you’ll want to scold me.

  Into the new syllabi will be a firm (and hopefully enforced) no late policy.

  Some of my peers think that this is a rather harsh policy. My peers aren’t really the issue, though. It’s the students who have such extreme needs throughout the semester who fight against this structure more than any other.

  Students don’t realize that when they turn work in late they’re eroding the careful balance their harried instructor has worked so hard to create. I’m the harried instructor here, and I only speak for myself on this. I’m betting all of you handle this far better than I do. I’m a soft touch; I crumble at the first excuse, I’m afraid.

  For example, students have argued eloquently that there was a deficit for that essay at the time it was due because it wasn’t done on time. Like roll-over minutes, the missing work opened up a time slot in the previous week, thus allowing me the opportunity to work ahead. Of course “life stuff” is actually more amorphous than that and will fill in whatever framework our days take on. No roll-over assignments, no roll-over time slots. There is no such thing as extra time. I have to schedule time to breathe; grading their late assignment is just not to be considered.

  Really, if I accept even one 5 paragraph essay late, that’s one more essay to read when I am past that assignment and onto grading midterms, commenting on ePosts in my online classes, correcting quizzes, or inputting grades. It’s an easily collapsible mound of time-sensitive stuff.

  I am sorry when their dog dies or their rock star crush breaks their heart; I’m even more sorry when the serious reasons unfold, such as their neighbor sues them, their car is stolen or wrecked, or their landlord kicks them out. I always wonder: are my hands tied? Like with finals that can’t be taken as scheduled, how much accommodation do I need to make?

  I’m just as much a softy about attendance. That one confuses me because I tend rant and rave on the first day and have in my syllabus in several places that coming in late or not showing up at all isn’t my problem it’s the students’. They figure out pretty early, though, that they can work me. This really goes hand-in-hand with the late work policy, as it turns out.

  I will be addressing both of these, and a few other challenges I seem to regularly deal with, as I make my syllabi. I’ve decided, in fact, that for the Fall I am going to sound like a Marine Drill Sergeant on that first day and scare off anyone who isn’t serious about my class. Maybe I’ll wear a uniform and use an air horn to punctuate each of the points in my policies section. All joking aside, colleagues have told me that giving students a test on the syllabus really helps. I’m starting with that.

  Tags: absence, attendence, Fall, Katherine Kiefer-Newman, late policy, organizing, planning, rules, syllabi, syllabus

• “Vacation, All I Ever Wanted…”

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  30 Apr 2010 /  teaching
  It’s almost May. The weather has changed and it’s making me think ahead.

  I’m already planning my meager summer vacation. Most of this summer I’ll be desperately working 8 and 9 hour days getting my dissertation finished so I don’t have to face my scary committee chair and ask for even more time than I’ve already taken. I’ve been blessed, or cursed, depending on how you see it, with no classes this summer.

  Blessed, because this dissertation isn’t going to write itself. I’m mired in Chapter Three and finding the time to even finish that has been difficult, at best. Having dedicated time, even just the sporadic hour here or there, is always a gift, and I appreciate it whenever it happens. Obviously, I’m cursed, because having no classes can mean dire financial consequences for part timers.

  As for the upcoming summer vacation, one of my oldest friends is planning on visiting here in June. She called me last week to ask if I was “in.” My only criteria for going along with any of her crazy plans was that I needed to be able to read trashy novels (no laptop, no Blackberry) and laze by some kind of body of water. She ended the conversation quickly; later, she texted me that we would be going out on another friend’s sailboat for four days. Four days. I’m in shock thinking of how wonderful getting a four-day break will be.

  Along with the anticipation of relaxing days under a deep blue sky, dipping my toe in the rippling waters of the Pacific ocean, I am also thinking of all of the work still to be done between now and the actual end of the semester. There are final projects to be graded, stacks and stacks of essays to get through, more online discussions than I know what to do with to comment on and grade, and then the finals to write.

  There are also the bevy of worried student-faces hovering around me at the end of each class, their pleading eyes and wistful voices hoping for some kind of extra credit for assignments earlier blown off and now (belatedly) causing gpa concerns.

