Small Successes I: Paper Activities

So I realize that I haven't had much to say in a while about my class, and in part, I want to record the successes that I've had along the way--things that I hope to repeat in the future.  I know that last time I checked in I was on the verge of despair.  *sigh*  I still have more moments of weariness than enthusiasm, but I haven't felt that bad since that week.  I have also been allowing myself to read for pleasure more, and not forcing myself to read along with everything I assign.  The latter makes me feel like a bad teacher, but it's not as if I'm lecturing on it, so I'll give myself a pass.

One thing that I feel I have done the right way is breaking the steps of the paper down for them and requiring students to "check in" (more or less) to demonstrate that they are working on the paper.  These assignments help them to stretch out the work on the assignment rather than saving it until the last minute.  They give me the opportunity to monitor progress--or not, because for the most part the burden is on them (which I'll explain).  Because they are wrestling with the paper over time, I do, in fact, hear more from them when things aren't going quite right, if they get stuck, etc.  This is definitely a success in an online course.  

What I'm proposing is something that was standard in composition classes--Topic Proposal Memo, Thesis Statement, List of Sources, Outline (maybe), Rough Draft, Final Draft.  Besides teaching time management and giving the opportunity for feedback along the way, we were also making sure that if a student was inclined to plagiarize, the supporting materials would have to be plagiarized, since a paper would not be accepted without them.  That's not really my rationale, since my paper is fairly unique and probably can't just be downloaded.  What is unusual is requiring these steps for a sophomore-level class.  Sophomores are supposed to be able to do these things on their own, right?  And sink or swim?  Well...  not really.  Not in reality. 

One of the amazing things about the online-only class is the opportunities I have along the way to correct what they're thinking about things, how they're interpreting things, how they are expressing their ideas in writing.  In class, if they don't speak, I don't know what they're thinking. Because the class meets every day, there are no assignments designed to let me know what they're thinking--whether they're getting it.  As a result, they don't necessarily get it, and I don't know until the test.  Heck--they don't know until the test.  In this case, I know.  And if we can have a discussion about it where other students can see, I'm actually teaching.  Yay!  This is how being a "guide" instead of a "sage" can still be an important function, requiring a teacher who is insightful and engaged.  

This paper was a beginning lit review, if you will.  My intentions (objectives, really) were to have them be able to write a research question, use it to do research, find scholarly sources on a literary topic, read and summarize, and begin to synthesize the sources in a very basic way in order to present the articles to an audience who wishes to know more about the literary topic in question.  It took a bit of wrangling to get them there, and I haven't graded the papers yet, but I know that learning has happened along the way.

Their supporting activities were:

1. A research question posted to a forum.  Each student had to post a question in order to see others' questions so that they were not influenced beforehand.
2. A bibliography submitted as an assignment to the instructor only.  This gave me the opportunity to check to see whether the sources were scholarly and whether the bibliography format was correct.
3. A rough draft/peer review wiki.  While it did not really function as a peer review, it could have.  Students posted their rough draft to a new page in the wiki.  They could also make changes to theirs (technically they could have to others' as well), and make comments on their and others' drafts.  If they wanted my feedback, they had to solicit it, and one did.  I could have forced each student to comment on another's draft, but feedback-by-coersion is not typically good quality stuff, so I let it go.

I had many questions during the first two stages.  Some were caught up in adhering to the question or making it perfect, so those people learned that research ideas do mutate.  Many, many students learned to construct better database searches.  And at least half of the remaining students had a rough draft in time.  All in all, a success--they did not drift away completely.

These supporting assignments were only worth 25 points each.  At first, I was going to roll these in to the daily grade equivalent--a pathetic 10% (which should be more given the effort).  Instead, I decided to reward their efforts by making the 75 points part of the paper grade, which is 15% of the overall grade.  I believe that the effort of staying on task and the learning activities involved deserve to be 3/7 of the 15%, because they are being rewarded, here, for the considerable effort of learning on their own, being engaged, and asking for assistance when they needed it.

