As a student, I’ve gone through the community college, undergraduate university, and grad school systems. I’ve also worked as a TA, GTA, and a community college instructor, so I have some perspective from both sides. Even with more and more courses going online, a majority of classes offered still take place in real time, these things definitely apply:

1. Read the syllabus and keep it preserved throughout the quarter or semester. The professor may refer to it from time to time. Also, you as the student need to know the policies. Protect yourself by knowing the law of the classroom. It’s always good to know he rules, but this can also come in handy if you have a legitimate grievance. Also, if a schedule’s attached,  it is important to note the assignments, and deadlines. Keep the schedule and CYA.
2. Attend all your classes, barring illness or something that legitimately prevents you from doing so. Playing hooky only hurts you.
3. Read the assignments and do the homework. This is active learning. You’ll learn by doing, whether it’s studying the material, reading assigned books, or getting practice in writing and critical thinking. This approach also works for classes in math or science. Also, doing these things will help you be prepared for your next class.
4. Come to class prepared. Do the readings and homework. Also, come to class with your thoughts and questions on the subject at hand. Write these things down while studying. Also, being prepared helps you to participate in class as you’ll ask germane questions and effectively contribute to the discussions.
5. Participate, participate, participate. If something doesn’t make sense, ask questions. Several of your classmates may even have the same question. Also, if you’re getting insights from your studies, contribute to the discussion as appropriate. What you say may compliment the professor’s lessons and might even provide an “a-ha” moment for your classmates. When you’re put in groups, do the work and make sure your classmates are pulling their weight. All this said, many professors consider the amount and quality of class participation when factoring their grades.
6. Behave appropriately. Follow the syllabus’s policies on classroom decorum. Treat everyone with respect. You don’t want to become that disruptive student. You don’t want to be the one who plays with their mobile phone in class, chatters with classmates while the professor is talking or another classmate is contributing to the discussion, or the one who always makes a grand entrance walking in late. While this may not be fair, behavior unbecoming of a student often has a way of overshadowing whatever achievements made in class.
7. Turn things in on time and meet the exam deadlines. If you have a job, you really don’t want someone to make you back track on a task and do it over again. That’s what you do to a teacher by turning something in late (provided they accept it). There are many professors who don’t accept late assignments or make up tests, so you only hurt yourself by failing to comply.
8. Keep your school schedule on the reasonable side of full-time. Going beyond 12 units is a mistake and taking on too many commitments outside of school is as well. Overextending yourself will really hurt you academically.
9. No excuses. Offer none. No one really cares. Perhaps for the first time in your life, you may find that the world does not revolve around you. No one will feel sorry for you. The professors have heard almost every excuse ever made, including some very 21st century ones.
10. Do your best. You will get the most out of your education if you do.

If you get a class taught by a TA, all of the above rules apply. Do not expect any favors from them because they’re (grad) students. Also, do not bully them or do things to treat them badly. They have worked hard to get where they are, even to get the position of teaching your class or breakout session of a lecture course. If you think you’re smarter than them, keep it to yourself. Anyone who thinks their  superior intelligence justifies mistreating a TA must understand that this conduct is absolutely inexcusable. They should try treating a fully tenured professor this way and see where it gets them. Overall, be respectful and do you work, regardless of instructor’s rank.

Keep in mind that your relationship with the professors is not only academic, but political. You may need to approach them to write letters of recommendations or serve as references. You definitely want them to know who you are by distinguishing yourself in their courses with your work in their courses. It does you little good if the professor doesn’t know who you are simply because you coasted by in their classes. Also, you do not want them as your enemies.  As mentioned before, be respectful.

In closing, take responsibility for your learning and be a respectfully active participant in your education. It will help you go a long way.

Going back to school to earn another degree is crazy enough. On top of that, I still have to work. I have to fund my MLIS program and still have to pay for the other things life requires. I also don’t want anymore student loans. Juggling classes and a job (make that plural) can be chaotic. I remember that from working on my BA and I took public transportation to get everywhere. I now have a car and much of my coursework will be online, but I still have the classes and any other jobs to balance. Getting some library experience will certainly add to the chaos in my life less than a year from now.

I quickly developed a system that’s still in progress. I’ve organized my assignments and made sure to return them no more than two class meetings. I have a system for my grades. The rubrics for writing assignments make them easier to grade, and immediately recording the scores in Excel saves time. I’ve kept grades in my head in the past, which is a very dangerous thing to do. There is no solid evidence for why students get their grades, even if I knew why and could explain it. Grade sheets, if demanded by the school, then become works of fiction (despite whatever knowledge is applied). In recording grades in a timely manner, I create an honest record where I have solid evidence for why the students did great or did poorly. While no less busier, sanity is something I’ve gained. Also, being prompt makes things much easier.

