Long week again and I am exhausted... and so are my students. Spring is not coming as soon as we wished it were, the students have difficult exams and assignments, and a spring break was not enough for those who wanted to have some fun to get enough rest.
First, on Monday, I returned their project 4 to the students. I had a hard time grading those papers for several reasons. First, we had spent a lot of time working on this project, revising, peer-reviewing, and discussing outlines and drafts of this project. I expected those final papers to be near perfect but was disappointed to see that a few students were still struggling so much that I felt that the time we had spent working on previous drafts had been wasted. It was frustrating to see that sometimes, the students had made the changes that I had suggested at one place in the text but had not changed that same problem elsewhere in their text. This means that they had not internalized the rules or the issue and were unable to "export" a new knowledge on their own and to the whole text. Sometimes, I repeated something several times in class and also in person when going over a draft with some students, but it seems as if they were incapable to say to themselves, "Ok, let's check and see if I made that same mistake somewhere else in the text." What can I do about that? I am not sure, but I told my students that for the next project, I would read their drafts but not write any comments on them. They are free to ask me questions, but I will let them find their own questions and try to remember what I told them for previous projects... I told them that I would not always be their teacher and that it was time they tried to use those tools and strategies I taught them and applied them to their work, not just for this class, but for everything they had and would have to write. I know that some students were a little shocked about that and sad too, and I know I am punishing the good students because of those who will not learn from this experience anyway. That's always the same thing: those who didn't really need my help but were impatient to get it and learn a lot from it are now being punished, while those who needed my help the most didn't really take advantage of it, didn't pay attention, didn't make the needed changes, don't really care if their drafts are not reviewed anyway, and will not try to do it well on their own. I know I sound a little bitter, and that's how I felt this week, and for several reasons.
This week, we mostly discussed about how to conduct interviews with the experts the students are supposed to find. We went over several drafts of questions, talked about the kinds of questions that can be asked to different kinds of experts, and practiced the questions in class and with some guests who came to help us. What frustrated me is that I would give my students a lot of time to practice, I would give them examples and tell them what works and what doesn't work, and I explained to them that our guests were people who were making us a big favor by coming and helping and that it was their only chance to really practice their questions, take notes, keep a conversation going, thank the interviewee, etc. During those "fake" interviews, however, I still saw a few students who hadn't brought their questions with them, or who weren't writing anything down, and I just couldn't understand that. After the interviews, I told my students about my observations in general (that they should practically memorize their questions, that they couldn't allow "dead" time to take place, that they had to bring enough paper and not write their questions one after another without any space in between, that they could say things like "is there anything else you could tell me...?" if they didn't know what to say and needed a minute to think, that they shouldn't discard an answer just because it wasn't what they had expected it to be, that their questions can't be too long or complicated, etc.), and no one was writing those things down and they were all looking at me or the wall with a blank expression, so I just asked, "Does this bore you? Is anyone interested in what I have to say? Because I feel like I'm talking to the walls and if you're not interested I'll just stop wasting my time!" I know this was mean. But really, I didn't feel that they are interested in this project and that they took this opportunity to learn about interview techniques, which can be an important skill to master if they ever want to apply to jobs, for examples. I also told them that they could be as creative as they wanted to be, that the information they were going to gather might not be presented best in a linear manner but maybe on a power point presentation or a website, but I don't think many students will try that. In the end, I just said, "you are free to do anything you want as long as it is organized, logical, and that it shows what new information you've learned in an efficient way." Again, I know that some students were shocked by this lack of direction.
Well, on Thursday we had 10 guests in our class (which were hard to recruit because many students of the English Dept. were in San Antonio for CCCC), and I asked my students to write a little blog entry about that experience, to see if it was useful or not, what worked and what didn't. Again, I don't think it went very well, or at least not as well as last semester, because several students had to wait in line for their turn, a few students took the whole hour to discuss with one person (and not always about their topics!), and as I said earlier, some students were just having a fun discussion but not taking that time as an opportunity to really practice interviewing someone. So... waste of time? I want to know. Next week I will teach only on Monday and Tuesday since I will be going to TESOL until Sunday, so I told the students that I wouldn't be there to help them much for their project and that they had to work hard and ask me all their questions while I was still here. I feel like I am going straight for the biggest disaster of this semester... But the grades on the last project were overall quite low, so hopefully this time things won't be worse... Sorry, I am not very optimistic this time.
To end on a positive note, I did have a few students who worked very hard on their last project and who did well. In fact, it is interesting to see that I am now asking a few students NOT to work so hard on their project because I know they spend so much time on it that they don't sleep or spend enough time on their other assignments for harder (and, let's admit the fact, more important) classes. Someone was also thinking that the given grade was too high and not deserved... Those are things that don't usually happen to teachers, and I feel very privileged to have such hard-working students. Now, I am facing a difficult dilemma about next semester. Tony has asked me to teach 106i again in the fall and I have accepted (verbally) but now Shirley is also asking me to teach a 106r section, the Lily Retention Program class for Learning Community Students, and the section I would teach is that for students who are interested in learning Spanish. I would love to do that, and it is paid better than 106i and I would have additional money for activities and food. However, it would also mean teaching American students again and I am not sure I am up to that again, even though now I see how much extra help international students need and how much energy I am putting into this class. Tony is at CCCC too so I couldn't talk to him. The other thing that I learned today is that the 106r sections are offered only in the fall. I'll have to see with Tony if he would accept to give me a semester "off" so that I could teach 106r in the fall and 106i in the winter again. I still don't know though... this is a tough decision. I'd also like to teach other things while I'm here, such as Engl. 227, the intro to linguistics class, as well as Engl. 505, the mentoring class, maybe.
