End of Term, Deep Breath, Plan Next Term

Classes for this term have been done for a week, and like most instructors I'm still looking at those last few papers to be graded and the grading spreadsheet to be filled.   But there's no time to wrap it all up with a bow (see that holiday reference there?) because the next course needs polishing and planning.  So I alternate bouts of Fall term closure with Winter term speculation, opening last Winter's syllabus and carving out the pieces that didn't work as well as they should have, and pondering what to put in their place. 

Happy Holidays, and a Festive New Year to all members of the circle.

Thanksgiving Week - Thanking Teaching Circle Visitors

It seems appropriate to insert a note this week thanking those colleagues who have joined in the conversations about teaching, both face-to-face and on-line.  Every exchange teaches me something new, gives me a new tool for my toolbox, and enriches my understanding about the dynamics of pedagogy and curriculum delivery. 

In this Monday's circle someone explained how she uses group conferences (3 students at a time) to promote interaction among classmates while conveying individual recommendations, and we traded ideas about possible formats for the reflective iWebfolio letter. (These are highlights of course, discussions range & meander as they usually do involving highly verbal people.)

Given the public nature of this blog, I don't feel comfortable posting specific names, but if anyone reading would like more information about a topic I mention, or perhaps a copy of a format or assignment, feel free to leave a comment and assuming  you're at Drexel, I'll be happy to send things along to you by e-mail or dept. mailbox.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Guest Blogger: Valerie Fox

Ways of Being Present in Your Online (or Hybrid) Class--
Assumed--a discussion based class

Keep "office" hours--Letting your students know you're logged in at specific times will encourage them to send your course emails around this time.
Students will know that they can reach you in course email in almost real time. Some groups like chats--the day/night before an essay is due can be convenient. If your class doesn't seem to like chatting, you can still let them know that you're logged into the class for specific hours each week.

Send course Email messages at roughly the same time/times each week in which you make important announcements and critique the previous week's discussion posts, quiz responses, or other assignments and activities.
 Give new or repeated information in a way that will help students to classify and group that information in helpful ways; or put another way, refer to earlier activities, repeat key terms, etc. Students become conditioned to expecting these messages and report that they find them useful.
 (Tip: Keep this content in a word file--you might be able to reuse in future terms.)

Have some backup style exercises or activities ready to go (but perhaps hidden) in your discussion area. 
You might add to or use these in a Weekly Plan to respond to an unforeseen need or situation that develops. A good one for fw classes is to have students read, summarize, analyze student essays from previous quarters--

The Circle Grows

I was once again delighted to welcome someone new to circle this week, who shared questions about the iWebfolio and its place in the Grand Scheme of Things (in the FWP), enlivened our discussion of discussion boards, offered counsel about student evaluation and commiserated about the end of term rush.  

There were madeleines to nibble and the circle was so “energetic” that we provoked a colleague’s censure (politely registered) about the volume.  Oops.  

Tomorrow is the FWP meeting, and Teaching Circle leaders will introduce themselves, but I will be conspicuous for my absence; the meeting was moved last week to accommodate a Dean’s meeting, and since Dean outranks Program Director (in administrative hierarchy only!) our meeting was moved to a day when I must be elsewhere.    I’ll garner any notes that can be shared on the blog & post as I can.

Valerie B.

Guest Blogger: Anne Erickson

An interesting technique I have is to print out the picture list for each course. I cut out the students' pictures and name and glue these onto index cards. On the cards, I enter notes about the student, such as comments from each draft, writing concerns, topics, and so forth.  When I have a few minutes, I can use the cards for flashcards to review the students' names and images (handy when you only meet once a week and have a day off fairly early in the term), and I can track the progress (or lack thereof) in one convenient spot.  If I can use different colored cards for the different classes, that also helps with my retention. 

Power Outage Edition

Nothing at all to report from this week's circle because there wasn't one.  The freak snowstorm of last weekend knocked out my home's power for 3 days, so:  no electricity, no hot water, no heat for 3 days, and cable took another day to come back (so, no internet).  I was behind in home & school duties, and bailed on the circle. 

However, I did recently discover/steal a couple of great ideas for in-class work; one a series of writing prompts, the other a different way to do peer editing, and the third a group-work poetry assignment.

Intrigued, yet?  Come this week if you can (I'll have hard copies) but I'll also be sharing on Drexel's FWP listserve (now where did I put those instructions on posting?) and on the BbVista site where assignments are stowed. 