Grade inflation is something I can avoid in working more systematically. When I was near finishing my MFA, I got in trouble with a professor over grades that were too good for my break-out sections. I as the the student wanted to help them out, give them a break. However, I might have just helped them move on with the bad habits they acquired in that literature class. They then are not equipped for the next class and they will fail. What I do in a non-classroom setting with an employee, whether it’s training them or giving them an idea about their job performance, may not help if I communicate with them unrealistically. For example, if I lead someone to think they’re doing great when they’re not, they’ll just continue on with their bad working habits until it becomes necessary to fire them.

Interacting with students teaches me to deal with various kinds of people. Most people, given a fair amount of respect and commitment, will behave reasonably. However, there are those who will push and see what they can get away with. In some classes, there are only a few people like that. Here, it’s easy to handle them and the group dynamic makes a wonderful back-up. However, when there’s an entire group of them, like the “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps),” then gaining control is difficult. Also, if authority isn’t established in the beginning, then having anyone work within expectations becomes a nightmare. I don’t want any more “Scary Monsters” in any situation. If I’m too nice, people can take advantage of that, and if I’m too adversarial, then I alienate them. Students teach me that I must be fair, but firm with people.

I feel silly admitting this, but communication is something I’ve been learning in the classroom. Outlining expectations and continuing to make them clear is one thing. Giving them what they need to know in order to carry out their task is key. I can’t be like Miranda Priestly and say, “Bore someone else with your questions.” Also, I’ve been learning to let people know where they stand and how they could improve. That way, I catch their bad habits and failures early and I can hopefully set up win-win situations without resorting to inflating grades, performance evaluations, etc.

Needless to say, I haven’t turned into a teaching saint, become professor of the year, or achieved perfection. Perhaps in the last semester I ever teach college-level English, I’ll have mastered these lessons. In the meantime, I am cultivating the skills that will help me later on in life.

I also need to thank the tree spirits this week as I used up two reams of paper to give my students various hand-outs (all with the hopes that they’d earn good grades, of course).

This latter half of the year I returned to teaching. Over the summer, I took on a job teaching at a private language school. I liked the students and my coworkers (including the director), but it was also the most temp-like job I’ve ever had. I also taught a summer class at the urban community college and it was a good getting my feet wet. I had taught for two and a half years (one year as a TA in grad school and one and a half years as an adjunct teacher) before I had a stint as a mailroom manager. That only lasted for five months before I got fired and spent a few months looking for a job. During that time, I worked every community community college I knew of in the county to get classes for the fall.

While I didn’t succeed with every college and English department chair I lobbied, I wound up with a decent workload at the schools that took me on. Actually, I took on a lot. Five classes were overwhelming, but I was happy to be working again. Also, there were things such as Christmas and a new computer to think about.*

Of course, returning to the classroom had its share of challenges. Some of the students were one. I’ve vented about this in some posts. The flow of papers was never ending. The hours were crazy, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Driving to various schools and staying on top of all of them took a lot of time. God knows how much time I’ve spent in my car. I’ve found myself more and more fatigued as the semester comes to a close.

While I listed my cons first, it was not a bad experience overall. I liked most of the students I had this semester. That I could make grammar clearer for them (in some of my classes) was rewarding). Some of my students were fun, others were very interesting to talk, and some really got something out of it. I’ve given my headaches a lot of airtime, but I should have also taken the time to mention the great students as well.

I haven’t been a good blogger over the past few weeks. There would be a few days of blogging punctuated by a few more days of no posts. I have no plans to drop out of the blogosphere soon. August seemed to be month where there was a universal topic shortage. November, however, is not at all short of topics, yet it’s the worst month for me posting wise. That’s why I never put up the NaBloPoMo badge on my site. While NaNoWriMo sounds like fun, I haven’t had the time to crank out a shitty first draft of my great American novel. I even filmed a video log this past weekend, but I haven’t had the time nor energy to edit it. Wah, wah, wah.

It’ll all be over in a few weeks. Then, like the Pythian prophecy in BSG, it will all happen again in the spring.

There are days I’m tempted to skip out on classes. I never do, though. Unless I’m sick and contagious (or simply not feeling well), I show up to work whether I feel like it or not. I can get over the mood and do my job.

Then there are the bad classes. I have one of those from time to time, and then a student from hell. I had one of the latter yesterday morning. I’m not going to give details (sorry!), though I don’t think this one is a permanent problem. It was enough to throw the rest of my day off and I wanted to call in sick to the other campus. However, I didn’t do that.

