It seems like if I try to tackle one problem at a time, things work out better for me. This week has definitely been nicer, easier, and more efficient than the previous one. I have decided to take things slowly and not to worry if I was not able to do everything that I had planned to do. After all, we have enough time to do it all, since normally, we have more days in class to do the same things we did in 102. So, no panic. I have been sick and feeling rather bad these last few days, but when I am in front of my students, I forget it all and just enjoy the moment. My students contribute to making our class such a rich environment! I am always amazed at what they went through, their experiences here and in their countries, and the different ways we can see things.
This week, we have been working on choosing a topic for the next projects. It is very difficult for my students to understand that you can choose one topic and write four different papers on the same topic but from different perspectives and with different rhetorical aims in mind. I have asked them to read an example of such work, a paper written about an earthquake in Turkey, which discusses things from a personal perspective, then from a larger perspective (friends, family, country) and finally from the perspective of the government agencies that came to the rescue of the victims. I thought the students would then understand what I am asking them to do, but it seems that some still do not know what to choose, what to decide, and how to phrase their "research question." The topic they choose also needs to be something that relates to them personally, which is yet another requirement they do not understand well. They say, "It's about my country, that's how I relate to the topic" but do not understand that it must be something that has directly influenced them or someone close to them. Today and yesterday, we had conferences in small groups. I tried to trust that my students could help each other find good topics, and it worked, to some extent. I had to ask the same questions repeatedly: "So what is your specific question here? How does it relate to you personally?" and some were farther than others. I am sad to see that the students who struggle the most are also those who work the less and those with whom I am the least efficient since they are not ready and I cannot spend extra time with them. They will consequently not choose a very good topic, which in turn will not help them write good papers... this is discouraging. I should spend extra time and make sure that everyone's on the same page... I really should... and if things do not get better next week with those students, I will take some time to discuss with them outside of class time. Two students did not show up to their conference time and I do not know what to do about it either.
Another thing that we have started this week is for my students to give me feedback about our class. They can do this any time they want on a new blog, and it is an anonymous blog, which will not influence their grades or anything. I am very interested in learning what goes well and what does not in this class, and find it difficult to try and decipher international students expressions and comments. American students will let you know if something does not work the way they want, but international students are too shy maybe, or scared, to say things out loud. I hope that this new blog will allow them to 1. express what they think about this class, 2. reflect on what they are doing in this class, and 3. let me know what they think about my nonnativeness... which is also the goal of this study!
What else? On Tuesday, I started working with them in with the library database and more particularly with the CORE tutorials. My students from last semester hated those tutorials and the quizzes that go with them, and I have the feeling that my new students feel quite the same! It is true that the quizzes are not always intelligent and useful, but it shows me at least that they have read the tutorials, which are useful. Right now, they had to do the tutorials about choosing topics and narrowing topics and stuff like that. We will start the real "research" process after mid-term since right now, they do not yet need to do library research. This will be yet another struggle... Well, the CORE stuff went OK, although it did take some time for a few students to get used to it and know how to take them. One student miserably failed the first quiz and complained that "there's a right answer in all the choices given in the quiz" and I told him that yes, that's how things work here, quizzes try to trick you by putting parts of the truth in all the possible answers, but that the goal was to find the one answer that had the whole truth and no wrong parts in it. Since them, he did much better on the other quizzes... except that he told me this morning that he had found a way to cheat... which does not surprise me in a way because I'm sure he's not the only one, but at the same time it is very disappointing! What can I do? Do I just let it go? Do I just not care? I told him that it was really not the kind of stuff you want to tell your teacher... and I remember the last year, when I had a student who cheated on some extra credit (she told me she had read Gandhi's autobiography but really hadn't), and another one who had basically copied her final paper out of a magazine... Both instances were such a struggle to deal with that I am not sure I am really to fight with that one student.
This is it for this week. Really, compared with last week, this week has gone well. I do not know what the students have learned, but at least I make them think. Goal for next week: to get them really ready with their topics so we can start working with great enthusiasm on those project and not get discouraged after a few days because of a bad topic.
