Sunday night thought round-up

* The weather has changed suddenly from cool and clear to warm and muggy. According to my car's thermometer it was 76 degrees this morning. The skies were grey, though, and the day felt dreary.

* An elderly woman sitting next to me in church today told me that I should join the choir.

* I have been grading all weekend, and procrastinating by trying to think of a faster way to grade. I'm really frustrated by the couple of students who seemed to spend less time revising their papers than I did commenting on them. Justin suggested that I only comment on rough drafts if students agree to conference with me; does anyone agree? Any grading advice out there?

* My roommate is watching TV in the other room, and each time a T-Mobile commercial comes on I think my phone is ringing.

* If any toy manufacturer is reading this (and I know that you are!), you should make the following action figures ASAP:
* Elizabeth Bennet
* Colin Firth
* Clara Schumann
* The Dread Pirate Roberts
* English T.A.

a better day in class

I'm feeling much more optimistic about the class I'm teaching this week. I think the long weekend, combined with a new play, really helped us regain focus. Plus, I learned that one of the students in my class speaks "a little Norwegian"! She helped me discover today how poorly I had been pronounced "Ejlert Lovborg."

After class, a student boosted my ego by requesting a letter of recommendation. She told me that she wanted me to write the letter because, although she was shy, she had participated more in my class than in anyone else's. While I know this is 99.99% her own doing, I like to think that that extra .01% is my influence, and that I have somehow cultivated an environment in which she feels comfortable talking. If true, this would mean a lot to me, since I was definitely one of those quiet, shy students myself as an undergraduate. I always appreciated the professors who would create opportunities for me to speak, whether they proposed activities that helped me prepare my thoughts or divided us into smaller groups in which speaking was easier. The more I think about it, the more I realize that creating a classroom in which quiet students feel empowered to speak is a major component of my teaching philosophy. (This is good to tuck away; I will need to have a written statement of my pedagogical philosophy eventually!)

student/teacher e-mail

The New York Times has an article today about student e-mails to professors, and how the tone and expectations of these e-mails differ greatly from face-to-face communication. (For any sagehens reading, it included a very short mention of a Pomona professor and how she advises students to handle e-mail communications with teachers.) As a T.A., I get surprising e-mails all the time; e-mails that, like the ones in this article, expect me to explain the day's notes to students who skipped class or which use very informal language. I'm not surprised at the latter, actually--I am, after all, a T.A. and not a professor, and try to cultivate an approachable persona in the classroom--but I do sometimes find their demands and expectations to be way too high. At least I haven't been asked for advice about school supplies . . . yet.

I wonder how long it will take for e-mail etiquette to become codified in the way business letter etiquette is, and for "rules" of sending e-mail within educational or professional situations to become common knowledge. Are there already books about e-mail etiquette? Is e-mail generally too informal of a medium to really take to such rules? Do instructors need to create a list of their own expectations for communication over e-mail? I already let students know that I won't guarantee replies after 7pm, and that I won't read complete revised drafts over e-mail, but I'm wondering if more guidelines would be useful.

because some days you need cute kittens...

...here you go.
















P.S. I love cuteoverload.com. I may have mentioned this before.

teaching rant

My students were especially energetic today, which may or may not be related to the fact that I brought in brownies to share. I had planned a short groupwork assignment, which meant they were also all talking and walking around the classroom to record their answers on the whiteboard.

At one point, the phone rang in the classroom--a phone I hadn't previously realized was there. One of my students who was taking notes next to it ("D"), asked, "Can I answer it?"

Me (confused): Okay.
D (answering phone): This is English 28 speaking.
Class: SHH!

LONG pause.

D: Well, let me see if I can get you more information about that. (Holds phone in hand.) She says her podium isn't working . . . ?
Me (finally takes phone): Hello? I think you may have reached the wrong number.
Woman on phone: This isn't the help desk?
Me: No, this is a classroom.
Woman on phone: Oh! I'm sorry. (hangs up)
Me (to class): She got the wrong number.

Class collectively gets back to work. Some are still laughing.

