Category Archives: teaching

Friday roundup

Posted on by
Reply

Oh, my. So much to say…so little time.

  • I had a really excellent time at my reunion. If you haven’t seen them yet, the photos are here. I had some wine, danced, and talked to lots of people I haven’t talked to in a very long time. It was great to see Anita (looking very tall and glamorous, as usual), as I only get to see her once every 4-5 years. I wish the turnout had been better, as there are lots of people I would have liked to see but didn’t. Ah well. The food was decent, and the DJ was…well…what you’d expect. There was much hair metal.
  • I also attended a family reunion during the day, and then Rand and I headed back to Buffalo on Sunday. And then I desperately needed a nap…therefore, I did not get to start reading Harry Potter until Sunday evening! It was painful, but I survived. I still owe a proper review (which I will be posting at Required Reading), but for now, here’s a post I wrote on point of view at Daily Writing Tips (it references Harry Potter).
  • My summer class is going fine…it’s much larger than I expected it to be. (I have 21 students registered. I think a couple of them have dropped off…) Summer classes usually aren’t this big. I’m choosing to believe that word has gotten out that I’m fabulous. 😉
  • Eden is famous. She’s all over teh intarwebs, and she’s gonna be on TV. It’s all over the kerfluffle caused by this video.
  • I had lunch with Jen on Wednesday, which was good! We ate at Steel Crazy Cafe, which was not as good as we’d hoped…
  • I received some strange and nasty troll-ish comments on my flickr account. I deleted the comments and blocked the user(s), but apparently I should have waited for flickr to investigate first. Oops. My bad. (the backstory is something I don’t feel comfortable posting about, sorry.)
  • I got an early birthday present. 🙂 More details later…

Er, that’ll do for now, I guess…happy Friday!

More oldness

Posted on by
3

So yesterday, the same day I got mistaken for a 14-year-old, I had a class that was working on a handout. One of the sheets in the handout asked the students to imagine what they would be doing at age 30.

“I’ll be in a retirement home,” one girl snarked.

“Hey, watch it,” I said jokingly, but apparently not jokingly enough. She looked vaguely horrified.

“Relax, I’m kidding,” I said. “I’m 30.”

You know, -ish.

Man, that’s rough. I realize that to a 12-or-13-year-old, 30 is ancient, but ouch!

Getting there…

Posted on by
Reply

Two of my four classes finished today. A third will finish tomorrow afternoon, and then it’s just grading portfolios for the fourth one.

I can see the light!

Thursday ramblings

Posted on by
1

The semester is rapidly coming to an end, and so I’ve been busybusy with class-type things. And after today, I have a big ol’ pile of papers to grade, so I’ll be even more busy. Phew!

I am teaching a class again this summer, and I’ll be needing to figure out how to make enough $ to sustain me in the in-between times. (from when school ends in June until the summer session starts, and from when the summer session ends until I start getting paychecks in the fall.)

I had my second yoga class last night, and I am loving it. I’m looking into getting myself a yoga mat of my very own.

I just began reading The Sparrow, which I’ve heard nothing but good things about. The downside is that it’s a 405-page book, and I’m finding myself wanting to do nothing but readreadread. I’ve finished several YA selections in the past couple of weeks, which you can see over at Required Reading. (or not. I can’t seem to get the link to work. you can get there from my About page, if you care. Or try this.)

I loved Heroes this week, and I’m eagerly anticipating next week’s episode! I haven’t watched last night’s Lost yet, but I’m also looking forward to that.

And with that, I’m off to read. Or grade. But probably read…

Work

Posted on by
1

I’ll be happy to have the money, but lord how I wish I hadn’t taken work today.

It will be so very nice when this day is over…

Hope you’re having a better Monday than I am!

Catching up

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be caught up. There’s always so much to do, and so little time to do it…

I’ve got papers to grade from all of my classes. That’s a lot of papers. 😛

I’m way behind on the TV watching this week. I did manage to watch both Lost and Veronica Mars last night, but there’s still Heroes, Studio 60, The Office and Scrubs to watch. Okay, I guess that’s not so bad…

A day of subbing in a classroom with a student teacher got me some time to read (when I should have been grading papers. Oops.). I also read the first issue of the Gunslinger comic. It was great, but I’m thinking of waiting until it’s collected to read the rest. It’s a little on the expensive side for a comic. At any rate, the art is fantastic, and writer Peter David did a wonderful job of capturing the voice.

