So, this is the end of yet another semester. One of these days I will have to change jobs because it is just too hard to let these students go and think that I will never see them enter my classroom and look at me like I know what I'm doing. I have to say that I am probably the luckiest teacher on earth and that I am now having the best time of my life teaching those 106i classes! I don't know of anyone else who told me that they had such wonderful students and loved to teach as much as I do.
This last week has been quiet and easy, for me, at least, since my students were starting to panic about their last paper and the coming finals in their other classes. I tried to give them as much help and time and encouragements as I could and not to make this final paper a nightmare for them. On Monday and Tuesday, I talked to each student individually about his or her paper and tried to give some useful feedback. I have been wondering whether those conferences are useful, though. I spend about 20 minutes to each student and that's enough to go over a draft and make a few comments and answer a few questions, but at the same time, I feel like I am repeating the same things over and over, and in the end, I am mostly giving encouragements for 15 minutes. This time, fortunately, enough papers were still not good enough that I felt that I was not wasting everyone's time and the final draft did show major improvements. I guess individual help is what matters the most, because I could say certain things five times in class, some students will still not have understood what I meant or what they had to do. I got upset with one student in particular, who, the day before the final paper was due, instant messaged me to ask me about a very easy APA question. I told him that we had discussed that about ten times in class, that I had written examples of that on the board, that other students had asked the same questions, and that he had to have the APA manual and was supposed to have learned how to use it. To that student's "Yes but I am so confused sometimes!" answer, I replied that it was no longer the time to ask for help and that he should have asked me or one of his classmates earlier if he was confused about something. Ensued a long conversation about the importance of asking for help at the time when you need it and not to wait until the last minute or let problems and questions accumulate. This is a student that I have tried to help very carefully since the beginning of the semester and who has rarely paid attention in class or during conferences, who has accepted my extra help but probably never realized that it was
extra, and waits until the end of the semester to tell me that he has not learned much in my class because he was
sometimes confused. I think that student learned a little, still, but that situation always starts my inner conflict of how can I reach EVERYONE and not let them figure things out by themselves and give them all the support their need so that I don't "forget" a few students here and there, vs. I am only their teacher and not their mother, it is their responsibility to listen to the instructions in class, do their homework, and ask if they need help.
On Wednesday, we had a last peer review session. I had told the students to bring an "almost final" draft and they did. They exchanged papers and were instructed to look for difference in organization, format, grammar, and ideas between their own paper and the ones they were reading and to discuss these differences and verify who was right or wrong. Again, this is a time when that student I was writing about above should have seen that references looked different on other people's papers and could have asked for classmates' opinions on how to do things, but didn't. The other students did, however, and consequently avoided several small mistakes that would have cost them much. Of all the peer review sessions, that one worked the best, I think. While they were doing that, I was very quickly reading one of their copies and making a few last comments here and there. The final drafts were initially due on Wednesday, but I gave them an extra day and they needed it!
On Thursday, everyone turned in his or her paper. They gave me only their final draft and nothing else, because I wanted to grade everything quickly and didn't want to look at previous drafts and the sources they used, or anything else, since I had already worked a lot on their previous drafts. I also told the students that I would simply give them a final grade on the paper and no feedback, unlike what I did on the previous papers, but that if they wanted some feedback from me, they were welcome to come to my office and grade their paper together with me after class. This had worked very well with my students from previous semester but I had asked them to make an appointment with me. This semester, however, I simply told them that they were free to drop by at any time in my office that afternoon between 3:30 and 5:30. The result was that nine students came (out of fourteen!) and some waiting up to an hour or maybe even more for their turn! This just shows me how sincerely interested in their learning those students were and I feel very honored by their attention and dedication. So I spent the whole afternoon grading papers together with students and loved it, although I had almost lost my voice by the end of the afternoon, which was just when we were supposed to have the last movie night!