Valerie B.

Guest Blogger: Fred Siegel

Hello, folks.  I just read Valerie’s post about com pound words, and it brought to mind a magic story.  See if you think it’s relevant.

Once upon a time (two weeks ago) I did a show in the little theater behind the TrickZone magic shop on Fourth Street between Lombard and South.  It was a small audience comprised of friends and magic enthusiasts, and so I trotted out a classic—the Houdini Needle-Swallowing trick.  It’s an old effect, but a strong one, and seldom seen these days.

In the audience there was an up-and-coming young magician, who has made a name for himself in the magic world by creating and marketing original effects.  He waited politely until all the non-magicians left the room and he offered me a wonderful compliment.  He watched the needle trick with great care in an attempt to understand how I did it, but despite his “burning my hands” he was unable to figure it out.  He wasn’t asking me to tell him the secret, but he was letting me know that he was impressed and amazed.  It felt good.

I thanked him for his compliment, and then, in a kind, fraternal way, I let him know that the method I used for the needle trick was from the Tarbell course.

I don’t expect you to be familiar with the Tarbell course, but if you were a magician you would know it.  It started out as a correspondence course in the 1920’s and was subsequently expanded into an eight volume series.  It’s a foundational text.  Some of the material is outdated, but still, a magician could build a long career using nothing but the wonderful effects in the Tarbell course.  The volumes are available in every magic shop in the world.  Can you magically predict what will come next in this story?

The young magician told me that he doesn’t read magic books.  Then, he explained that he is a “visual learner.”  He learns magic from DVD’s, online videos, and personal instruction.

I couldn’t help myself.  I tensed up.  My hands twisted into Nosferatu-like claws.  I wanted to touch him.  Climb up him.  Put my hands on his face.  The owner of the shop grabbed a volume of the Tarbell course and wiggled it around the room.

Here are some discussion questions:

• Where did he get the term “visual learner”?  Did he learn it from one of us?
• When did “not reading” become a justifiable choice for a student?
• Can I be described as “outdated material”?

Com Pound Words

OK, so this is not directly related to the teaching circle, but I've been noticing a trend in student papers and I really want to know if I'm the only one.  It falls under the tab of "Kids these days don't read anymore"; they learn so much of their language and vocabulary by ear, exclusively by ear, so they spell phonetically with no reference to actual word use or spelling.  So, "would've" which is clearly a contraction of "would" and "have" when you see it written down becomes "would of"; the verb "are" and the possessive pronoun "our" are used interchangeably, etc. 

So, back to the title of this post.  I have begin noticing an increasing number of compound words being uncoupled in student writing.  First I thought it was just a strange quirk of my own brain, but with this round of paper grading I started to keep a list.  Here is a subset:

before hand
can not
finger tips
eaves dropping
some how
my self
with out
out look
play ground
on going
home sick

And yes, I know that depending on context "home sick" could be appropriately used as "I went home sick and spent the rest of the day in bed."  Believe me, the context in which it was found referred to being away from home and missing it, or "homesick."

So . . . am I the only one?  Are any of you noticing this trend, too?

My ESL Knowledge Base is Growing

This week's session was all-ESL, all the time, and it was really great.  Three of the program's ESL specialists came and I learned a lot.  I'll post all of the details soon (I want to make sure that the notes I drafted are accurate & are having them verified) but I'll leave you with this: 

ESL sections exist in 102 and 103, and students can move between standard and ESL sections as best suits their needs.  In other words, if a student in your 101 whose language skills you thought would suffice hasn't worked out as well as expected (you didn't flag the student and recommend he leave, or she chose not to follow your recommendation) you can strongly recommend that he move to an ESL section for 102. 

OK - maybe I'm the only one teaching in the program who was unaware of this, and quite possibly it was intuitive to everyone else, but this give me a great sense of relief. 

More detailed update as soon as my notes are cleared with the other participants.

Guest Blogger: Vince Williams

I find that teaching hybrid courses works different rhetorical muscles.  Without access to students' physical cues that I've always used in a classroom setting to adapt my teaching style in real time, I'm re-discovering pedagogical techniques that I took for granted. It can be frustrating but, in many ways,I think I'm learning as much from the process as I hope my students are learning from the material.

Guest Blogger: Don Riggs

Composition Sonnet

It takes a while to warm to the topic.