  The semester has gone by so fast, it seems. Actually, the entire year is a blur. Like my students, I see my own as-a-student work, my dissertation, and what it means - work I’ve put off, and now must face. Because I am anticipating my soon-to-be loafing I will likely be more understanding with my needy students. I get their anxiety. I’m going to try and not pack that when I back my sunscreen and swimsuit.

  Tags: adjunct, April, break, dissertation, grades, grading, Katherine Kiefer-Newman, part time, procrastination, students, summer, teaching, vacation

• Showing vs. Telling: Twilight Invades My Writing Class

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  25 Apr 2010 /  students, teaching
  It was bound to happen in one of my classes. I knew that sooner or later I would be confronted by the fanatical devotion fans have for the Twilight books and movies. Twilight, for the three people in the United States who don’t know, is the first in a series of novels and movies about a young woman named Bella Swan. As the series progresses, she must choose between two different young men with whom she has fallen in love. The first is Edward, the outsider who comes from a wealthy and prominent family; the other, Jacob, is everyone’s favorite town son. The twist that makes this more than a standard teen romance novel is that Edward is a vampire and Jacob is a werewolf.

  These stories have captured the attention of so many people, from all different age groups. Christine Seifert, writing for BitchMagazine.org back in 2008, explains that this multigenerational reader infatuation with Bella and Edward’s smoldering romance was even the focus of a fan “engagement” party at the Sandy, Utah, Barnes & Noble store on the night before the fourth book was released that year. Participants wore formal wedding attire in honor of the happy fictional couple. It was a big night for romantics, one and all (”Bite me, (Or Don’t!“).

  With so much overexposure, I should have realized that at some point a student would bring up the books and movies in a class discussion. We were talking that day about “showing” versus “telling” in writing. I was giving examples about word choice, word placement, sentence choice, and using examples. One young woman lovingly brought out her copy of the second or third book and, in a rush of breathless exclamation points, told the class that she wanted to write like Stephanie Meyers, the author.

  Quite the controversy exists around these works and this author. Early last year, horror writer Stephen King, in the USA Weekend Magazine, stated that while Meyers does speak directly to her audience, “Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn.” Her lack of polish and talent dogs her as she continues to write for fans who are so avid they call themselves Twi-Fans and Twi-Hards, or Twi-moms if they’re of the older variety. They don’t seem to care that literary critics pan her work, they just keep buying her products obsessively. And, with the second movie just out on DVD, and the third movie scheduled to arrive in theatres at the end of June this year, fans everywhere are in a frenzy.

  Here I was in my college writing class faced with just such a dedicated enthusiast and I was caught off-guard. I am not going to spend this entire post outlining the failings of Ms. Meyers’s books. Not when gifted bloggers like Eric Boyd Vogeler have already done a superb job of it here. And the Monkey See duo at NPR have also done a series well worth your time here.

  But I was at a loss as to how to manage the spellbound student. I barely had to. Not all students, it turned out, were in the thrall of this pseudo-gothic-vampire love story. A heated debate broke out. One contingent believed that Twilight was a poor substitute for such literary classics as Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Another didn’t care about the literary merit because readin’ is readin’ and that’s what these books caused people to do (people who normally weren’t bookish). Still another rallied in support of the writing in the Twilight books, sticking with their dogged belief that it was good. What’s an instructor to do?

  In the end, I allowed all sides to state their views. Then I took lines from the book and used them as examples. Sadly, they just didn’t hold up to scrutiny and the student-fans were forever awakened to that fact.

  I seem to be breaking ever more hearts in my classroom…

  Tags: bad writing, college, Composition, debate, English, good writing, Katherine Kiefer-Newman, show, students, tell, Twilight, wordiness, writing

• Function Over Form, Really?

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  19 Mar 2010 /  organization, teaching
  I was out walking with a friend last week and the conversation turned, as it often does, to school. She’d just finished her college-level writing class and was sharing her experiences. She loved her instructor and mostly wanted to express how grateful she was for the terrific job he had done. In his class, the students wrote eight essays, plus a rash of smaller writing assignments. They watched movies, and analyzed them. She raved about the various critical thinking exercises and discussions this instructor offered—she felt challenged to try harder, and to push herself. Overall, the class sounded like one that, as a student, I would’ve enjoyed.

