Teaching and Tech

This Chronicle article has me thinking more about effective teaching, especially as I continue to struggle with my current class.  Its primary claim is that technology works best in the classroom when it fosters stronger connections between teacher and student.  This has been the idea that I've been circling around in the past week, that key to a productive classroom is one in which there is a strong connection between teacher and students.  In my current classroom, because the students came in with such strong connections already among themselves, it's been difficult to get their attention focused elsewhere. 

I've spent the past week meeting with students about their first papers--part of my intention in doing so has been to try to forge stronger connections individually with students, in an effort to improve the classroom.  I want them to engage with the class material during class time, rather than be chatting and passing notes about their social lives.  Friday, they workshopped their rough drafts in class, and I had them pair up with a random partner, in order to cut down on extraneous "underlife." 

I noticed an interesting change Monday.  In general, the students were a bit more focused and participated in class discussion more (partly after realizing that they wouldn't get 10s for participation just for showing up).  However, my overachiever student had the student newspaper out and read for part of class instead of participating.  I wonder if he's protesting my not letting him write the treatise on the effect of commercialism on marriages he wanted to write, instead of the assigned rhetorical analysis of a print ad?  Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

Either way, I realize that for the first time I'm missing that sense of "wonder" in the material.  This is definitely a sign I need to shake something up.  I really wish that the department would go ahead and announce fall teaching assignments; knowing what I'm working toward in the fall might be helpful in facing the rest of the semester, too.  I think I'm more generally missing a sense of "wonder" right now--even though my reading for class/comps is right down my alley right now, I don't want to read.  The part of my brain that translates words into meaning is tired.  It's not too terribly bad--when I feel this terribly, I get up and work out, or do something crafty (I haven't been too musical lately--that might help).  Still, when I come back to the book,  it's still feeling like work.

As I write this, I realize that (with a few exceptions), I have been enjoying the writing side of things more lately.  I'm quite happy with the pedagogy conference paper I'm giving this week (ironically, I suppose--though it's about group projects, which I really enjoyed last semester), and once I get through this new round of revisions for the <expletive omitted> Transatlantic paper I received two days ago, I'm looking forward to the writing projects I have going which I actually am excited about.  Hmmm.  Perhaps I should keep my focus on writing--I've got a really good writing partner right now, and our commitment to meet once a week has kept me working diligently on writing. 

And here's why writing is important--it allows me realizations such as this.

Smack dab in the middle of winter break

I gave myself the Christmas present of absolute laziness today.  Yesterday we went to New Orleans to exchnage presents with friends--one of the presents was cookie cutters, cookie dough, and accountrements for the kids, with whom I then spent the afternoon making cookies (so, a gift for all of us).  We had planned on going to see the bonfires on the levee after that, but were pretty worn out from Christmas cheer (and rather tired), so we skipped it, planning on going by the store and getting some cold cuts for dinner--who knew that everything closed on Christmas Eve at 6?  I have no interest in stores open at 4am the day after Thanksgiving--I'd much rather have a grocery store open the night before Christmas.  Mark ended up getting McDonald's.

The semester came to an end--I gave exams on Wednesday and Thursday of exam week, got on a plane Friday and flew to Columbus, Ohio, where I then drove an hour through snow to Marion, Ohio, which was half an hour from where my dad's wedding was held the following day.  I made it through the wedding and stuff, grading exams in between, and had a blast playing with my nephews in Dayton for the rest of the weekend.  The rest of the week, I was in Cincinnati, where I blew off a ton of steam--at one point, finding myself playing backgammon with a friend, I was struck by how lovely it was to be playing backgammon and not working on anything school-related. 

I also danced a remarkable amount--in addition to dancing at the wedding reception, there was dancing Thursday and Saturday nights until 3.  Saturday was particularly amazing--as "Warehouse Reunion Night," it was basically the feeling that I wanted from a high school reunion and didn't quite get.  Seeing my friends on the dance floor while Ministry and New Order played was such fun.

My body, however, wants to know exactly what I think was doing.  My right knee is still complaining--so much so that I got a brace today to wear on it.  And last night, my left had started complaining loudly about all of the knitting I've been doing (close lace work on a shawl from the "Jane Austen Knits" magazine I've been waiting about a month to start playing with). 

While I was out of town, I applied for the position of "communications officer" for the Women's Caucus of the MLA, and interviewed for a summer job teaching gifted junior high students.  The WCMLA application was rather straightforward, though I did put a significant amount of thought into the cover letter.  The TIP job wanted to set up a skype interview, which turned out to be impossible on my travels.  We scheduled a phone interview for Wednesday afternoon, which they managed to forget, and had to reschedule for Friday morning.  It's a good thing skype wasn't available, as I was out until 3am dancing the night before.

The interview went very well--the woman I spoke with started out by saying that the writing instructor positions I had applied for filled up rather easily, but she was interested in hearing more about my Drama in Stratford and London course, as she thought it made me a good candidate for teaching their "Shakespeareance" course at Davidson.  We talked for 45 minutes--it was a lot of coming up with things on the fly, as I hadn't prepared for an interview about teaching literature, but it went very well, and she said I should expect an offer in my email that day.  And indeed, I had one. 

The WCMLA position came through, too.  So, I've now got a stack of books from the library on web site maintenance, and on teaching Shakespeare and drama games, all of which I need boning up on.  I also sent in my registration for the Wharton in Florence conference, which is the beginning of June; Shakespeare is three weeks in July.  I'm quite excited about all of it.

