education
Post-Museum Trippy Lessons on Drugs
Last Sunday, I took my 11-year old to see the recent exhibit at our local museum called “Psychedelic Art: Hallucinogens and their Impact on the Art of the 1960s.”
I could hardly have been less prepared….
Guest Post by Megan Killinger: Lessons From The Spectrum
This personal narrative was written by Megan Killinger, a student in one of my Composition-101 classes during the Fall-Winter 2010 semester….
Guest Post by Leanna Best: Lessons From Javan
This piece was written by Leanna Best, a student in one of my Composition-101 classes held at Monroe Community College during the Fall-Winter 2010 semester….
Lessons on an Elevator
On my last hour on campus during the fall-winter 2010 semester, during my last elevator ride down from the English/Philosophy Department, I experienced the most interesting confrontation/ conversation. Ever….
End of Semester Gratitude
The Fall-Winter 2010 semester is over for me. My grades have been reported. My unattractive yet functional wheelie bag has been dumped of its contents and placed with the rest of the luggage — in the nether regions of the basement. Today, I am getting my hair high-lighted. It has been fifteen weeks since my last highlight or cut. (The straightening thing doesn’t count.) Don’t even ask about the state of my fingernails at the moment. I have a way of letting certain things go during the semester. But now it is time to catch up….
Contemplating Quitting The Classroom
I have been thinking that this will be my last semester in the classroom. It’s been a hard year for a variety of reasons, but I have been thinking I just am not connecting with my students the way I used to. Part of it may be that I am getting older. I have somehow become an “old-fashioned teacher” who doesn’t show movies, rely on Smart Boards or Power Point presentations. In other words, I have always been able to “be my own show,” create my own bells and whistles, and that was enough. I was enough.
This year is different. I feel… old….
Grammar & Facebook Do Not Mix
While I am definitely a Facebook fan, I do not enjoy what social media (and texting and the media in general) is doing to our language. it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a set of rules upon which we can all agree are necessary to follow. Because, really, that’s all the conventions of writing are….
End of the Semester Blues
In reality, it is kind of hard to fail my class. I offer a lot of help to students to want it. I make myself available to conference. I allow students who show initiative to revise their papers. I offer extra credit opportunities throughout the semester – just not as an “emergency out” at the end.
I hate watching students unravel at the end of the semester but – the reality is – there are always some who come unstitched….
Functional Illiteracy: The Repost
People who know me know I’m struggling this semester. I try to explain how my students seem weaker this year; how I can’t get them to use capital letters (or, in some cases, how I can’t get them to stop randomly capitalizing words that don’t need to be capitalized); how they won’t stop writing “im” instead of “I’m”; how I can’t get them to stop using the letter “u” when they mean the word “you.”…
Lessons From A Boy In a Skirt
Several years back, on the first day of the semester, a student walked into my classroom. A boy, clearly, a male — wearing a long pink skirt, his hair tied in a low pony-tail. When I read the roster and got to his name, he corrected me and told me that his name was Sophia.
I quickly noted the change.
When I met Sophia, she wanted gender reassignment surgery. She wished for it, but knew it would be a long road. As gender reassignment is an irreversible procedure, two letters of therapy clearance would be required. She explained one therapist (psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, sexologist) would be required to have a doctoral degree, and one of the two therapists would have to know her for an extended period of time. When I met Sophia, she was simply trying to change the name on her birth certificate and running into all kinds of roadblocks. A ward of the State from age 15, Sophia was living with distant relatives. She had no car, was taking the bus to campus, and had no expendable money for one therapist, let alone two with the kind of credentials that she would need to put her on the path towards gender reassignment….