OK, I know now why I didn't feel that connected to my students this semester: because I didn't get involved. Last semester, so many students had so many problems that I had to get involved... but this semester, my students have been just very nice and have never complained about anything, so I really never had to talk to them a lot, about their semester, their lives, their classes, their problems and worries. And I haven't really looked at my students carefully to see what was going on. Yes, I have talked with one student in particular, and asked someone who was not doing well if something was wrong and something was indeed wrong but there was not much I could do, but that's about it. I feel bad about not being more careful, and at the same time, I realize that this class has not drained me the way the others have exactly because I didn't get that involved in my students' lives! So, what is the answer? I am not a shrink or a mother, yet I often felt like I was, especially in previous semesters. Is it selfish of me to keep my distance a little? Last year, in her end-of-year evaluation of my teaching said that I should get less involved in my students' lives, but at that time, I was teaching 50 American students and now things are very different: I am teaching only 14 students and their difficulties are much greater than those of American students! So really, I shouldn't complain! I don't know, this has always been my weak point I guess, to know how much I can do and how much I must let my students go through alone. I am feeling bad now, though, because the fact that I am an international student too should put me in a privileged position where I have the ability, and therefore the duty, to take care of my 14 dear students. Someone has been begging for help recently, and I haven't really done much for that person until today. I know I haven't solved all of that person's problems, but I also know that that person really wanted and needed to talk and our long chat today has made an important difference. How many other students are feeling like this but not daring to ask for help? At the same time, can I, should I, talk like that with everyone? Next Monday and Tuesday we'll have individual conferences, so I'll just make sure to ask how things are going and see if there are students who are not handling the end of the semester so well.
Well, this week has been going ok, at least for me, with this class. On Monday and Tuesday, I saw only half the class and worked on everyone's outline. It's difficult to know how much can come out of an outline and I didn't judge those outline well enough I guess, because they seemed fine but the first drafts, due on Wednesday, were just not so good. I have spend much time working on peer reviewing (and outside, because it's been so nice), and I wonder if I simply haven't been harsh and demanding enough, because those first drafts were far from what I got last semester and even farther from what I got last year. The information was not research in depth, the references were mostly inexistent and so was the reference list, the organization was ok but so little was written that there was not much to say, and overall, it was just kind of empty. It lacked enthusiasm and depth, as if the students didn't care about their papers anymore and had just copied and pasted parts from their previous projects. So, I told them that. I know it is very hard to find more energy to keep doing research and making efforts to write a good final project, but this project is worth 20% of the total grade! It is usually at the end that the students need the few extra points to get the grade they want and it is usually at this point too that they give up because they are so tired. Yet another thing to make sure they understand, next week, during the conferences. I put four final papers from previous students online for my students to read, three from American students and one from an International student. Those papers were among the best papers, and I hope they will be good examples of what my students need to do now, but I also feel bad because I wonder if I haven't simply been strict and demanding enough. I see that we haven't worked a lot on APA, I haven't taught anything about writing abstracts, I am asking for fewer and fewer pages and references, and in the end, we might have had fun this semester but have I really taught everything that I should have taught? The one thing I did better this semester than ever before was to work with outlines and, for this last project, to work with specific patterns of organization (writing a proposal, making an evaluation, and the classical argument form). This is something that I will do next semester with my 106r students, and in fact, I will have them write a paper for each one of these patterns.
Talking about 106r, it is now official that I will teach it in the fall. I have managed to teach three times a week in a computer lab instead of once in a lab and twice in a regular classroom, and I am not sure that it is a good thing, except that I don't have to build my lesson plans around computer lab time, plus we will have a projector (because it's a regular ITaP lab), which I missed a lot this year. It will allow me to put more things online and to project them directly from the instructor's computer for everyone to see, and we will be able to have student presentations too. Other than that, I visited the lab in which we will be and it has no room in the front of the class for everyone to gather in a circle, so it will be difficult to get used to teaching people who will be hiding behind computers. I might also be teaching 106i this summer, but the section is not full yet so it might still be cancelled. I don't mind either way, since I need the money but also need the vacation. It would be nice, however, to teach international students again, and the schedule is also very convenient (June 14 to August 3, which is when my prelim exams start). I have already been working on a website for this class (the link might not work if I end up not teaching the class) and I am somewhat happy with the image I used for that website.
On Thursday night, I showed The Pianist to my students. I didn't expect many students to come to the movie night but there were in fact eight students, three of whom were not even my students but another 106i teacher's students. I have been sending emails every week to all the 106i teachers (and many others too) to tell them about the movies and to tell them to send their students, and obviously, no one had done it until last week! This makes me sad, because the students were obviously interested in coming and it would have been nice to meet new people from other classes and to have a larger audience. I believe that the movies I have chosen were usually good and interesting, and if I do these movie nights next fall I will definitely insist that other teachers tell their students about them. This week, the students really liked that movie, and next week, we will watch Gattaca, which is somehow cheesy but raises interesting issues, and maybe have a little party. During the movie, I was looking at my students and realized that I was the only woman in a room with eight men. Last semester I had 13 men and one woman... this semester I have 10 men and 3 women... my men... and I heard that in 106r sections like the one I will teach there are mostly women. This will be a big change. I have never felt very comfortable with American women; we don't have much in common, especially with people of that age. I remember my fist French 201 class that I taught at BYU, where I had 25 women!