  This got me to thinking.

  Much goes into putting together a writing class. As part of the design, instructors consider the course’s outline of record and other requirements. These can be rather strict and stiff. Some schools have tightly controlled curricula, some limit the textbooks used, while others allow the instructor total autonomy. A minimalistic approach is one extreme (basics only), and a fully-loaded course like the one my friend had is at the other extreme.

  Where my friend’s class was chock-full of critical thinking opportunities, a variety of materials for the students to analyze, and ample classroom discussions on controversial topics, the minimalist approach offers a more practicum-oriented structure rather like a vocational application of writing techniques. Here, students spend their time learning writing formulas for thesis statements, paragraphs, and essays; they read mostly other student work looking at style, function, and effectiveness more than content and quality of writing; and while they are introduced to critical thinking as per the requirements, classroom time is mostly spent in various writing exercises and workshops rather than heated discussions.  Instead of spending weeks on research essays and longer writing pieces, students have a shorter reading and writing assignment due every class, and frequently workshop those assignments in groups.

  Now, the ultimate goal of any instructor is to offer a variety of teaching styles so that more students’ needs are addressed. Sticking too closely with one or another style, however well-intentioned, can result in losing some, or many students. Having too minimal an approach can lead to formulaic and dull writing; having too creative an approach can lead to the basics getting lost in the milieu of technique. Perhaps it comes down to that old battle of function over form, of practicality over style.

  You might be thinking that I am about to say that my courses fall firmly between the two extremes. That isn’t the case, though. I did used to teach the fully-loaded, critical thinking heavy class. If lessons got sidetracked because of hot topic discussions, I figured that students were learning how to express themselves. I encouraged creativity. I cheered on individuality and innovative thinking—at least I did until I taught a critical argument class about two years ago.

  The first meeting, I surveyed my students and they admitted that not a single one of them had scored higher than a C in their prerequisite writing class (which I regularly teach). I spent the majority of that semester:

  1) teaching them the what and how of a thesis statement

  2) that opinion is not analysis

  3) that plagiarism can be unintentional yet still be really bad.

  I came to dread the discussions because basic “if/then” arguments were lost on these students. Their attempts at writing clear, concise arguments were painful to read. Critical analysis was all opinion for these students, and they had no idea how to even communicate those opinions in grammatically correct ways. When we moved into the literature section they were lost in every discussion about symbol, tone, mood, and interpretation.

  I made the decision then to return to my computer training method of a practicum approach. I developed my writing formulas, and I’ve been using them since. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder sometimes if I haven’t sacrificed style for practicality. Sometimes it’s a roll of the dice how well we do in any class; sometimes we agonize over every choice we make. I’d say the proof is in the pudding, but I don’t allow my writing students to use clichés or figures of speech in their writing and it would be bad form for me to do it here.

  Tags: adjunct, adjunct instructor, complicated, critical thinking, form, function, how to teach writing, how to write, Katherine Kiefer-Newman, minimalist, philosophy of education, POE, simple, style, teaching, writing

• Death & Dying: A Love Story

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  13 Mar 2010 /  teaching
  Last semester I walked into a class that I had been petitioning to teach since I began at this particular school. It is a class on the dark and brooding subject of death. When I first talked with the department chair about this class, and about how I would bring a completely different perspective to the material, I actually had no idea what the class was about. Hubris, I know. I’d seen the name in the catalog and thought it would be fun to tell people I teach a class called Death and Dying. It is fun saying that, I admit it. I am a 40+-year-old woman, and the name sounds cool is a frivolous reason to want to teach a class.

  In that meeting with my chair he gently but firmly informed me that he was quite content with the gentleman currently teaching the course. Last summer that changed. I was suddenly mired in the culture of death, grief, mourning, and more. I was going to bring in various cultures and how they approach sickness and death. I was going to show students how Freud’s oft-misunderstood “death wish” was alive and well. I had so many plans.