This was a tough semester, but tough because there was so much work (much of it hitting the end of November), not because I didn't like the work.  Unlike this time last year, I'm not seriously considering trying to transfer programs.  Now, I'm officially done with coursework (hooray!) and bearing down on studying for exams.  I picked up Philip Roth's American Pastoral this week, after putting it down out of boredom once before.  I admit, I put it back down after Peter Elbow's new book arrived--I love this work, and this one is about the connection between spoken and written language.  I'm intrigued by the importance of the body on speech and writing.  I'm happy to feel excitement about teaching writing, because it's going to be tough to go back to teaching comp after the wonderful experience I had teaching women & gender studies this past semester.  It was so wonderful to have the kind of committed, enthusiastic students that I had last semester.  I hope I'm able to have similarly enthusiasm this semester.  Of course, going back to teaching 23 students (rather that 68!) will be nice. 

And being done with coursework, it will be very nice to not have response papers and things due. 

I'm also working on cutting an article that I had submitted to the Southern Literary Journal--they responded that they've changed requirements, and would be happy to read my article if I'd cut 1,000 words.  So, I cut.  It's better than a flat out rejection, like I got from the Mississippi Quarterly.  I've got a to-do list for winter break, but I hope to make it leisurely.  My body is insisting on it.

Smacked in the face by the end of the semester like a two-by-four

I felt a momentary relief to have that presentation behind me, but now face Friday's deadline for revising this paper on The Messenger.  I've done major revisions and more research to supplement my claims.  My wonderful professor is being quite helpful in making recommendations for other work to look at, but the quickly approaching Friday deadline is making me feel anxious.

All of the quickly approaching deadlines are making me feel as though the end of the semester is smacking me in the face with a two-by-four.  (Though that may be exacerbated by my forehead still hurting a bit from where I smacked it on the overhead compartment Sunday.)  We've got one more reading next week for my southern class, and then conference papers start the following week, with seminar versions of those paper due the end of the semester.  I've got to put something together for my independent study.  And I've got to write and then grade my classes' finals; I give finals Tuesday and Thursday of finals week, and then have to be in Ohio for my dad's wedding that Saturday.  Grades are due the next Wednesday.  I don't relish the thought of dragging two classes worth of blue books with me on the plane.

I got a flat out rejection back from the Mississippi Quarterly on my Welty paper which my adviser said would be "easy to publish."  That's not helping my feelings of usefulness at the moment.  At least my readings for teaching and for class right now are enjoyable reads--we start Alison Bechdel's Fun Home Thursday in WGS, and next week we're reading a post-apocalyptic South book called Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse, which you've gotta love just for the name.  It takes place in East Tennessee, which makes it an enjoyable (albeit weirdly nostalgic, as I keep missing Tennessee a lot lately) read.

I don't like feeling incompetent and behind.  I will now have some lunch and read read read, something I can do, which I hope will make me feel a little more capable.

Moebius To-Do List

After a weekend during which I valiantly struggled to accomplish things, while my body staged giant protests (I went to be Friday night and slept for seventeen hours), everything is packed and ready to go for a big day tomorrow.  10:30-12 is the EGSA grad student panel presentation, where I'm getting to do a practice run of my Flannery O'Connor paper looking at Wise Blood together with the Ministry song "Jesus Built My Hotrod" (which samples dialogue from the film).  At noon, I professor I admire is speaking, and then in my class at 3 I'm presenting on Selah Saterstrom's The Pink Institution.  Once those are done, I can cross more things off of my list.

Sort of.  The O'Connor paper is a dry run for the Flannery O'Connor Society Panel at SAMLA, the primary reason I wrote the paper, which is the first weekend in November.  I wrote the abstract as a bit of a lark--as SAMLA's theme this year is poetry, it looked like the O'Connor Society was having trouble getting proposals (I assume, as they extended their deadline).  Since seeing the movie and realizing where the "Listen--get this: No one with a good car needs to be justified" bits from the Ministry song came from, I've toyed with writing up something about the juxtaposition of the two.  Who knew they'd actually say yes?  And that I'd have to come up with a coherent argument in only eight pages?  (As time goes on, the small scope of a conference paper seems more and more difficult.)

But, I've written something now--thank goodness for my discovery of the "technological sublime," as well as the weird phenomenon that a lot of punk musicians seem to have a thing for the novel.  I'll be glad to give it a go-through in front of other people and see just how many of them just stare at me as though I'm high.

And then in class, I picked a rather experimental/metatextual/nothing's been written about it novel to present on.  I'm not too terribly worried about it, as I've come up with some things to say.  I turned in a response paper about it, too, which means I've written the required number of response papers for the class.  And, as this is my last required course, it means it's the last such short assigned paper I'll do for school.  Weirdness.  I mean, I'm auditing a course next semester, but I won't have to do response papers if I'm auditing.  It's a nice, small milestone to recognize. 

In the midst of all of this to-do-list-crossing off, however, I got news that an article I wrote on Maria Montero's The Messenger was accepted for publication pending revisions.  Revisions are due in three weeks.  One of the requests from the readers was more secondary sources, which means read read read!  Happily, the wonderful professor (who is speaking tomorrow) already responded to my email with suggestions for reading.  I haven't actually looked at the drafts they sent back--after my talks tomorrow, I'll look at them.  I have to be on campus Wednesday for reading group and a student meeting, so I'll officially start tackling the revision then.

I'm still feeling occasional anxiety attacks, but between the days of sleep this weekend and the drumming I did today, it currently feels under control.