Later, the class shared their group work answers, only to reveal that about half of them had been fundamentally confused about the fairly simple activity. They asked me to clarify it, and as I did some of them felt bad about being "wrong," while others just thought the assignment made no sense. I tried to pull it all together and discuss what we could get out of the answers (even if they were a little -- or a lot -- tangential to the original assignment), but I don't think they completely bought it.

THEN.

In the final ten minutes or so of class, a student group performed a scene from the play we've just finished discussing (She Stoops to Conquer). This group decided to "update" the play -- which is fine and can be really interesting -- but did it in a fairly haphazard way, assigning accents and mannerisms to various characters. Mrs. Hardcastle was a "country" woman, which kind of makes sense; Hastings was British and clearly urban ("because he sounds British," a student explained later); Marlow sounded inexplicably like he dropped out of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?. What really disturbed me, though--and the reason why I felt the need to rant today--is that one student, "J" (who is Chinese American) performed Tony Lumpkin, the play's primary clown, with an exaggerated, terrible Chinese accident reminiscent of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The students laughed, probably because it was so ridiculous, but I was just sort of shocked. When the scene finished, we had our usual Q&A session, and one of the students asked them to explain their accents. J basically said that he chose his accent because "look at me, it fits."

!?!?!?!??!??!??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't pull it together to say something right then in class as I should have, about the problems of laughing at racial stereotypes for the sake of racial stereotypes, about the danger of ever claiming that a stereotype "fits" a real person simply because of that person's ethnicity and skin color, about the way in which racial humor can theoretically be used to say something provocative--if really disconcerting--about a character like Tony, but that it needs to be justified by the text, and not by the person playing him.

Instead, I was silent and allowed them to move on to the next question before dismissing the class when time ran out. My students generally really seemed to like the performance (Tony's part was, after all, a very small part of it--he had fewer lines than anyone), but I can't get J's performance and explanation out of my head.

So my question is: what do I do?

Valentine's Day

These are not the valentines you are looking for.

holy global warming, Batman!

It was 88 degrees here today! The sky is a very bright blue, and the air smells a little like smoke from the fire north of here. I'm wearing shorts and have the fan on in my room; what month is it again?

some things I like, part 4

- When students bring up Jane Austen in class out of the blue.

- The fact that some of my students find 18th-century comedy amusing.

- The simple joy inherent in reading that Daniel Defoe moved from Cripplegate to Tooting in his younger years.

- Embarking on new projects. Today is day 1 of reading for my exams!

- My yoga break in 3 hours.

what football game?

There are many tables available at my favorite coffee/sandwich shop today--some even near an electrical outlet for my laptop. I love Superbowl Sunday!

caution: do not view while drinking milk

I recently discovered The Daily Mumps, a truly excellent photo blog. Check these out:

Opera Singing Toddler

Awesome

You're Next, Brainy Smurf

Slayer Piano

:)

dizzy

In the past two weeks, the following has made my brain a little dizzy:

- I seem to have become a morning person. How/why did this happen?

- A friend of mine announced she was quitting our program, found out she couldn't be reimbursed for the cost of tuition for the quarter, decided to stay in the program for a while, and changed her field of study from Medieval to Victorian literature.

- Another friend of mine broke up with his girlfriend, decided he was leaving his program and moving away in a week, signed most of the withdrawal papers, found out he would have to pay thousands of dollars to cover the remainder of his funding for the quarter, and decided he would stay.

- While meeting with a student in office hours, said student told me that I was an "elder." :?

- Justin and I saw The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler on stage last weekend. Yes, this showed what happens after she kills herself. It's difficult to describe, but the result was something like what might have happened if Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison and Jasper Fforde all decided to write something together--it was thoroughly absurd, sometimes very sad, and generally wacky. It was interesting to watch Hedda try to become something she was not (i.e., a happy character); her temporary re-writing of the ending of her play was hilarious, as were her frequent threats of what she was going to do to Ibsen when she found him. I always think it's fascinating when writers take characters from another fictions and transplant them to a new setting, or have them interact with bizarre combinations of characters (in this case, Hedda with Medea, Hedda with Mammy from Gone with the Wind, Hedda with the protagonists of The Bird Cage . . .). It was head-spinning, but well worth getting tickets for (especially student rush tickets). ;)