Start writing, see what comes out—no, scratch that,

I don’t want anyone reading that thought—

did it really come from me?—That’s more like

what I’m going for, let’s do some more of

the same:  examples, some of which I get

so caught up in they gain momentum, let

them run free through the sheets, a kind of love!

Next morning, after I get out of bed

and eat and wash and dress and hear the news,

I read the reams of paper I composed

yesterday, drop most of the text I’ve read

and find the paragraph that I will choose

to expand a bit, and then it’s closed.

Guest Blogging: Many Voices, One Program

I am pleased to announce that a number of colleagues have agreed to participate in Circles as guest bloggers; they will not post regularly, but will send posts to me and I will post them.  Keep an eye out; my goal is to post at least 2 per week. 


Building a chorus, one voice at a time . . .

Making a new friend

This week I moved my circle to Tuesday afternoon, since Wednesdays already have circles scheduled and there didn't seem to be any Tuesdays.  I wasn't filling the time grading papers on my own this time, and although I can't claim that we were fighting over seats, I can say that I was quite pleased to meet a colleague I had not met before, and we had a lively discussion that ranged over several topics. 

Of particular mutual interest were students whose native language is not English; readers may recall that questions about ESL learners and writers have cropped up before. 

We talked about using the circle as a sort of a workshop, with individuals bringing student papers for discussion, and my only hesitation with this would be the need for a core group of at least a few regular attendees for this to work.  I'm not quite sure how to make this happen, but I'm willing to keep trying.  (Even the seduction of pastries isn't working, but the budget doesn't stretch for much more.)

Any suggestions will be received with an open mind. 

What if you threw a party and no one came?

Week 3:  My suspicions that the date and time aren't the best for my Teaching Circle seem to be correct; no one came to talk teaching yesterday, although I did manage to find a few people to share my scones.  My own time was happily engaged talking briefly about a comic book version of The Wasteland with a colleague, but this was a conversation of mutual interest about reading, not teaching.

I know, having spoken with some other circle leaders, that sometimes no one comes because, well, they just don't, and that there's not much you can do about it.  But I think that I will move my circle (at least next week) to Tuesday & just come in to campus for it.  No one now has a circle scheduled for the Tuesday/Thursday crowd, so maybe this will serve to increase their accessibility and my attendance issue.

I'd appreciate some feedback in comments; is Tuesday good?  And what time frame?

A growing community

The teaching circles are coming of age (the digital age) with the blog and if all the leaders agree, we can use this forum for the quarterly reports that I ask of each leader. Although listserv and BbVista have been tried, the blog format may be the easiest for all of us to share--triumphs and failures. The idea of a community learning from one another and brainstorming ideas, however goofy, should benefit us as we go through this year, and hopefully become a repository to document the growth of the community. I encourage everyone to be honest about concerns and immodest about success. As someone who has only succeeded in posting to the blog on her 3rd attempt, I am sure we have room to grow.

Weeks 1 and 2 - Valerie B. at 10:00 a.m., Wednesday

Log:  each of my first circles was short: the first because I had to leave for a meeting at 10:30, the second because the attendees were busy and couldn't come until 10:30.  Even though I've only had 1 full hour so far, I think I'm going to really like this gig.

Two others came week one; two again week two, although the people changed a bit.  Week One the largest area of concern was ESL students: by what mechanism they were identified before the start of classes, how to use the Assessment essay to identify others in a regular 101 section, and how to effectuate or just strongly suggest transfer into an ESL section.  One of the attendees asked whether Drexel used a software program called "Compass" to evaluate students' need for ESL, and I did not have the answer to that.  Do we?  Do we use a similar one? 

Another question raised had to do with the rest of the classes in the sequence:  does ESL stop after 101?  In other words, are there ESL 102 (or 103?) sections, or do we assume that any student who has registered for a 102 (and thereby passed a 101) is considered competent in English?  

Anyone who has taught at Drexel longer than I have (I'm only here since Sept. 2010, so still a newbie) probably already knows the answers to these.  But I'm curious & shameless in questioning, so if you know and can respond in comments, please do.

Welcome FWP Writers and Teachers

In order to make the ideas and information generated in Teaching Circles available to those who cannot attend (or to those who have attended, but wish to revisit them) I created this blog.  My goal is to post an informal log of the Circle sessions that I facilitate, and I hope that other facilitators will do the same. 

I would like to create a space where the conversations begun in the more intimate circles can develop and reach the larger faculty community in the English Department at Drexel. 

Here we go . . .