But anyway, going back to that Thursday class. After everyone had turned in his or her paper, we had a long discussion about the semester. I had brought little chocolates wrapped in papers of different colors and had everyone take one. Then I said that the students with the silver paper had to start making comments, because I didn't want the class to remain silent or the usual speakers to be the ones to talk, for once but everyone to have a chance to participate in the discussion. At first, the designated students just made a few kind comments, but after a while, the discussion was rolling and we talked about several interesting things. I especially wanted to know what they had liked or not, and what they would think I should change next time I teach that class. Here are some of the comments that were made (one student or several who also agreed):
- They learned about writing but also about the English language;
- they would have liked to learn more about the research techniques, especially when they had to do the interview (which is something I have indeed done better in the past and will do better in the future);
- they would have liked to spend more time learning about persuasive writing;
- they needed more help with APA throughout the whole semester and not just toward the end;
- they liked to be able to say that they were writing a "research paper;"
- they didn't want me to grade some of their drafts (and indeed, I only did that twice, to motivate the students who were doing a very poor job, but quickly noticed that it didn't change a thing, the good students kept doing well and the less good students kept doing poorly);
- they liked the movie nights but wanted more "educational" movies (that surprised me, because I thought the movies I had chosen were too educational!) and also more flexible times (which is not really practical since I have to reserve the room once and for all on a certain day and time every week at the beginning of the semester);
- they liked to learn about one another cultures;
- they thought that writing about one topic only was fine and not too boring because they could see how they became better experts in one area;
- they would have liked a little more grammar in class.
Overall, they all seemed quite happy with the way the semester has gone, and I must say again that things went so well for me that I don't have one complaint to make! On Friday, after I returned the papers of those who hadn't come to my office, I shortly talked to my students about a few things, but I wasn't too happy with the way it went, because we were interrupted by the teacher who was going to give the teacher evaluations to my class. I was still able to say to my students that they should keep writing and reading, that they needed to ask for help whenever they needed help and that their teachers were usually happy to help, that I would always be available for them, that they should keep in touch, and that they should work twice as hard as American students and then go back to their countries which needed them. I wanted to tell them how much I had enjoyed teaching them... but didn't get a chance to do that. I then left class, and came back later, after the evaluations were done, to take many pictures of the students who had not already left. I will put all the pictures online for all to see. As for grades, I am quite happy, it looks exactly like last semester, about half-half, and I noticed that 6 out of fourteen students had never missed a single day of class or had never been late more than twice, so I gave those students a few points of extra credit.
The only negative points of that end of semester is that I realize I could have spent a little more time and energy being "a mom" to some students who were struggling with their final exams, not sleeping and eating enough, and panicking. I have talked to a few students, and that has been good, but I wish I had had the time and energy to do more. Three students said that they were happy I had been there for them because it was the time they needed their mom the most, to tell them to sleep, eat, breathe, study, take breaks, etc. I used to do that a lot more with everyone when I was teaching the TOEFL class, and I'll try to do this a little better in the future. Something else that happened and really messed up my perfect end of semester is that the one student who had appeared in the middle of the semester and then had disappeared after a week wrote me an email saying that he would be in my summer 106i class to "complete the incomplete." I was ready to give him an F since he had attended class 10 days only and I had never heard from him since, so several not so nice conversations took place and I still don't know what is going to happen, but one thing is sure: I will not take him in my summer section! Tony, as usual, backed up my decision, and said that it would be impossible for me to give a student an Incomplete and say, in the "requirements to complete the class and get a full grade," that he needed to "retake the whole class" without the Dean of Students' permission. Given the fact that I must turn in my grades on Monday, I wonder if that will be possible. That student is scaring me and has disappointed me and angered me so much that I really hope he finally disappears from my life. Other than that, I am already working on the pages for our class website for this summer, since it is now official that I will teach (12 students registered so far), and at the same time, I already have meetings next week for next fall's 106r class, so it's a lot of planning! I still need to think about what I want to change or add from this semester's syllabus, but one thing seems to be sure already: I will keep the feedback blog but will add the "comment" function so that I can ask specific questions to my students even when I don't have access to the blog, for student privacy reasons. As for the schedule, it will change a lot too, since we'll only have seven weeks instead of 15 and two hours of class every day! Wow, I am already excited about this next class!
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.
