The Week at a Glance

Sunday: Come home from weekend trip to Bemidji. Do some laundry. Grade some papers. Grocery shopping for Phi Theta Kappa spaghetti feed supplies.

Monday: drop off daughter at "playschool." Run to school with supplies for spaghetti feed. Taught a class--asked students to have prewrites ready for Wednesday. Worked rest of day (8am -5pm) on 2 online classes and accelerated class. Scramble to find students to cook 20 2-lb boxes of spaghetti! Picked up daughter. Supper. Play. Bed.

Tuesday: no school. Drop daughter at playschool after much struggle so I can work all day anyway. Spent time getting last files together for campus anthology so I could forward it all to the designer. Morning visit to chiropractor visit goes awry as I'm late--see daughter note above--and electric stim feels like I am getting 4th tattoo! Not usual relaxation routine! Papers graded for Wednesday class.

Wednesday: late for playschool again. Late to school. Scramble to get spaghetti feed set up/coordinate students who show up. LOTS of spaghetti and sauce to heat, little details like money and gloves for serving. teach class--students did not bring prewrites as asked (see above). Return their essays. go to office. Email, write formal letter to, and call students for scholarship prize I'm coordinating. Hubby says stay late and finish, so I do. Home at 6:30. Eat. Play. Sleep.

Thursday: talk to students about scholarship again. Spend day in cubicle (I can't exactly recall what I was working on, but it was a lot and it took from 8-5 to do it. Lots of emails to follow up on, drafting documents, etc.). Pick up daughter, play, eat, and watch Survivor. Play. Sleep.

Friday: waiting for drafts to come in. catch up on email. wrote this quick and now I'll go back to work.

Better World Books

Our campus chapter of Phi Theta Kappa has collected 500 books for Better World Books, a social enterprise with the mission of increasing literacy and promoting environmental responsibility. Their sales raise funds for over 80 literacy programs such as Books for Africa and the National Center for Family Literacy.

The chapter also shipped over 200 books late last spring.

Women Motorcyclists

My sister started a women's motorcycle riders group in Bemidji. They have meetings, they plan short road trips, and they have a lot of fun.

It makes me wish I lived in Bemidji.

And that I rode a motorcycle.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It is 9 am. It is dark, cold, and wet outside. Blah....

To Do:
Finalize Travel Lit Exam (the last day is technically Saturday, but papers can be submitted next week yet).
Grade 0050 exemplification paragraphs and prep for mid-term conferences
Update scores for 1102 discussions and blogposts


Oh...and in case I don't log in before then, Oct. 14th marks 13 years of marriage! It seems like only yesterday....sure....

PBwiki frustrations today!

Previously anyone could edit our course wiki (1.0) with an invite key. It worked great all last spring and this past summer. This fall, though, numerous students could not get in even though they followed the directions. I watched one gal log in, spell everything correctly, and when she clicked "log in" it simply returned her to the log-in page. Today I created a new 2.0 pbwiki, had to create student accounts (36 of them) and then email the new username and password to each student. Much time has been wasted today. I then had to transfer over all the pages and current material from the old wiki to the new one. Numerous projects have been put on hold. :(

Allan Ball

I'm really impressed by the work of Allan Ball. His works include the movie American Beauty, the HBO series Six Feet Under, the new series True Blood, and a new movie, Towelhead which is already stirring some controversy. I was a big fan of Six Feet, and the preview of Towelhead has me intrigued!

Ren Fest

Huzzah! It is Ren Fest time in MN again. Saw the new Puke and Snot show. Ate bread bowl soup. Enjoyed the festivities. Marvelled at people dressed in robot outfits. WHY? How is that Renaissance related?

Time is NOT on my side

I've become a single parent. No, my husband I did not divorce and yes, he is alive and well. However, his new job now takes him out of town for a week at a time. For the first month, we were lucky because he was training in town. On short notice, however, last week, he was told he'd be going to Grand Forks for a week. Granted, that is not far away. Yes, he will be home soon. In the meantime, I am flying solo. Today, I put my daughter in the tub just so I could do dishes and throw in a load of laundry. :) I've always empathized with students with kids, but more than ever I wonder how they do it! Tired, tired, tired, and I have much more to do before I collapse for the night.

Back to School

As you may have noticed, I took a complete hiatus from this blog. I didn't really mean to just quit posting over the summer, but that's exactly what happened! I'm a bad, bad blogger.

Fall semester begins Monday so I will begin posting more regularly again. In the meantime, I am excited to report an update on ENGL 2320: Travel Literature. I was nervous it would not be run this term, but it currently has 16 students! The readings will include works from early explorers, the era of The Grand Tour, and then move quickly towards modern works starting with Kerouac. I've also included contemporary works like Bill Bryson, Mike Horn, and Jon Krakauer.

A new project I am working on is teaching ENGL 1102 as a hybrid course. So in seven weeks, with only 4 face-to-face meetings, our students will complete a semester's worth of learning. The course blog and wiki will still remain as key components of that course as places for journaling and collaborative projects.

Another projects on the radar include publishing the next edition of Prairie Fire, our student anthology.

Overall, it looks like it will be a very busy semester!

The Road to Hell....

Talk about good intentions. After my last post, I was ready to buckle down and get some serious grading done. And then life throws a curveball (I'm mixing my cliches now). Alas, I tried to grade a batch of essays this morning and it took 2 hours to grade 9 of them! Needless to say, but I'm going to say it anyway, I did not get them done before class as I had planned.

Today was a mix of catching up on smaller grading projects (blogs, discussion boards, etc), emails (200 to read, respond to, delete), and administrative tasks (order summer books, fill out requests for travel funds, submit other required paperwork). I did a lot today and yet I feel as if I accomplished little. I did enjoy reading the posts from the accelerated class again though. I feel there are some good efforts at offering some specific details in these posts, which are only required to be around 200-250 words.