Anyway, that's about it for this week. We worked on outlines, and first and second drafts, and I hope that the third drafts will be better. I will try to give more help so that the level of those papers gets where it should be and also to check on the mental health of all my students just to make sure they are all surviving! I hope that we can all end this semester just as well and happily as it has been so far!
The end of the semester is near and I am both sad and happy. Sad because I feel very comfortable with this class and will miss those students a lot. It is not the first time I enjoy a class that much, and strangely enough, I don't feel connected with some of the students this semester the way I felt with the first class I taught at the ELC, for example, or most of last semester's students. This class has not been incredible, marvelous, wonderful, but is has been really good. I have never had any serious problems, which is something unusual, and what's nice is that the semester has been good from the start and we never really had serious ups and downs. I also didn't feel insecure in front of these students the way I did with my first Purdue class and also my first ELC class. And we didn't have a difficult beginning, nor are a few students complete strangers to the class, the way it happened last semester. So, for all these reasons, I can say that this semester has been a new experience and a good one too. It's just been good, constantly, and I've always felt comfortable in front of these students, rarely annoyed and never seriously, and all students together form a pretty tight group, we have some fun, we work hard, things are going well, and I am happy. This class has never been a burden or something that I have had to "deal with" outside of my work life, in my student or personal lives.
This week has gone fast, like all the others. We studied the different kinds of persuasive writing that the students could choose for their final paper. I have decided to keep it as a paper, since they will often have to use this format in the future and I know now that they can be creative if they have to. It is also the format that will allow them to use all the information they gathered throughout the semester the best. So basically, they will have three options: the classical argument, the evaluation paper, or the proposal. I gave them these three options because not all their topics would have worked well with the classical argument since some students were trying to discover information, others to compare different situations, and others still to find solutions. Someone who wants to know if the government in Venezuela is really a democracy or not will want to make an evaluation of the situation there and compare it with other counties. Someone who has shown that discrimination exists in Indonesia will want to find some solutions to the problem. In the end, I'd say that about 50% of the students have chosen the classical argument and the other 50% has chosen another way of writing this last project. So this week, this is all we did: learn about those different persuasive kinds of writings and decide which kind was the best for everyone. I had my students try to write outlines for every kind of writing with their topic, and to formulate different kinds of claims or hypotheses, to see which one would fit their topic and the kind of information they had gathered the best. It was not an easy process but at the end of the week, everyone seemed to be ok. I asked the students to choose one way and to stick to it, to read the chapters and the examples closely, to follow the guidelines given by the textbook and to use the grading criteria that are (and thankfully!) given as peer review questions but that I will use as grading criteria, so the students know exactly what to expect.
On Thursday and Friday, I had half the class bring a first outline of their paper and the other half work alone, outside (nice weather!), to try to understand those three types of persuasive writings. I had told them to work in pairs and to help one another come up with different outlines, and it turned out that the group that went out on Thursday worked all together as a group and not in individual pairs. I pretended to be mad and said "thanks for listening to my directions" but really, I realized that they worked very hard and were able to understand the concepts quite well. I am proud of them. I see that even though I wasn't there to supervise what they were doing they still worked responsibly and learned what they were supposed to learn. This makes me want to give more freedom to my future students and allow them to prove me that they are studying not only because I ask them to but also because they want to and trust me to know what's best for them. It is funny how I went from being a total dictator (102, for example, was a complete dictatorship!) to realizing that my students trusted me and were ready to do anything for me (last semester) to learning that they not only trusted me and were ready to do anything for me but also really wanted to learn and were ready to go beyond what I asked them to do. This is amazing and I feel very privileged to go through this learning process. I don't know if this is because of the fact that my students are international or just because I am changing too, but I hope that my 106r class can go that well.
Last week we had class only two days because I had to go to Long Beach for the TESOL conference. All we did for those two days was to discuss project 5, the interview report, and which I had to let my students do by themselves, basically, since I was not going to be there to help them along the way. The last month felt a little weird since I was gone to Utah, then we had spring break, then an intensive week, and then I was gone again. We have lost all balance and consistency, everything regular, our normal rhythm, our momentum. I feel like an irresponsible teacher and at the same time, I don't think much of that could have been avoided. The good side of it, however, is that I was forced to abandon my students for a while and to think that they could do it without my constant help. Earlier during the semester, I sometimes thought that I was helping my students too much, that I was telling them everything they had to do, that I didn't give them any freedom, and that once the semester was over, they wouldn't be able to do anything by themselves. These last couple of weeks proved me otherwise, and I am very happy about that, and proud of my students too.
