The semester can’t end, it would seem, without a student crying in my classroom (I don’t have an office, really, so this is as likely to happen in the hallway, in front of the Coke machines, or on the way to the parking lot, tbh). I always feel badly when students are upset by the work we are doing, but I’m also heartened – it means that they actually care about what they are writing, and how they’re writing it….
Well, I have to say I’m rather torn about the plethora of information I have to make use of as I plan for class. I recently assigned students an investigative report, as part of a larger group of assignments that span the semester (a reflective piece on the topic they chose, with a number of initial sources, followed by an Annotated Bibliography, then the report, and now the argumentative paper). The report helps hammer home the need for careful, thoughtful,…
I’m continuing my reading and working with Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I’m finding it helpful for me, as a writer (how weird is it to apply that title to myself, even though that’s what I am, and have always been), but also I’m trying to see it through the lens that my students might use. I know that they struggle – as do I – in finding ways to make their writing work for them, and to make it…
So amidst the avalanche of end-of-semester emails I received this go-‘round (“my grandma’s cousin’s brother’s goldfish died tragically, and I couldn’t write my paper and I know that the semester is over, but I need an extension” – do these kids think that the bills never come due? Things can just be put off and put off without question?), I also received a link to a list of Magna Publishing’s top 15 teaching and learning articles. There are so…
I know I am so incredibly lucky – I have so many things in my life that bring me joy: my puppies, my running, my work, my family (“joy” might be too strong a word there – let’s shoot more for “it’s complicated”). All those things, all kidding aside, do truly make me happy and recharge my batteries when they are low (but then again, some of them also drain my batteries sometimes, too, so…hmmm. Perhaps I should limit the…