Today I bought The Kite Runner DVD. I also picked up three books that caught my eye:

Best Friends
Veil of Roses
Three Cups of Tea

Then, of course, the books that I had hoped would arrive over spring break finally arrived (stupid super saver shipping--never again!):

The Road to Oxiana
Methods for Teaching Travel Literature and Writing
Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World
Salon.com's Wanderlust

Now when will I have time to read these?! Book orders for fall are due SOON!

Sluggish and lazy

Yep. Spring break is nice. I've played a couple video games (Oblivion mostly), slept in, stayed up late, and eating at normal times. I have pretty much reveled in running pants and t-shirts; no teacher costumes!

I've read and read and read. Trashy novels, academic texts, lots of stuff online.

I did some productive stuff:

• read and annotated sources for my wiki research
• Attended an event where one of my former BSU instructors, Will Weaver, spoke about the adaptation of his short story "A Gravestone Made of Wheat" into a film (Sweet Land).
• stayed at my folks' place with daughter
• worked on the wiki
• read blogs
• thought about lesson plans for next week
• and other random bits

This weekend I'll go back to the folks' so I'm doing my part to stimulate the economy. I'm thinkin' that if gas prices do not drop this summer, that will put the kabosh on the road trips unless I get a rent a hybrid car, which would still be cheaper than driving my Jeep.

Sweet!

http://peoplereading.blogspot.com/

Midterms

This week is midterms. Next week is Spring Break. They couldn't have planned that better!

Last year for Spring Break, I took a ten day trip to London, which, of course, I blogged (shameless self-promotion, I know). This spring break I will be grading a major essay from each class. I will also be working on the ENGL 1102 wiki. I need a lesson plan to encourage continued content development and to introduce linking and refactoring the pages; however, I also need the students to fix current errors in grammar, documentation of sources, etc).

Other plans:
I need to plan advertising for the Travel Lit course for fall. If enough students do not register, it will not fly. It's tough to invest all the time and energy constructing a course and spending hours on creating flyers and such only to have it canceled over the summer.

What I really want to do is hit the road.

Flu

By now, most of you know I've cancelled classes for most of this week due to the flu. Next week, each of my classes will be getting some sort of revised calendar to address the assignments for this week. I'm also playing catch up with my email, slowly.

Other than that, I hope you are all taking your vitamins and Airborne and such. :)

Note: scrap the Airborne plans.

Blog Update

I've been browsing through the class blogs recently. Some posts are really short. The 1101 students are opening up more in the blog than they do in class :)

The 1102 students have some interesting ideas about their short story readings. Soon we'll be entering the Poetry Zone.

I'm also starting to think more seriously about the Travel Literature course I'll offer this fall. I need to start advertising it soon, and putting together a reading list. The first thing students ask when they inquire about the course is "What are you going to read?" It is quite a difficult task to narrow the list.

I also need to start thinking about getting ready to solicit manuscripts for Prairie Fire anthology again.

CCs in the news

Obama on the importance of community colleges.

Slowing down

I haven't posted in almost a week because I'm taking a class where I am learning more about the finer aspects of blogging. As a result, much of my blogging time is directed towards class assignments and practicing in my new blog.

This morning, though, I am prepping for ENGL 1101 and grading for 1102 (all three).

Just an observation

My 1102 student ROCKED their group discussions on "A Rose for Emily." There were really thorough responses as each group answered questions focused on historical, feminist, psychoanalytic, and formalist "lenses" to discuss the story. I think this activity was useful in that it drove home the point that literature can be interpreted differently and that there are multiple views to consider. It also helped alleviate some of the confusion that usually accompanies a more complex story.

The students were very funny about discussing "The Storm." I'll just say that the reactions to the story and the ensuing discussion were mixed.

Today's task: review thesis statments with 1101 and begin pre-writing activities for their first essay.

Other news: MSCTC has linked to the class blogs in a beta version of the newly designed website. How exciting! Can't wait to show the students!

Finally: How cold can it get??? I saw that it is -50 in western ND! I bundled McKenna up so she looked like the character from A Christmas Story. She turns beet red at the lightest breeze, poor thing.

Ugh.

Today in my 1101 class, the lesson did not go so well. They were bored. How can I spice up thesis statements and an overview of the writing process? Maybe I don't talk about it at all...it will show up in the course after all. Maybe I just needed more than five hours of sleep to convey excitement about narrowing a topic and devising a controlling idea.

Maybe the students were as tired. Many didn't seem to enjoy the Anne Lamott excerpts about shitty first drafts, a piece usually guaranteed to induce quite a few chuckles. Hmmm...hopefully just an off day.

Regardless, I've noted for next time: more group work/hands-on activities for teaching narrowing and thesis statements.

Digital Dorothy

On this day in 1798, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote:

"The green paths down the hill-sides are channels for streams. The young wheat is streaked by silver lines of water running bewteen the ridges, the sheep are gathered together on the slopes. After the wet dark days, the country seems more populous. It peoples itself in the sunbeams. The garden, mimic of spring, is gay with flowers. The purple-starred hepatica spreads itself in the sun, and the clustering snow-drops put forth their white heads, at first upright, ribbed with green, and like a rosebud when completely opened, hanging their heads downwards, but slowly lenthening their slender stems. The slanting woods of an unvarying brown, showing the light through the thin net-work of their upper boughs. Upon the highest ridge of that round hill covered with planted oaks, the shafts of the tree show in the light like the columns of a ruin."

Spring is dead-ahead. Must remember that when its 40 below here.

Wordsworth, Dorothy. "Journal, Written at Alfoxden in 1978." English Romantic Writers. 2nd ed. Ed. David Perkins. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1995.