So I told my students that this time, I would give them grading criteria and a general description of what the project was supposed to be like, but they had to work the details of what they wanted to put in the project and how they wanted to do it by themselves. I also decided to take the major risk to allow them to use any format for their project (regular paper, PowerPoint presentation, website, etc.) because I told them that not all kinds of information were presented well in a linear way and that sometimes, other types of presentations would fit the information better. It was a little coward of me to leave and let them figure it all by themselves, but I must admit that they did a great job. Before I left, I showed everyone the basics of making websites (how to access their www folder on the Purdue server, how to create a simple page with a few links and pictures, how to upload it all, etc.), but didn't discuss PowerPoint at all, since it is much easier to figure it out alone. Then I left. When I came back and saw what my students had done while I was gone, on Monday, I was quite happily surprised. Of course, a few students had done nothing yet, and someone hadn't even interviewed anyone, but the class as a whole had done a great job! Several people had done a combination of paper and PowerPoint, three students had done a website, and only a couple of students had decided to go with the classic paper only. I loved the variety of formats and designs that I saw, and even if some of these projects were quite simply presented, still, I loved and really appreciated the creativity and the effort! So my students are able to do something good without my help after all! And so on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, all my students did was look at one another's projects, make some comments, show to each other how they had done certain cool things, share ideas, and I didn't have to do much really. I did give a few directions to a few students about how much information could be written on a PowerPoint slide or how to make a useful menu on a webpage, but that's about it. It felt very relaxing and easy, and it made me realize that I could indeed trust my students to use what I have taught them and also find their own resources if necessary. Maybe I used to focus on the input (outlines, drafts, conferences, the process, etc.) and I needed to have this kind of "control" over what my students were doing, and this time I trusted my students a little more and focused essentially on the output (results). Because of this, the grading process was also different, since I hadn't seen the "work in progress" but only the end product and couldn't be influenced by thoughts such as "he never turned in his outline" or "her first draft was really poor!" Is that good? Is that unfair to those who worked hard through the process compared to those who waited until the last minute to put something together? Does "time" mean "quality"? I don't know. Who am I to say that writing outlines and drafts means that the final product will be good? Maybe I needed to have this kind of control over my students' work earlier in the semester but now I must lead the students toward independence from me. Maybe in the end, hard work did pay off... hopefully... and maybe in the real world no one cares about the process but only about the result. I am not sure about all that, but overall it was a very interesting experience, and I will definitely do something like that every semester!
On Thursday, I first asked my students for some feedback on that fifth project. They seem to have liked the freedom of format I allowed, even if it was a little scary at first for some, and the feedback was quite positive. I also did something else: I asked them to give themselves a grade! The self-evaluation and self-grading is something that I had to do a few times as an undergraduate and several times as a graduate students, and although I didn't particularly like it, it allowed me to reflect on the amount and quality of work I had done and to honestly assess my work compared to what the other students had done. I think it was hard for my students to do this, for the first time, but they actually did it quite well considering that I didn't really give them any specific directions or asked specific questions, and their self-given grades were often pretty accurate. On Thursday, I also introduced the next and final project: the big research paper. I am actually tempted to let my students choose again any type of format for that project, because I know that they like it and feel more comfortable with a PowerPoint presentation than with a regular paper. I also enjoyed grading these creative projects a lot more than the regular papers! At the same time, I think that they still need to know how to write a basic research paper... but I am not sure... I need to think about that really quickly and maybe ask a few other teachers for their opinions.
This past week, I also finally decided what I was going to teach next fall: the Retention section of 106, 106R, for students who are learning Spanish. I am not excited to teach American students again, nor to have 20 students instead of 15, but I am hoping that the fact they are all learning a foreign language will help them be a little more open to cultures and new ideas, plus I will be paid a little more and will receive money for all kinds of activities that we will be able to do outside of the classroom (and that I had to pay for myself until now). I am a little scared about the fact that I will have to work with someone else, since I have heard a few scary stories, but I need the experience and I just can't teach 106i for the rest of my Purdue career, even though that's what I'd love to do. I am already thinking about some activities we will do together with my students (I'll continue the movie night for sure!) and am also working on a webpage for this class... and a webpage for next spring too, because 106R exists only during fall semesters and Tony said I could teach 106i again in the spring, hopefully! I felt bad to abandon Tony like that after I had said I would teach 106i in the fall, but the opportunity to teach 106R came up and I could not really refuse it. In addition to the 20 students, it will be very difficult to work around the questionable schedule that all regular 106 sections have to work with: two days in a regular classroom, one day in a computer lab, and two days for conferences, with absolutely no flexibility! After much talking with Shirley and Judy, I managed to get three days in a computer lab, which I am not sure will be better because teaching in a computer lab might be a pain, depending on the way tables and chairs and computers are arranged, but at least I will have some flexibility within those three days. I will also ask my students if they agree to have their conference time on either day so that we can have a little more flexibility there too... but after the very nice setting of 106i, with the same classroom for every day and computers that we can use whenever we want and the students available five days a week, it will be very difficult for me to adapt to the more regular requirements! If it is only for one semester, though, I think I can manage.
The end of the semester is coming fast... just a couple more weeks of class...