  The reality, of course, is that I also had to find a textbook (or five) that allowed me to do all of that. And that was when I hit the wall. Had no one ever taught this course the way I wanted to? Was there no instructor out there who saw the ceremonial purpose of body tattoos that commemorate our beloved dead, and had a textbook made that showed pictures of them? And what about those “in loving memory” car tattoos that everyone drives around with? Wasn’t there a collection of essays someplace that had academics discussing the healing merits of such things? I did find some rather oddball books about zombie and vampire culture as outgrowths of our collective fear of dying. But the books were expensive, and the essays proved to be difficult to integrate into any other kinds of lecture. In the end, I went with a collection of essays that more or less outlines the historical development of the cross-cultural study of death utilizing essays and chapter excerpts by anthropologists, ethnographers, psychologists, folklorists, and other scholars. Mostly the students like the book. I’m constantly looking for supplemental materials, though, to fill in the gaps.

  Is teaching this subject everything I thought it would be? Yes and no. I do enjoy telling people I teach it. They always give me a strange look and then shake their heads and some, the less timid, finally ask me what a class on Death and Dying really is. The reality of the class, though, is that it’s a lot of work trying to teach students that the universe isn’t made up of “us” versus “them” but is, instead, just full of a whole bunch of “we all.” Two days a week, for 18 weeks, I do my best to teach that. Some cultures seem scary at first, some are rather boring, while others are very involved with their death and dying practices. There’s intrigue and exotic locales and more politicizing around corpses than you might think.

  Yesterday, two former students stopped by to say hello and update me on their transfers to four-year schools. As we were saying goodbye one of the young women - a smart and vivacious young woman who favors extremely tall hair styles and elaborate lip tints - said that she couldn’t get the class out of her head, even midway through a new semester. “I keep seeing death, rituals, and how people cope with it all in everything.” We laughed at that, but I think I can chalk that up to a win for me. After all, as Freud pointed out so long ago, the human body is moving inexorably toward its sure death, immortality is only, you see, a figment of the collective imagination. Every semester a few more students “get that” and perhaps see things a little more clearly in the big, bad world? Or not.

  Tags: brooding, Class, classroom, dark, Death, Dying, Emo, Gothic, Grief, Katherine Kiefer-Newman, Mourning, Philosophy, Religious Studies, student, textbook troubles

• Why Are They Just Staring At Me

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  04 Feb 2010 /  teaching
  There are days when I wonder why I even got out of bed.

  In teaching, these days can sneak up on you when you aren’t ready for them. For me, they are especially acute when I’ve taken extra time with a lecture or assignment and the fanfare and accolades don’t come from it. Don’t misunderstand; I don’t think for a second that every lecture is a golden testament to my own brilliance - far from it. But when I’ve really worked hard to make a lecture interesting for the class, and they nod off during the lecture, or file their nails, or text under the desk, it can be more than a little frustrating. The reason behind the extra work can be that maybe the chapter reading was more dry than usual; or past students have struggled with some of the vocabulary in a particular reading; or maybe the previous lecture was less-than-stellar and I want to make up for it. Whatever the reason, there are times when I will take extra time and care, scout out particularly vivid images to put in a PowerPoint, find a video clip interview with someone that I think makes the lesson even more powerful, or tell an especially fun or unusual story - and they just stare at me.

  You know the feeling. That loud silence when the crickets fill the silence of the room or when their eyes are blurry from trying to pretend they’re paying attention. That’s when I wonder why I got out of bed and bothered to come to class.

  Luckily, these days don’t happen often. If they did, I would probably rethink my desire to teach - or at least I would rethink doing this part-time gig. For as we all know, this job doesn’t have a lot of benefits or compensations.

  I sometimes wonder if there isn’t a teaching-fairy-godparent looking out for me, because when these days do sneak up on me (worse, they sometimes even double up on each other), something wonderful will happen that erases the frustration and feeling of “why did I bother.” That “something” is often small, and always unexpected. It’s a student from a previous class showing up in the next class with a huge smile; or it’s when a student stays after class to tell me he was too shy to speak up in the lecture, but really thought my story that day was fascinating; or when a student declares he or she will change majors because my class so interesting; or when a student asks me for advice about which college to transfer to.

  These “somethings” can also be unbelievably huge and momentous. Like the time one of my online students showed up at my class to meet me because she wanted to see the person who had changed her life. Or the time a former student read my birthday on my Facebook page and dropped a birthday card off at the Instructional Office for me. I even had a student ask me to sign my lecture notes because “they got me through the really hard readings, and I just know you’ll be published one day.”

