The Pissed Off Professor

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 31/28 (Change = +1)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 31/25 (Change = -1)

It seems there’s a bit of a controversy burning in Kansas City: Tom Wayne, the man who’s been running Prospero’s Books for the past ten years is sick and tired of the apathy being shown by the reading public.

When he began to realize none of the approximately 20,000 tomes in his inventory were selling, he tried to give them to local libraries and thrift stores, all of whom reported not to have room for these books.

The article points to the fact that while some of the titles in Wayne’s collection are obscure, many of the 20,000 texts are best sellers.

Now that he’s straightened out his burning permit, Mr. Wayne (Tom not Bruce) will be burning books in protest on a monthly basis.

A book club I belong to is trying to save the remaining texts and distribute them to those who are interested. They’ve started a petition to convince Tom Wayne to release the books to them.

I hate the thought of all of those charred pages, but you’ve got to love this guy’s activism.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 30/28 (Change = None)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 32/25 (Change = None)

I decided to give myself a break in class planning, so I put the 301 class aside for a few days and focused on the 100 class.

I’ve taught 100 many times including several summer sessions, so the planning isn’t nearly as great a challenge.

Well, it wasn’t supposed to be, anyway.

The wrong book has been ordered for my class—I think. There’s no real way for me to know until next week (the bookstore is closed until then), but if the online bookstore information is correct, I’m planning my class with one text, and my students will be buying a different text altogether.

Of course, the details online could be a simple error, in which case, I’m planning things as they should (and will) be.

Not knowing presents several problems:

• If the wrong book has been ordered, the book I generally use won’t even be available, and in a summer session class, I can’t afford to lose a day’s teaching because of a textbook error.
• If I plan a class using the book I ordered but that book isn’t available, all of my planning will have been wasted, and I’ll be scrambling to plan on-the-fly with a book I don’t even use.
• If the books have just been switched, I might be able to use the book I want to use; however, I’ll be dealing with students who are then faced with returning the wrong book in exchange for the right book, and that just doesn’t bode well for a clean start to the summer. (It also opens the door to excuses about getting homework done.)

I have some options, none of which are very pleasant:

• Wait until the week before classes to find out which textbook has been ordered for my class and then plan things.
• Plan for both books and go with whichever one is being sold.
• Plan for the right book, and hope not to get burned.

Obviously, plan #1 or #2 are my only real options, so I guess I’ll compromise: I’ll plan things with the book I am expecting, and in about seven days, I can find out which book I am really going to be using.

If the right book is there, great; if not, I’ll have a few days to plan the course all over again.

This is good news considering I get no compensation what-so-ever for planning a course.

Don’t you just have the warm-fuzzies? I know I do.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 30/28 (Change = +1)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 32/25 (Change = -1)

It appears my worries regarding whether or not my summer classes were going to fill are over. With more than two weeks remaining before the session begins, both of the courses I’m teaching are full, and each has a waiting list.

This means I have to get down to the business of really planning things, and it’s a job I both love and hate.

I love it because there is such a feeling of newness, and there is always an opportunity to do something different, but I hate it because I generally get that so-much-to-do-and-so-little-time-in-which-to-do-it feeling which has got to be the educational equivalent of a panic attack.

This feeling is magnified, say, tenfold when summer session is at issue—and that’s exactly the issue here.

The first few meetings are important: they set a tone for the entire semester, and finding the proper ground between maniacal bitch and oh well is always a challenge. (Given my natural lean toward maniacal bitch, I really have to work at this.)

The 100 course is roughly one-third grammar / punctuation and two-thirds writing. The challenge is easing students into the grammar and punctuation because going at it too hard too early freaks people out. The problem with this in a six-week session is there is very little time to ease into anything. Additionally, because the course requires building blocks and their application, putting off the grammar and punctuation is a delicate matter.

M.C. Escher’s image of a hand drawing a hand is exactly what I mean.

The 301 course is reading heavy, so picking the correct initial reads is crucial to getting the course off to a bang. I have read and reread the texts for the 301 class, and I’m nearing a point where I think I know which selections I want to assign first, but it’s still a roll of the dice. I know two things: I can’t start with Black Maria because it’s poetry, and like grammar and punctuation, poetry freaks most people out. I also don’t want to start with the graphic novel (i.e. comic book) because I think it might send the wrong message.

It’s got to be story that’s shorter than long, not too gory, but absolutely engrossing.