Valentine’s Day was lovely. Rand and I went low-key and had a nice dinner at Taste of India (by far one of my most favorite restaurants around). This was a good choice because it was not at all busy. I liked that. It certainly beat being sick, like last year!

Stephen Colbert v. Wikipedia

Posted on by
1

Back in August, Stephen Colbert got his fans to crash Wikipedia by logging in to edit an entry.

The video from the show used to be on YouTube, but it’s been removed. Does anyone know of anywhere I could possibly find it?

Almost 100%

Posted on by
Reply

The evil sickness has almost left me. I woke up feeling a wee bit congested, and still coughing up some yuck first thing in the morning, but after some decongestant and heading back to bed for a little while, I feel almost completely normal again. Yay!

Classes started yesterday, and they went pretty well. I had to take two guys aside and tell them they weren’t supposed to be in my class (regular Writing 100), but rather they were supposed to be in a developmental Writing 100 section. I emailed both of them last week to inform them of this fact and let them know that they should see their advisors about making the change. They either didn’t read the email or ignored it. 😉

One of my classes is very small…I only had 12 students registered, and only 9 were there yesterday. Oh, it would be so lovely if it stayed that small. The other class has 15 students registered.

Classes at the other school start next week. I’m teaching their version of developmental writing again, which I actually missed last semester. The nice thing about that class is that it’s much smaller and I can devote a lot more personal attention to each student. Also, most of them work really, really hard, because they really, really want to pass. I’ll also have an evening class, and those are usually pleasant. I haven’t been able to log in to the system to see how many students are registered for those. The English 101 classes start out larger than I like (it tops out at 23, but they usually stuff a couple of extra ones in), but usually dwindle down to somewhere around 15 throughout the course of the semester. I still have to update my syllabi for those classes, but that shouldn’t take me long. I’ll be incorporating some of the elements from my syllabus at the other college.

I also got a new battery put in my car. Yay for me.

I probably should get to some of this today. The only other thing I have to do is go to a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. (just a regular checkup) Lucky me!

Oh, and of course I’ll be taking a project 365 photo and posting it. 🙂

Bah! Humbug.

Posted on by
2

I’m in a mood today.

What’s not helping is that I’m knee-deep in paper grading, and the stupidest things are setting me off. Like the inability to follow simple instructions.

I ask all my students to write a short reflective self-assessment to hand in with their portfolios. Now tell me, dear reader, how one misunderstands the SELF part of self-assessment.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

Apparently, my class wasn’t entertaining enough for this one. I should have had them “play some writing games or something.”

Feh.

Wednesday things

Posted on by
5

Looks like I’m going to be teaching a full course load this semester. My classes at one of the schools started this week. I stopped by the other school (the community college) to pick up some things yesterday, and the department chair asked me if I’d be interested in another class.

It was tentatively given to me, pending enrollment. As of 5 minutes ago, it looks like it’s almost full. This means I’ll be teaching a total of four classes. Yes, I’m aware that’s a full course load for full-time professors.

This means Tuesdays will be hell for me. Class at one school from 12:40-3:30. Class at the other school from 4:30-8:30. Oh, and I have to have office hours too, of course. Thursdays are not quite so bad, as my evening class only meets on Tuesdays.

My classes at the new school are slightly smaller, which I like. They are also heavily populated by girls. I understand the ratio is 7-1. Those poor girls. 😉 OH! And in one of my classes? Four of them (out of 17) are named Christina. FOUR. Like I don’t have a hard enough time remembering their names…

I’ve been spending a lot of time the past couple of days taking care of little random things like setting up Blackboard for my classes and getting my email to download on my computer.

I’m still working on my syllabus for the other class.

Other than that…I attended a Save the Internet rally this afternoon. More at WNYmedia.net.