The "Education" Thread

[Nephilim96]

Finished my first semester full time teaching today. The final day was just draining. 6 of my 69 students failed, which isn't a lot in comparison to the district average, but it's still very frustrating that I couldn't help those students succeed. It was hard seeing some of the students who are trying to change bad habits fail either my class or other classes. I know it's often part of the learning process for kids, but it's difficult, especially for those who have so little support.

My favorite student dad's in prison, has a difficult relationship with her mom, has a bunch of family members in gangs and recently joined one herself. She's ESL, which makes all classes more difficult for her. I know from the outside it looked like she didn't put in much of an effort, but I know how much of a struggle it was for her and how she really did try. She ended up failing 4 of her 6 classes.

It's so hard to leave these kids for 3 weeks when they're at their most venerable, disillusioned and in need of support.

Anyway, intellectually I know there were a ton of positives from this semester and I know I did a lot of great things with my students, but emotionally I can only see the negative at this moment. Fuck it, at least I've got booze.

Even if you can't help some of them pass, you can still have a positive impact on these kids. I've had a couple classes where I got a bad grade, but I still learned a decent amount and got some valuable advice from those particular teachers.

 

[Nephilim96]

Working in the community colleges

Curious, what are the schools besides LBCC that you teach at? I can't remember.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Also, supposedly my evaluations came in yesterday but when I checked my box today they weren't there. Going to have to ask around; if someone lost/stole them I'm literally going to cry. I love reading all the comments.

Finally got them. All very positive. Got my very first "cute" and "bae" in the other comments section. I am happy today.

 

[unknown]

Curious, what are the schools besides LBCC that you teach at? I can't remember.

Not sure how I missed this. I also teach at Rio Hondo and Saddleback

 

[unknown]

Back to school time. What are you taking? What are you teaching? I'm teaching five classes this semester instead of the madness that was 6 last semester. I'm also using a new textbook in 3 of the classes, so I had to re-write my syllabus. We'll see how it goes. If it falls flat, I'll just go back to the textbook I used last semester

 

[Dak]

Finishing my undergrad thesis, participating in another research project just because, and taking 3 upper level Phil classes.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I'll be taking a 19th Century philosophy course that focuses exclusively on Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, a 20th Century continental philosophy course, Europe from the Age of Empires to WWII, a neat seminar course on medieval European and modern American conspiracy theories, and German 2.

 

[Einherjar86]

Lots of interesting stuff here!

I'm teaching the same course I did last semester, albeit in a modified fashion. It's a writing course, the topic of which is simulation; so some grounding in Plato, lots of Baudrillard, some Nick Bostrom, recent New Yorker pieces on simulation in our society, and then some SF literature and three films. Busy semester!

I'm also taking the following two seminars:

Modernist Gothic (tracing the lineage of gothic literature through the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries).

Professionalization (mostly preparation for comprehensive exams, conference submissions, and - eventually - dissertation prospectus; this course basically is preparing us to go on the job market).

 

[Dak]

I guess this would go here:

So after my inlaws left my wife told me that my FiL expressed concern that by pursuing a graduate degree I would make myself too old and too educated to hire. This is the sort of mentality I'm talking about that holds people back, runs deep in the generationally poor, whether blue collar and/or "welfare" collar, if you will. He also was updating my wife on the status of a younger cousin, and spoke of him making "Really good money" for an 18yr old working at a slaughterhouse or something. What was the "really good money?" Minimum wage.....

 

[Dak]

Anyone else in the middle of submission abstract making?

 

[Einherjar86]

I've made abstracts for journal submissions before. Not writing one at the moment. I actually enjoy writing abstracts.

 

[Dak]

Having to do stuff for presentations/grant moneys. It's not terribly hard per se but I can't say I enjoy it either. It feels either sort of like going through the motions when for the usually accepted presentation variety, and in the case of money requests I never feel like they are good enough.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

I'm starting to zone in on my inquiry project and I'm really excited for it. My aim will be to help my students build intellectual empathy-to understand the reasoning and cognitive perspective of others. I'm experimenting with different strategies to help them interpret, acknowledge, and appreciate one another's perspectives and abilities.

There's a few areas I'm focusing on:
1. cultivating gender equity in the classroom- male voices tend to be heard and acknowledged much more than female voices.

2. helping students communicate with those of different ability levels. I especially want my ELD students to be heard.

3. Provide students with opportunities to work in differentiated groups that offer different roles that capitalize on multiple intelligence. My hypothesis is that if students see other students display their strengths they will be more likely to acknowledge and respect one another.

I really like the way it's shaping up, so now it's just a matter of developing a strong culminating project that ties all this together.

 

[unknown]

That sounds really interesting

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm interested to hear how that goes. I've definitely experienced the gender inequality; male students tend to speak more, and speak over, female students. So far this semester I have a few strong female voices in my class, so I'm happy about that.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm reading a really interesting piece for my professionalization seminar by Gerald Graff; it was a preface written for a re-issue of his book, Professing Literature.

I really like this portion near the end:

The same inability to think productively about controversy - even to imagine productive controversy as an alternative - has impoverished recent debates about political correctness the same way it has impoverished debates about the curriculum. Such debates tend to be framed by two unsatisfactory opinions: either the classroom is a site of radical political advocacy, or else such advocacy has no place in the classroom at all. And so long as the debate is limited by "the classroom" understood as an isolated space, an alternative way of thinking about classroom advocacy is indeed hard to imagine. The possibility hardly arises that the antidote for irresponsible classroom advocacy might be counter-advocacy rather than the avoidance of advocacy. Let instructors take strong stands, but let these stands answer to the strongest available counter-voices, so that students gain models of true intellectual exchange.

 

[unknown]

Interesting. When I'm in the classroom, I act as a facilitator. I don't give a shit if students agree or disagree with me on certain points of view or interpretation when discussing an article or reading. I'm more interested in getting them to articulate the reasons and motivations behind their own opinions and feelings. The class will also tend to devolve into group think, so I'll frequently play devil's advocate and speak for the minority. A lot of these students, mostly the fresh out of high school ones, have little understanding behind why they think about things the way they do, and they don't question their beliefs or look objectively at alternatives.

 

[Dak]

The argument in that quote though has received a lot of criticism for supporting the "teaching" of completely erroneous (in the estimation of some) theories or perspectives. IE, do we allow space for Neo-Nazi arguments when discussing various topics like genocide or immigration, or allow equal time for various creation theories along with evolutionary theories? Etc. Obviously I chose the more extreme examples, but there are plenty more of the less extreme variety.

 

[Einherjar86]

I can see how that's present in what he's saying; but ultimately any argument can be co-opted for less-than-reputable purposes. The question of censorship rises up yet again: should we censor ourselves to prevent what some people might use our arguments for?

In other news, I fucking hate formatting papers for journal submission. Every journal has different requirements, and they all suck.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well, paper submitted to Science Fiction Studies for publication. We'll see if it gets accepted. I'm still waiting on my submission to Modernism/modernity, and that was nearly six months ago.

In the meantime, I'm trying to pin down my committee for my comprehensive exams. Mild anxiety in the works.