I gave my critical thinking class their new syllabus. They seem like a cool group, but I have this argumentative chick (yes, I’m using this word instead of girl or young woman) who revels in her mediocrity and seems content to drag the rest of the class down with her. She’s also one of those types who tries to manipulate the professor, largely through being an aggressive loudmouth. Why do I have a feeling she’s in for a rude awakening when she gets her final grade?

I hit it off with another student in the class after I started talking about Star Trek and minorities being represented on that show. Interestingly, his first and last names are those of Star Trek characters (though I don’t think his parents intended that). I can’t reveal it here.

Then I had to go on with my “math teaching.” This is my special term for teaching grammar. I went over run-on sentences in my last two classes of the day and then went over writing assignments. In the English Skills class, I always refer my students to the English Writing Center to see a tutor. Since this is an ongoing thing, they keep pressuring me to give them extra credit for taking the time to have a tutor help them outside of class. I keep telling them this will favorably factor in their grade, but it doesn’t keep them from pushing for those extra points.

By the time I went home, I was completely exhausted. I caught the tail end of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style and then went to sleep shortly after. Special elixirs (i.e. a couple of glasses of wine) always help.

I didn’t think this would be such a long-ass post. Here’s a funny, but cheesy skit I found on YouTube from some Aussie guy. Talk about taking self-love to an extreme.

Happy Friday!

This course focuses on race, class, and gender. This guarantees that there will be a lot of controversial topics, enough to make any white person/white wannabe* uneasy. White (male) privilege, that women and minorities still face discrimination, and that divide between rich and poor has become greater are recurring topics in this course. The professor warned me the group would be resistant.

They watched Crash before sometime before I took over the class. She told me the class had a discussion on it, but they weren’t quite finished. I tried to continue the discussion yesterday, only to get tightlipped silence. Even though I saw the film several times, nothing prepared me for this. Some people did talk about the film, but several of the more vocal ones tried to claim the discussion on Crash was over. I also got some other misleading ideas about the course from some other student, such as that the papers were two pages in length and that the readings weren’t due that day. This was definitely a Mona Lisa Smile moment if there ever was one. I felt a lot like Julia Robert’s character walking in on that horrid group of girls with another professor’s syllabus. However, my class was a horrid group of young men and women.

New syllabus, new rules, and much longer papers. They need their arses kicked.

Now on to a few other things. Chris made a comment in his latest entry about “making a concerted effort not to do a blog fade.” He mentioned a few of the blogs he read that seemed to hit blog death. No apologies for not posting, just a sudden stop. I don’t think that’s the fate of Chris’s blog.

There’s this one person on my blogroll who stopped posting altogether. He got himself a domain name to route it to his blog and no posting since some rant in July. He broke his silence to show off a T-shirt, but that’s was over twenty days ago. Is this blog faded? Hopefully, all isn’t quiet on the western front.

I saw Eureka last night. I still don’t know what to make of Stark beyond that he’s hot (as he is too complex to be a villain). Oh, alchemy turns out to be alive and well in Eureka and apparently has a very handsome practitioner. That’s all I’ll say on Eureka.

On a lighter note about teaching, I inflicted a Beavis and Butthead episode “Butt Is It Art?” on my freshman composition class in east county. The main point of showing the vid was to show cause and effect, though I wonder if my students only got a “boob” and a “butt” out of it. We also discussed Chris Crocker’s newfound fame as a result of Britney’s critically panned VMA performance and we watched his vid and Seth Green’s parody. Gotta love those smart carts.

Back to work. I have a long day tomorrow.

*this definitely applies to those conservative types.

There was the date of September 11. In my family, that has always been my niece’s birthday, so I must wish Aurora a belated happy birthday.

Unfortunately, this past Tuesday marked the 6th anniversary of 9/11, which also occured on a Tuesday. It is one of those dates where you will remember where you were when it happened. I was starting my first year of the MFA program and I was in the faculty computer lab abusing my priveleges as a TA. A television broadcast the news to everyone in the room up to the point where Gray Davis, then Governor of California, closed all state institutions, including the university.

It was Aurora’s eighth birthday when that happened. My mother originally had a birthday party planned for her that afternoon, but serendipitously cancelled it a week before.

I blocked out the date this Tuesday. When I wrote the date on the blackboard, a student reminded me it was September 11. I then reminded myself it was my niece’s birthday and I felt better.

Wikipedia has a long list of events on September 11, some of them very interesting and significant other than September 11, 2001.