Admitting defeat

I think it's time to face facts.  I probably won't be continuing as an adjunct past this semester.  This makes me terribly sad.  It was fulfilling.  It gave me purpose.  It made me feel important.  It was exciting to develop the activities and search for the extra resources (because I'm not a fan of the textbook resources) and exciting to know that the students were learning, or were making connections, or at the very least, were enjoying the activities and literature.  But as the semester wears on, I have to face facts.  I'm terribly behind.  The level of instruction is sub-par.  And I don't have time to even read the material that I'm teaching because of the 40-hour job, exhaustion, illness (mine), travel (someone else's), grading, and, you know, regular meals and such.  Note that I did not say housework.

Perhaps it's because I made the test too long. I'm grading it question by question and it simply goes on forever.  Because I'm knee-deep in exams (which I don't even think should exist in online courses), I haven't spent as much time interacting with students through the weekly online activities, which means that I miss the learning.  I have a really interesting assignment "out there" that I haven't been able to look at--casting Everyman with conteporary actors.  Perhaps when the exam dust settles I will have time. I only have 6 more questions to grade for each student, but this week has not let me breathe.  In the meantime, I should be posting the assignments for King Lear, and I simply don't have any.  The only reason I'm even teaching Lear is because it's in the textbook and we have to do Shakespeare.  There is another play, but it's a Comedy.  I have a trio of "serious" plays that I'm teaching, so Lear it is.  I like Lear.  A lot.  But so much of this course material seems wasted on an online class.  So in spite of the stimulation, there's a lot of discouragement and feeling that I'm simply not performing up to par.

In life right now... well, I've had a lot going on as well.  Three classes in the past two weeks, one of them new and one of them rather demanding.  Plus, I have been prepping for a conference presentation that was yesterday.  While these things happen at work (8-5), they affect my intellectual energy (and actual energy) when I get home.  These classes have left me feeling overwhelmed--the last thing I want to do is come home and engage with online class activities.  Well, that's not entirely true.  But I need some decompression time that I never seem to get.   Particularly this week, when my husband is traveling for the high profile part of his job.  *sigh*  I have been feeling that this position is for someone older, with grown children, or better paid, with a trophy (second) wife who doesn't work.  Certainly not for a family man with young children and a wife who would like to make a career for herself one day, and keeps struggling in that direction in spite of failure and setbacks.  And when my helpful teenager goes off to college... I don't even want to think about it.  Then, I will feel really alone when these trips happen.

It is just too much.  I'm not sure the happiness I gain is worth the cost.  But... I still don't think teaching online is the problem.  The problem is being a full-time 40-hr employee somewhere and teaching as an extra.  Because it's not a hobby. I joked that it was, but you can't truly make a passion for your job into a hobby.  It demands too much time and energy because you want to do it.  And then you can't.  And sadly, I don't think I can.

The Frustrations of Being Scheduled

Today, I'm reeling from the chaos of the weekend.  One of the side-effects of adjuncting is that I have to make time for myself to work.  Or, rather, I have to scehdule myself non-negotiable times to work which then bleed into every aspect of my life when I'm not working my 40-hour job.  I actually rather like sponteneity.  But now, it seems, in order for me to feel like I've done what I need to do for the day... or evening... or weekend... I need to stick (at least partially) to my schedule.  And I hate it.  Becuase when I don't get off on the right foot, I feel utterly dissatisfied.  Enter the weekend.

I have no idea what Friday looked like.  I can't remember that far back.  I think there were fish sticks involved.  Ah yes--Friday.  The day I did not leave the office for lunch, making me feel like I didn't accomplish a thing all day.  A good start.  Last week was pretty busy at work-work, and I have everything to grade, from the last thing we covered before the first exam (Chaucer) to the exam itself, which I am grading question by question instead of exam by exam.  I have realized in so doing that my exam was too long--for me, not for them--and that I need some objevtive questions:  nice, self-grading, multiple choice. After 4 or so grading sessions, I have finally whittled them down to 6 test questions left.

