1. Oh, you guys, it's a glorious day. The sun is shining brightly and I don't have to teach today!
2. Teaching 4 days a week is going to be an adjustment.
3. This semester I have two classes, one grad and one upper-level undergrad. Their content is pretty similar, which means that lecture prep overlaps -- more detail for the grads, more explanation for the undergrads. But still-- I had forgotten how long it takes to prep a lecture. I think it was like forgetting about childbirth pain. You think to yourself, "It can't really be that bad, can it?" And then -- surprise! -- it is.
4. Luckily I have left behind much of the angst that attended lecture prep in the early weeks of last semester. I knew that it would take me a lot of hours to pull together six anatomy/physiology classes, but I also knew that I could handle it. And I know too that the prep load will lighten a bit when we get into the clinical portion of the course.
5. I'd been feeling more confident until Wednesday afternoon, when the chair sent out an email saying that course evals were ready to review. Reading them was something I'd been dreading, so I decided I'd just bite the bullet and look at them right away. There was a lot of grumbling about my standards for writing assignments -- a whole lot.
6. I have been thinking a lot about this. (Read: waking up in the middle of the night with student comments on the brain.) On the one hand, I don't want to be the Usage Nazi, nitpicking meaningless distinctions. On the other, they're heading into a profession that requires more writing than the average job, and I want them to be prepared for that. If I give them four weeks to write a short paper, and post my grading rubric in advance, and steer them to the writing center if they're uncertain and review first drafts on request and STILL they turn in papers with mistakes on every page -- then, yeah, I'm going to dock their grades. I will not apologize for expecting grad students to use semicolons correctly.
Doesn't mean it didn't smart, reading those comments.
7. I'm going to have a chat with my chair this morning about the whole thing, to get her take on whether it's typical grumbling from students who aren't used to getting Bs, or whether there's a kernel of truth I should take to heart. Here's hoping I can let it go afterward.
More quick takes at Jen's.
Fight for correct usage! Long ago I worked in a school district in which memos from the superintendent's office regularly had spelling, punctuation, and typing errors. (Think "hte".) I don't believe it's any wonder that the students' standardized test scores were always low....
Posted by: Salome Ellen | January 27, 2012 at 11:05 AM
Stay strong on holding up high standards on your writing assignments. As a professional with 30 years in a technical field, I can tell you that the people who succeed are the ones who can communicate effectively in writing and in speaking. Your students deserve to be prepared to enter their working lives with skills that will get them where they want to go.
Posted by: Karen | January 27, 2012 at 11:53 AM
This is unrelated to your current post, but I want to tell you that I thought of your daughter and her "dinder" and "doughduts" yesterday when I heard my 3 year old utter the word "domidoes" (dominoes)!
Posted by: Sarah | January 27, 2012 at 01:54 PM
So ask your students if they think there is a difference between an A and a B on a paper. Tell them that you think there is, too...and that in your class, that difference can come from great content with POOR USAGE.
This is their chance to learn how to succeed. I like to think that someday you're going to get a letter from a student who will thank you for having such high standards.
But I also have to say that I don't think the student barbs should sting as much; they come not from the students who worked to have A's, but from the students who settled for B's. It's really not your fault they made that decision.
Posted by: Celeste | January 27, 2012 at 02:25 PM
That reminds of one of the comments my husband got as a teaching assistant during his Masters. A student actually wrote, "You should mark what I mean not what I say." Keep your standards high. When I was student I appreciated teachers like you because most profs would see that I could structure a paper and a sentence better than most students and would hardly give me feedback on where I could improve. When a teacher actually did take the time to really dig in I respected them more. You're doing them a favour if they choose to accept it.
Posted by: Pippi | January 28, 2012 at 11:14 PM
Keep your standards high. My advisor used to scare the pants off of her students on the first day of class when she gave people her expectations. Her expectations forced me to work really hard on papers for her and I ended up doing better in grad school as a result.
Posted by: jen | January 30, 2012 at 02:19 AM
I provided a guide to how I graded, including the key information that a paper with no thesis statement got an F. We used to workshop papers and discuss what grade other students thought papers deserved, and some classes just got it better than others.
"I'd give it a B. I mean, it didn't have a thesis, but other than that, it was good."
Posted by: Slim | January 30, 2012 at 01:44 PM
Piling onto Sarah's unrelated comment: My 3yo says "try-kih-sol" for tricycle :) He started with "try-kih-kohl" but clearly could tell there should be a "sss" in there somewhere, and then decided on the proper place... and so far, there it has stayed :)
Posted by: mandamum | January 31, 2012 at 11:18 AM