Wow, things are becoming a bit crazy, and I feel that I am losing control of the situation, and at the same time I am learning so much about my students, myself, and how to teach this class! This week, we had class two days only, and then individual conferences. On Monday, we used the computers to do several things: learn how to find ones' conference day and time, verify email addresses in the class list, see what kind of form the students must download and fill out before and after their conference time, and how to format a paper: title page, header, spelling and grammar, titles, double-spacing, margin, page breaks, word count, page number, etc. I had uploaded some examples of "good formatting" on my website and had asked the students to bring an electronic copy of their first project so that they could copy the format and make their first project look perfect. I was surprised that we spent the whole hour working on that and the following day, when I asked the students to bring a hard copy of the first draft of their first project for peer-reviewing, I still saw formatting mistakes here and there! I talked with every student, verified what they were doing, helped them, repeated the same things over and over, gave them several examples, wrote the directions on my website... but some can still do it wrong! I felt that they just took advantage of me, of my patience. I remember last semester, when I made my American students so responsible! I was very harsh with them, expected a LOT from them and it was tough on them but they learned. This semester, I felt maybe too close to these international students. I felt bad for them because I know many are experiencing difficulties, homesickness, and other hardships similar to what I experienced when I first arrived at BYU 8 years ago. So I have been nothing but nice with these guys, and maybe I have been wrong, maybe I have been too nice and am not helping them by forgiving too much.
I was discouraged on Monday but at least, many students learned something... but Tuesday was a disaster! I need to remember that what was difficult with American students is almost impossible with international students. Peer reviewing has always been hard for me to conduct in a very productive and efficient way, and trying it for the first time on Tuesday the way I did it was just plain wrong. Other 106i teachers have done extensive training before trying the actual peer reviewing exercise with their students, and I should have done so too. It is strange that I feel almost unqualified to do it with them, I feel that I wouldn't know what to do if I had to do it myself, so I am afraid to show them what to do with examples on a transparency with the overhead projector. First, half of the class hadn't brought their textbook (where they had the review questions!) and someone even told me "you didn't tell us to bring it on the assignment page!" As if I also had to remind them to bring pens and paper! That made me mad, and I had to go to my office to get my own book to lend it and ask one student who didn't live very far to run to his place and get his book so we would at least have one book for two students. Then I had asked my students to bring three copies of their draft, and I first wanted them to get into groups of three, distribute their copies, and one after another, read and discuss their draft within their group. It did work with my American students, but only after much training and patience. Brita had the good idea to keep their draft as electronic copies, to open them on the computers, and to have the students move around the classroom from one computer to the next and to make comments with the "add comments" function of Word on each other's draft. That's somewhat nice, but doesn't foster discussion and communication the way reading aloud and discussing in a group would do. Maybe I'll try that next time, just to try something new.
Wed/Thur/Friday, we had individual conferences, and Wednesday was hard, since the first students were already late and pushed everyone even later... Because we were short on time, I also didn't feel that the discussions were very productive and useful for the students. Thursday was a little better because I knew what to expect, and Friday went well... except for one students who came 30 minutes late... I had them fill out a form when they write what questions they have, what they want me to help them with, and what problem they might have with their draft, and that helped a lot. Again, if I compare with my American students from last semester, this move was a good one because the students already come to their conference with questions and concerns and we don't spend 2-3 minutes asking, "so how are things going? what can I help you with?" I had tried that a bit last semester but only had the students write down questions on their drafts before the interview. Now they have a full form to fill out and also to give me feedback AFTER their conference so I can know if they find them useful or not... and they seem to do. I only took class time for these conferences, though, and gave 10 minutes to every students, which proved to be a bit short, so next time I'll take some time from my office hours and have them come for a longer period of time, with more specific questions (some students only wrote "I need help writing a better paper" or "I need to improve my writing style," which of course we couldn't do in 10 minutes!).
That's about it for now. Most students are doing well, some are doing very well, and a couple are not doing so well, but that is normal I guess. Gigi spent some time on Wednesday afternoon telling me about what she was doing with her students and how to introduce the second project. She also sent me some good ideas and examples of second projects by email, which was very nice and helped me get a better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing! I'll work on making myself feel more confident and my students more independent, and hopefully, things will get better and better.