On Saturday, my daugther usually has archery practice.  This Saturday, she did not.  So everyone slept in.  The problem is that I have office hours at 10 A.M.--this is my "good start" to the weekend.  I guess I should have seen it coming.  I suppose I should have said explicitly--WAKE ME UP.  But I didn't.  So they let me sleep. It was a little bit gloomy and sort of cold, so I slept.  I woke at 10:42, realizing that I was well past the start of office hours--so why start now?  I went to the living room, was promptly pestered about the impending birthday party for a friend at 3 P.M., and went to bathe and get dressed.  We ate bagels and had coffee and then went to run errands, including the purchase of the party present.  Well, the errands were frustrating.  In one case, there was a startling encounter with a rude and crass person who made gestures that no one over the age of 15 should really make toward anyone, much less a harmless car full of strangers including two young children.  So... lovely.  By the time we went home, it was party time.  I did not go.  Rather, I stayed with the other two children and contemplated backing up my hard drive so that I could buy more RAM--which would make actually working on my 2011 MacBook Pro a possibility.  Failing to find the cords for the extrenal hard drive, I went to Best Buy and purchased a 64GB flash drive and the 8GB memory sticks for my computer.  Then I went back in Best Buy to get the sale price I had been promised hours earlier.  By the time I got home again, the birthday party attendees had returned.  My files finished transferring to the flash drive.  Begin part two of Saturday.

My husband occupies a visible position in an international scholarly initiative.  He is the face of his project, you might say.  And as I type, he is on his way to Mexico, all of which causes its own fits of angst.  But I am very proud of him, and the reputation he has gained, and because I wanted him to look the part, and because we finally sort of have the money for him to look the part (not that I'm not having retroactive hives a bit because of spending it), I suggested suit shopping.  And that took a couple of hours, but yeilded great results.  After that foray, we bought our third non-homecooked meal of the DAY (I hate that) and headed home, where the starving (well, not quite) children were.  We ate, I might have done something or other with a batch of clothes, and then the memory instillation happened. It was wonderful. Still is.  No problems.  Twice the RAM.  No more minute delay starting Microsoft Word.  I barely even noticed iPhoto trying to import photos from my phone.  A new era has begun.  And yet, you might notice that I still have not, at this point, done any actual work for my class.  This is what happens when I get off to the wrong start on Saturday.  And... frustration ensues.

So of course, I had to do work.  I had to.  And by this time, it was night.  Before, during, and after the girls went to bed, I worked on the class.  There was no prep for the religious ed--but that's a whole different matter.  And the result was that I was keyed up and didn't sleep well, which starts a whole cycle.

Sunday was cold and wet; religious ed.  Mass.  Both were fine, which is great.  An uneventful Sunday is a good Sunday.  We went to two different locations of our favorite chinese restaurant, and had some editorial comments by the staff on our seating choice (a booth) and our order (that's a lotta food--umm, yes).  Went home, and I'm not sure what else I did besides work on the class--grading, activities, grading, emailing a student who wanted more generic help on everything.  Oh yes!  I helped coordinate dress clothes options for my husband who was packing. I stopped working at midnight or so, and could do nothing else--I mean, I could have, but it was time for bed, as we would have to get up early to coordinate shuttles to catch flights and children to school and whatnot.   But having only one parent in the morning is hard.  Besides that on Sunday I started looking around and the chaos and realizing that with only one parent in the house, that chaos was MY chaos--and mine alone.  I think I just got moodier until bed.  And working up until bed is bad for me.

So now my week starts.  And it is a hectic week--one 2-day (6 hr) class to teach on Outlook, a presentation to give in between, no helpmeet.  And I feel like I did nothing during the weekend, because I didn't get off to the right start on Saturday.  And I gave up trashy romance novels (a recent guilty pleasure) for Lent.  So no escapism.  *sigh*  Oh, and I haven't written anything in over a week because I had the bright idea to revise the older novel instead of fleshing out the new.  Feeling so unproductive and busy and behind and frustrated and resentful.