Lounging on my Laurels

Apparently, along with tenure comes lots and lots of requests to observe other people's courses. This completely makes sense to me; the number of senior faculty members that I trusted to write observations for me---which go in the big binder from hell---were few and far between. So this is not the kind of request where I even think about saying no.

Observing other good teachers is, on the one hand, a delightful experience. It gives you something of a student's eye view to the classroom. It can show you how your own content and pedagogy connect with your colleagues. It can make you privy to a whole different side of your colleagues--even the ones you thought you knew pretty well. And, for me, it can make me realize how lazy I've become as a teacher.

There are certain things, I think, that have prevented me from getting hit in the face with the consequences of my own laziness. For the most part, students tend to not hate my classes. I suppose I'm relatively entertaining, and the classes are pretty interactive. And I'll stand by this til I die: letting students know that you actually give a crap about what they think goes a long, long way.

So, without any mutinies or absolutely horrendous classroom experiences, I haven't really been all that attuned to how totally boring I've become. But going to other people's classes sure have. One of my colleagues has convinced students to do some marvelous multi-media projects. In spite of the griping and moaning that they did while they were working, the final projects were great fun, and they were all aglow about everything that they had learned. In another colleague's class, the students had developed these terrific patterns of interaction with each other; it was just a great conversation to watch.

Visiting other classes reminded me going to class with a list of passages and depending on my conversational skilz to tie everything together is just not really enough. In general, "enough" isn't really enough. What am I doing to get excited about the text? What am I doing to get them excited about it? What should I be doing to engage those who aren't already hooked, and what am I doing to push those who are? I fear that this is the kind of habit that creeps up on you, particularly when there are no checks in place (hello, no post-tenure review!!). And I wish, in some ways, that my students were harder to please (not in the Marcia sense, but in the "we're not willing to settle for "you're not sadistic or insulting so we love you!"). But in the absence of these external motivations, I'm going to have to muster up my own.

Registration is upon us, and I'm watching my courses fill pretty quickly, but this is a reminder to myself to do better by those students. Let's see what I can do to be a more engaged, and engaging teacher.

[And a quick note to myself? The theme for the post-tenure year is clearly "self-motivation."]

One Cheek

That's right, folks, I am officially and self-consciously half-assing everything from now until April 3.

That includes, but is not limited to: class preparation; grading; committee work; the department-wide student extravaganza; negotiations about new curricula; personal hygiene; correspondence; cooking; cleaning the house; laundry; wifely duties; advisee requests, and anything else that should crop up in the next week.

Why? I'll tell you why. Because I'm not designed to teach three classes, revise two articles, and write a conference paper all in the same month. I have no doubt that there are people out there who can do it. I'm sure that it speaks to my fundamental insufficiencies. It probably makes me a bad person who's going to the ring of hell wherein the damned swim in a pool of dog snot for all eternity (at least according to my 8th grade geography teacher's take on The Inferno).

Do my students, my advisees, my colleagues, my friends and family deserve better? Damn skippy. Are they going to get it? Probably, but not in the way that they deserve.

I just thought you all should know.

If you want me, I'll be here listening to "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" on infinite repeat.

The Quality of Mercy is Strained

In large measure, I'm now operating free of the ball and chain that was my administrative appointment. I've handed over a thumb drive full of documents to the next in line---the Captain, and he's going great guns. There are, of course, a few things that still require my attention: a monumental screw-up on the part of the registrar, and, more troubling, a hold-over student who refuses to accept his fate.

The Captain and I agree, this kid is a piece of work. Cap's name for him is "the chucklehead" which is totally his name from now on. Chucklehead chose this major because of its openness (or, as he told me during his first advising meeting: "no one cares what I graduate with, and so I picked this because it requires less than anything else"). It's not true, of course, and I tried to explain that to him, but he just talked over me---one of his favorite practices.

So here's the situation: the Chucklehead had to take one of the few final major requirements in the fall semester, which involved a fair amount of independent work. He neglected to begin that work until week 8 of the semester. However, he was willing to take "full responsibility" for his own failings----in the form of an extension into the spring semester to finish it. We argued this up, down and sideways. "Not really a good idea," I told him. "You'll be in under the wire of the deadline. If anything goes wrong, you'll fail the class and have to start over. And when you do, you'll be behind again." He insisted that he could do it, and used a bunch of rhetoric about how he'd been a fighter all his life, etc., etc.

Low and behold, he has a serious accident in the final week of classes, that prevents him from finishing the class. In fact, he won't even be able to start that work for another month or so. These injuries, however, have not prevented him from calling every office on campus to find out whether I will give him an extension on his extension, rather than failing him. ["Every office" is not hyperbole. In addition to multiple registrars, other faculty members, and the Dean, he may well have discussed this with the cleaning staff.] He's told multiple versions of this story, many of which leave out the part where he didn't begin his work until mid-term, and focus on the fact that I stubbornly refuse the extension even after informed of his medical problems.

I have no objectivity in this matter. Technically, the mechanisms exist to extend the Chucklehead's class through the end of this current semester. And he does, indeed, have extenuating circumstances. What I think is my rational brain says this: I specifically and in writing asked him to consider the idea that everything had to work perfectly for his plan to work. He ignored that, which is a pattern for him. If anything defines the way that this student works, it's his ability to talk his way into exceptions and reasons why boundaries and rules should apply differently to him. [I've fielded calls from instructors about him, for example, who are afraid to give him the grade he has earned in a class because he insists to them that he's never gotten such a low grade before. These are complete fabrications, of course.] Thus, I think that by refusing the extension of the extension, I'm requiring him to live up to the decisions he made---again, in writing. This seems like an important lesson to me, and one that if he doesn't learn it here, he won't learn in college at all.

There is a nagging sense, however, that I'm being punitive when I should be merciful. If it were another student in these circumstances, would I extend the extension? Perhaps, but only if the student did not have such a persistent pattern of behavior, I like to think.

What is teaching, if not persistent self-doubt and the nagging question of what's fair when students are individuals instead of cookie-cutter versions of the same person? How happy am I to be rid of these questions on a programmatic level, rather than a classroom one?

Hot Dogs for Breakfast

Note to self: despite what your tired tired brain tells you at 11 p.m., after a loooooong day of shuttling a job candidate all over hell and gone, you actually CANNOT speed-read Frankfurt School Theory first thing in the morning. Not even if you've taught it before. Probably not even if you included parts of it in your dissertation. Coffee is not that kind of miracle drug.

Note to self part 2: If you do not write that paper VERY SOON, you may as well cancel going to the conference at the end of the month and save yourself the "I'm giving a paper naked" dreams.

Note to self part 3: Whether you go to the conference or not, scheduling an appointment to get a haircut, for the first time in 3 months, will prevent you from looking like a bedraggled hippie. It may also save you precious hair-drying and styling time in the morning. Which you can then use to finish up reading Frankfurt School Theory that you should NOT convince yourself to leave until the next morning...