  Big or small, these interactions with grateful, engaged, excited students keep me fueled through those other times. I mentally pull the “somethings” out and hold them in my metaphoric hands when the echoing silence rings through the room and the glazed expressions cause me to pause. A rueful smile will spread across my face, too, because I also know that the biggest failure is taking myself too seriously. That brilliant story or fantastic PowerPoint clearly isn’t as life-changing as I thought it should be. My own hubris must be kept in check, or those silent stares will happen more often as I lose touch with what I’m really supposed to be doing, which isn’t some ego-stroking performance, but just plain ol’ good teaching.

  Tags: caring, classroom, good job, helping students, juggling, Katherine Kiefer-Newman, students, teaching, worry

• Ready-Set-Go: The Curtain Goes Up On A New Semester

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  16 Jan 2010 /  organization, teaching
  I rushed around this morning trying to find my nice shoes, print out a copy of my lecture notes, grab the textbook, and wolf down something so my stomach wouldn’t rumble. It was the first day of the new semester. I felt equally harried and elated. I wanted to leave early because students tend to park in the faculty lots during the first three weeks, and I hate being late for my own class due to something controllable, like parking. Next week classes start at the other college I work for, so today had an almost dress-rehearsal feel to it. I don’t know why, my two online classes began on Monday. The staggered starts and endings happen each semester, but I can’t keep from feeling a weird kind of academic bends from coming up too fast. Another pretty common happening is that, like this morning, I forgot something. I neglected to print the class roster. Not the end of the world but a little frustrating. And I didn’t even realize it until I started to call roll…tough to do without a roll sheet.

  Does any of this sound familiar? Maybe forgetting the roster on the first day of class isn’t something that happens to you, but I know that adjuncts are busy people. Few of us are any one thing anymore - online instructor, training center tutor, classroom instructor, this or that subject instructor; this is in addition to all of the other things happening in your life. For example, this semester I am scheduled to teach five classes at two different colleges. One of those colleges has me in the English department, while at the other I am in the Social Sciences department. When I’m asked “what do you teach” I always pause. When I’m asked where I work and I say at two colleges, people seem confused. But I doubt that many of my fellow adjuncts would be confused. While the majority of part-timers don’t work in different departments, it isn’t uncommon.

  The tricky part of it all is that every college we work for requires a different approach, a different skill-set, even a different persona. Actually, each class requires some form of this, as well. I would no more teach my basic writing classes like my American Religions class, than I would assign the same kind of quiz to my classroom Death and Dying class that I use in my online section of that same class. This is where the title of this blog comes from: Juggling 101. I do juggle. Most of us juggle. And there are sadly more roster-forgetting-type episodes than I like to admit. Sometimes, during midterm time or even finals week, I’ll have whole moments where I forget which school I’m supposed to be. Overcoming these challenges is worryingly like juggling.

  I do it— the crazy and jumbled schedules, the late nights of grading, the sadly-rushed letters of reference for really deserving students, the working weekends trying to get the next syllabus done, or plugging away at my online instruction certification (even though I’ve been teaching online for over two years now) - because teaching is exactly what I want to be doing in my life.

  Even without the roster, I got to stand in front of a room full of mostly eager, mostly interested, some young and some old, new people. I get to talk about subjects that genuinely interest me, and to share those subjects with over a hundred new people every 18 weeks. I get to tell little jokes and most of the time they laugh. And I get paid to do this.  Most days, too, I feel like I could do this indefinitely without growing bored by any of it.

  This past year has seen so many economic ups and downs for the country, the state, my city, and my own family. My husband is also an associate faculty and his course load has been cut in half due to two of his colleges perilously cutting back on part-time instructors. Not uncommonly, neither of us has healthcare, and we were more than worried as the H1N1 flu swept through the classrooms last semester. I have no idea what the near or distant future holds for me; for now, though, I know that I’ll be printing things out at the last minute, hoping I have everything I need, as I rush out the door, my heart racing with an equal mix of exhilaration and beleaguerment.

  Tags: beginning of semester, juggling, Katherine Kiefer-Newman

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