This, my friends, is the nitty gritty of teaching.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 29/28 (Change = +10)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 33/25 (Change = +3)

Summer school is an odd beast. It’s a period during which an eighteen-week semester is crammed into six-weeks’ time. That means each day in summer session is equivalent to about three-days’ of class, or each week of summer school is equivalent to about three weeks’ of school.

It is not for the faint of heart, the overly-busy, or the average student.

The same holds true for teachers: the pace is such that even the most productive and disciplined among us are frazzled most of the time.

Unfortunately, many of the students I see in summer session classes are attending to get a particular class over with. They are not generally students who are strong in their English skills, and often, they are students whose ability to transfer rests on passing my class. (Translation for that last part: if they don’t pass, I have ruined their lives and/or destroyed their scholarship opportunities.)

Intellectually, I am opposed to summer school as even the good students (and teachers) must cut certain corners and make certain concessions to make it through the class in the allotted time. (The less advanced the course, the more detrimental this fast-paced, corner-cutting becomes.)

Far too many students have been told (or presume) summer session is shorter; therefore, summer session is easier. I try to set my students straight on the very first day by asking them whether they want a whole grade or merely one-third of a grade. (It’s an excellent test of which students are strong thinkers: the strong students make the connection, but the weak students do not.)

I do break it down for those who can’t do it for themselves by assuring everyone that while shorter in time, my class isn’t shorter in terms of assignments or expectations. I emphasize that to earn a full grade, one must complete the full amount of work.

That’s what I say, but this is what many of them hear: “blah-blah-blah.”

I’ve tried to approach this truth in a number of ways—none of them very successful—because many students are merely stuck in the rut of getting their classes done so they can get on with their lives.

Fair enough: I was once there myself.

This summer, I’m going to try something new: since the majority of students hear “blah-blah-blah” when I talk about the pace of summer session, I’m going to skip that speech.

I’m going to save my breath, pretend I don’t need to insult anyone’s intelligence, and move along to other things. I’m certain it will save me a good deal of frustration in the end.

After all, these are adults I’m dealing with, and the real world doesn’t come with a syllabus: it only comes with an assignment sheet.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 24/28 (Change = +8)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 31/25 (Change = +12)

Summer session begins three weeks from today, and already I have a waiting list in my literature class. I don’t want to jinx things, but this is very good news.

In other good news, a box of books I ordered arrived today, and inside were several much-anticipated tomes. Among them was Kevin Young’s Black Maria which I read about in the latest issue of Mystery Scene.

This is a book unlike any I have ever experienced: it is a hardboiled / noir tale told through a series of poems. (Perhaps it is more accurately described as a book of poetry that tells a hardboiled / noir tale.)

It just so happens that the theme of my summer literature class is Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem, and Young’s book is going to round out my book list nicely.

I think we can have some real fun with this book: reading aloud in class, guessing what comes next, and applying what is in Young’s work to the graphic novel and the more traditional short stories I have planned for the course.

Ah, the smell of a new semester with just a hint of fresh book: what could be better?

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 19/28 (-1)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 18/25 (+2)

The end has now officially come and gone: the finals are over, my papers are done, and grades have been entered.

I began the semester with two full rosters (25 student per class) plus twenty students on each waiting list. The numbers were as follows:

ENGWR 300 (4 pm): FIRST DAY:
45 bodies showed up on the first day, and I allowed 27 in.

ENGWR 300 (4 pm): LAST DAY:
10 bodies showed up, and 9 have passed the class.

Of course, I’m starting to fine-tune the details of my summer-session classes, and as is always the case, I have a new idea about how to keep the disinterested interested.

And so it goes.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 20/28 (+1)
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 16/25 (+1)

Semesters are an odd thing: they begin with a flurry of excitement and confusion and unbelievable busywork. From there, they shift into a regular—if grueling—pace. Near the end, the flurry is renewed: only this time, it’s a flurry to the finish.

There’s no doubt both teachers and students want the end to come, but there’s also no doubt the end is an oddly bittersweet thing.

Last night, I met with one of my classes for the final time, and though there are several students I’ll see again over the summer—and several more whose lives I am happy to part from—the others’ temporary presence in my world will now leave a void in my life.

It’s not a big hole, and it’s probably not even an important hole; however, there is a dynamic that every class has that is never duplicated. It is made up of all of the good and the bad and the in-between, but it is a mixture of each student and me, and it won’t exist in the same way again.