Chris and Brian both wrote some long posts about this date. On that note, happy anniversary to Chris and his partner Ray!. Also, Brian’s birthday came two days after my niece’s. Happy Birthday, Brian!

Now to some other things. ‘Tis the season of the overstuffed accordion file folders. I may have been dealing with lessons, readings, and classwork the past couple of weeks, but this is the first week I began to collect assignments I will GRADE. For my freshman composition course, I collected their reading response to Brent Staples‘ “Just Walk on By…” and their first essays. The essays will be the easiest thing to grade because they are narratives.

Regarding Staples’ essay about how strangers respond to him as a black man, some students were much more honest in their written responses than they were in class discussions, especially if they reacted in similar ways to Staple’s examples of white strangers who assumed the worst about him. These students weren’t proud of this type of behavior or attitude, but they were connecting with and responding to the essay. Some other students mentioned in their responses how they felt they were singled out and profiled (such as one young woman who, along with her grandmother, was hassled the San Ysidro border checkpoint and spoken to in bad Spanish by a border patrol agent). One young African-American man’s response could have easily been one of Staples’ examples as he mentioned a moment when he was crossing the street and an old white woman decided she would rather cross the street in another direction and risk getting hit by incoming cars rather than simply walk past him.

I always learn too many things about my students in the course of the semester. Things come up in class discussions, writing samples, and essays (like the narratives) and reading responses like I mentioned above. The kids and their antics are material enough, but who knows? Schools are never short of characters.

I’m sure I’ll learn a great deal from my students from the evening class as I go through an essay they had to write for me in class last night. Instead of racially charged essays like Brent Staples’, I targeted them as non-traditional students by having them read “The Professor is A Dropout,” Beth Johnson’s essay about Lupe Quintanilla, a first grade dropout who went on to become a professor. While my students’ histories may not be as extreme as Quintanilla’s, I knew they could identify with her story and even find inspiration. My folder for this course is stuffed with what they wrote in response to Quintanilla’s story.

Yesterday, I had a mini-obsession where I had to find some colored chalk because I have blackboards (more like greenboards) in my late afternoon and evening classes. While the east county suburban and desert colleges have whiteboards and dry erase markers, most of the classrooms in the urban college have chalkboards.

I like chalk better than dry erase markers. Definitely more sensuous and tactile, and I love how the sticks break while I write or draw on the board. There’s something hideous about how whiteboards get dirty from the markers. Also, getting high is the best you can hope for while using dry erase markers, and marker smell is simply god awful.

I’ve learned that yellow, green, and white show up the best, but other colors are fun to use.

Gotta go. Gotta drive out to the desert and get a form in the that college’s office and I’ve got a few errands to run.

After asking my customary, “May I help you,” the young man said he picked up some food for my student. I told him, “This is not lunch hour.”

Of course, my students find me telling him that amusing. I wonder if he felt any embarassment.

If I were more enterprising, I would take the lunch and eat it. Actually, I wouldn’t, but it was one of those “after it happened” fantasies.

I don’t care if my students eat in class. I don’t care if they sip Starbucks Lattes or Mocha Frappucinos in front of me. I only care that they purchase their snacks or drinks before arriving to my class and dispose of the bags, cups, or any other kind of containers after they’re done. Delivery service to class – definitely not acceptable. As for the young man who interrupted my class with the Taco Bell take-out, perhaps he should reconsider his friendship with my student.

If he continues delivery service, then he should pick some up for the rest of us. There is one instructor and thirty four students who restructured their days to take lunch at different times of the day. We’re all hungry too.

A couple of the young ladies in the class wanted to kick her ass for being rude to me. That makes me feel special.

Towards the end of the class, I took the class downstairs to the English Center. Some of my students were about 10 feet outside of the library’s exit, so I had to quickly round them up. Some of my students told me the librarian was not too pleased with my loud voice in trying to keep the students from wandering away, ending class early for themselves. I did have to make them aware of the English Center, which will benefit them gradewise as they get help on assignments during the semester.

Tonight, I’ve got to turn in soon and wake up super early–I have my very first 7′ish am class tomorrow morning. In the scheme of things, this is my third “first week” of school, as I start class on one campus, which is in the same district where I teach another course. The reason for the different start date is that this is a “short term course,” which lasts approximately 12 weeks.

This campus is inland, out in the desert 30 minutes from where I live, so I will have to deal with hot days for the next few weeks.

I’m not a morning person by any stretch, but I’ve always showed up whenever I’ve had a job where I had to be there at unnaturally early hours. I had the course over the summer where I had to be there by 7:30 four days out of the week, but I’ve also too quite a few marathon naps on my days off.

I’ll blog at you all later.