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Troubled Students

Right now I am checking my email every minute or so. Even though I know that it will tell me when I get a new email, I am furiously clicking the refresh button because right now I have a troubled student. Actually I have a couple, but tonight I am concerned about the one.

This student is having what the student describes as personal problems and I can tell from the student’s emails that he/she is suffering from depression. It’s painful enough to think of someone the age of a college freshman having depression problems, but when that student is in my class, I take it personally. I don’t see that there is any other way to look at it. So I email them and hopefully encourage them not to give up.

The problem is that depression, even in a mild form, can be so insidious that there isn’t much anyone can do. When I have a depressed student, I fear sometimes that it’s like a greek tragedy: what makes it tragic is not really the fact that bad things happen but that none of the characters can do anything to stop it. As if it’s my role to be “the concerned teacher” and it’s my student’s role to be “the troubled student” and things will not turn out well.

But I’m not really that pessimistic, so I just keep checking my email.

Will Work for Hoodies

So far, the most disappointing thing about being an adjunct teacher is the fact that I don’t have any money.

At my last “job” as a T.A. I actually got paid fairly well for the small amount of work that I did. Plus I had a sweet student loan shoring up my finances.

Now days, not so much. Times are getting hard already and it’s only the first week. I can’t even afford to buy a new round of hoodie sweatshirts for the fall. Normally I do this every year.

The ability to comfortably wear hoodies from September to May is one of the greatest advantages to living in the Midwest. So comfortable and relaxing…and a new hoodie is the most comfortable of all. *sigh*

First Class at Community College

Yesterday was my first class at Triton. I showed up several hours early to just kind of get the feel of the place. I had been there a few times over the summer, but you don’t really get the feel of a college until you spend some time there when students are present.

First impressions:

The campus wasn’t as crowded as I thought it would be. The main campus is pretty small and I thought that would translate to steady streams of students walking from one place to another. But I was really surprised at the small size of the crowds of students and the leisurely atmosphere of the outside area. In the student center, I was able to find an open table even during peak lunchtime hours. It could be that the place is a little more crowded in the evening.

My students were extremely quiet at first, more so than I am used to. My best guess on this is that they were probably a little nervous. Triton has open enrollment which means that alot of the students probably haven’t taken AP classes in high-school. To me that has no reflection on their ability, but they were probably more “out of their element” than my university students.

As I was told, there is a lot of variety in the racial and economic backgrounds of the students. There were a lot more students of Eastern European background than I had thought there would be.

So it goes.

Martini Time

So I’m sitting at my desk at home, enjoying a fine martini and I had a great idea.

According to a book I bought called Grammar Alive: A Guide for Teachers, Students will more effectively learn the grammar of Standard Written English if they can be shown the need for what the book calls “code switching.”

What the book suggests is that you have them look at various types of writing and come up with a descriptive grammar for each. For example you could take an advertisement for a car and a technical service bulletin for the same car and have them come up with a grammar for each. I have a lesson plan for this. But I just came up with a related idea that I really like.

I’m going to have them take the lyrics to Mamma Said Knock You Out, by LL Cool J (the greatest song ever written) and have them re-write it using conventional grammar (complete sentences and no slang). So far, pretty vanilla right?

then I’m going to bring in my Boss DR-202 and some speakers and read the re-written lyrics over a rap beat. It will sound really funny and be kind of entertaining while, at the same time, it will reinforce the fact that different grammars are necessary for different discourse communities.

P.S.

I just checked my iCal, which I set up a month ago, and it says 8:00 -9:05. Looks like I just screwed up on the syllabus. I suppose to make it official, I’ll have to tell my students to change it on the syllabus.

Finally Starting Again

Teaching as an adjunct at the school where I got my B.A. is a strange experience. On the one hand, I can’t help feeling like I have returned from the outside world with great knowledge to impart. You know, kind of like a hero’s journey thing. This has a boosting effect on my confidence. 

On the other hand, I think that a part of me keeps waiting for someone to notice I’m here and shout “hey stop him, he’s not a teacher, he’s just an undergrad with a button shirt!” 

The first class went about as well as I expected. I managed to get a class register just in time to hightail it to the classroom, quite out of breath. Half of my students were directed by their schedules to look for my class in some other room. I forgot my dry erase markers at home. None of these are big problems though. We worked it out.

I would have sworn that my class was supposed to be from 8:00 am to 8:50. But, after I let them go at ten to nine, I noticed on my roster that it’s scheduled from 8:00 – 9:05. I wonder if this was changed at the last minute or did I screw it up. Well, it’ll be nice to have the extra time.

So far so good.

Semester Eve

tomorrow I start my first semester as a non-TA. I am somewhat nervous, but not unreasonably so. I’m sure I have forgotten something important that I won’t remember until it’s too late. But whatever it is, I know I can teach my 8:00 class and then go work it out. I’m not an expert teacher, but I have a little experience and I have never been intimitated by facing a roomfull of students.

I really thought I would be intimitated. Before my first semester as a Teaching Assistant, I just avoided thinking about it until I got to my first class, then I realized right away that I was going to enjoy teaching them.

The only thing that really makes me unhappy is the fact that I have to teach at two schools. This is because I have learned that I always feel closely tied to a location. When I have to go to more than one location, I feel fragmented. Oh well.

So it goes.

Semester Start Up

Well. I had to decide whether or not to continue posting on the fycomp blog. It occurred to me that it could be difficult to keep a truthful blog that reflects on my teaching while working professionally as opposed to being a TA.

There is always the risk that l may make mistakes or do things that might incriminate me (not in a legal sense, but in a “getting rehired” sense) not because I am a poor teacher, but because I am still inexperienced and there is always the possibility that an employer will read the blog. In fact I put it in my resume, so it’s more than just a chance.

I thought about it. Then I decided that the value of keeping up a reflective blog about my teaching is higher than the risk of getting fired.

I feel that this first semester as a “pro” is going to be extremely formative, so having a method of self-reflection is going to maximize the degree to which I improve. Also, for reasons that I am not quite sure of yet, the blog just works extremely well for this purpose.

I think the reason is probably this: the audience for a blog is nameless and faceless enough for me to be fairly open with my thoughts. Yet, there is still the FACT of an audience (however theoretical it may be)

There is the potential that somebody will read what I am writing here. This forces me to organize my thoughts in a slightly different way than if I were writing in a journal, for my own eyes only. Also, the fact of an audience creates an impetus to write at times when I might become bored of writing in a journal.

So anyone who reads this thing, can look forward to more posts in the near future as the semester starts in about a week and a half.

MF

Fouts Waffles on Book Choice

I was determined to use Edward P.J. Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student for whatever classes I got hired to teach this coming fall. However, I changed my mind and decided to go with my favorite standby, Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing, by Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau.

I haven’t changed my mind on the value of the former title. I truly believe that Corbett’s book, in the hands of the right teacher, can be a rhetoric book that will not only inspire students but also help them achieve a level of achievement of which they didn’t know they were capable.

The thing is, I don’t yet think that I am that teacher. It’s nothing really specific, but I feel that I haven’t quite achieved the level of experience I need to use that book effectively. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the book is extremely hardcore and old school. I fear that I could easily have a class crash and burn if I came on all hardcore like that without the facility as a teacher to back it up.

So it seems as if the best course of action is to play a fairly safe game with a book I like and have already used. Then, I can work in a few lessons in based on other stuff. That way, I will be able to develop my skills without ruining my career in the process.