The hardest part is the hour or two after which I finish grading the final exams. Once that’s done, the students turn into people, and I am no longer their teacher: I, too, become merely a person, and I can’t help but wonder who we all are.

Summer Session Enrollment Watch:

ENGWR 100 (College Writing): 19/28
ENGWR 301 (College Composition and Literature): 15/25

I have a routine of sorts when I go in to town to teach, and a major part of it is the latte I treat myself to on my way to the office.

This is a throwback to my endless days as a student: twice each week, I treated myself to an afternoon at a local coffee shop and a latte as a means to change studying venues.

It worked, and it still does. (I set my personal bribe bar low, and this is a good thing!) I still treat myself to time in a local coffee shop and a latte when I have a heavy grading load, or when I want to change my scenery while writing. I also buy myself a latte when I head in to teach.

Yesterday, I walked into the shop I frequent on my teaching days, and I saw the most amazing thing: covering the windows of the store was a display of second grade artwork from a local school.

The students had been studying Mark Rothko and abstract art! (I know this because the show was accompanied by an overview of the project written by the instructors responsible for it.)

In addition to the second graders’ studying issues of shape, form, and color in art, they also discussed the meaning of abstraction in art and thought.

The art works produced by the students were acrylic on acetate, and the result was a stained-glass-like display worthy of a museum.

The only thing missing was a display of the students’ abstract thoughts, but as mesmerizing as the art was, I can overlook that little imperfection.

If I have calculated things correctly, I have a shot at teaching some of those kids in 2019 or so.

They might be worth the wait.

I have been carefully monitoring my summer session enrollment numbers in hopes that I am:

A. Going to be working;
B. Going to be teaching a literature class;
C. All of the above.

The good news is that summer-session registration is still in its early stages.

The better news is that as of today, I have 13 students (of 28 needed) in my composition course and 12 students (of 25 needed) in my literature course.

The best news is that two of my strongest (current) students are signed up for my summer literature course.

Not only are they patting me on the back by taking another of my courses, but also they are going to make the class a whole lot more fun.

Yeah!

Thursday night, while doing a variety of household things, I had the news on in the background, and I stopped to listen to a story about twelve grade-school teachers who have been giving extra help to students.

Friday, try as I might, I couldn’t find the story anywhere online. Of course, I didn’t listen carefully enough to note the name of the school or the state in which this occurred. All I do know is that it involved twelve teachers, and their descriptive catch-phrase was For the Children.

Here’s the gist of the story: a group of grade school teachers began devoting the twenty-five minutes of preparation time they are compensated for at the end of each school day to their students. In lieu of using that time to prepare for the following day’s lessons, these teachers devoted that twenty-five minutes of time to assist students in math, reading, and writing.

There were grumblings at the school and grumblings at the union as this time that was being given away was viewed as potentially turning into mandatory (unpaid) service. (In other words, if teachers used their prep time to teach, they don’t really need paid prep time.)

The principal stepped in, and she asked that each of the teachers vote on whether or not to do the extra, after-school tutoring. Her position was simple: everyone’s in or everyone’s out.

Now, I am assuming this only involved the teachers in the math, reading, and writing areas as the vote was unanimously yes, and that resulted in the twelve teachers mentioned on the news.

Here’s where it gets really interesting: the students and teachers have been doing this since the beginning of the school year, and the improvements have been vast.

These teachers are being hailed as heroes, and while I guess they are, I am appalled.

They should not use their paid preparation time to tutor students: they should be using that time to do what they are being paid to do.

If twenty-five minutes of extra time is resulting in such huge advances, why isn’t the nation standing up and demanding this time be given to each and every student across the country?

Where in the HELL are the parent(s) of these children? Twenty-five minutes is making a difference between grades of failure and grades of excellence to most of these kids.

Are you telling me the parent(s) does not/do not have twenty-five minutes of time available to spend helping his/her/their own child/children? This is grade-school-level math, reading, and writing. These are not skill-sets any parent should be without.

We live in a society that requires licenses for driving and for owning handguns, but this same society requires virtually no training to become a parent.

I’m with the union: make the teachers stop. If the school day isn’t sufficient to teach what is necessary, extend the school day. If the kids need extra help, the parent(s) need to step in.

Teachers do not have children in their classrooms: they have students. Parents have children.

Any parent who can’t spend twenty-five minutes of time per day helping his/her child/children is not a fit parent.