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.

Yoga and Vertigo

Yoga has recently received much attention in the Fargo Forum (a lot of it negative because so many believe it is inseparable from mysticism), so when my colleague sent an email inviting me to participate in a free Yoga session on campus Friday, I was all over it. I went with a really open mind because, despite numerous opportunities to read about it, I never cared to learn what Yoga might include beyond the poses.

I really enjoyed the meditation and focus-on-breathing aspect of Yoga. Some of the movements baffle me. This is not a new experience. I've dropped out of aerobics classes and hated nearly every moment of any non-machine related regime because I don't get the whole "breath in now while simultaneously bending in half" because that is when I want to breath out! I also can't interpret "pull your navel to your spine" chatter or instructions for other complicated procedures that contort my body. I don't GET it.

I tried everything though. I kept waiting for my back and neck to hurt (Past injury. Hit by drunk driver in AZ. Enough said), but instead, I really felt both energized and calm afterwards. I'll go again!

Two very surreal moments in two days: a friend let me us her mat during the Yoga session. I was supposed to be facing downward (the movement is to stupefyingly complex to describe here), and when I caught sight of the bubbled pattern of the mat, I had a moment of, I guess, vertigo. The pattern was swimming before my eyes and kept shifting as I looked upon it. I could not tell how close I was to the mat and was in serious jeopardy of smacking my nose into the floor. I had to break out of the pose to get my bearings. Ugh. A similar thing happened today after playing Guitar Hero III. I stopped the game, looked at my carpet, and it became a rolling, shifting sea right in front of me. I knew better than to get up. I looked at the TV instead. It grew! This is so weird and hard to describe, but it's like those crazy camera shots in movies, where a character stand still and the camera zooms up to him/her, but all the background seems to shrink as the character gets bigger. Can't think of an example now...will add one when I can.

Update: It is called, fittingly, the vertigo shot. Here are some examples from Youtube.

First Week

I have one class today and the first week is wrapped up. What an energizing week! Both 1102 classes were engaging, discussing and debating ideas about Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour." When I asked students to write their initial responses to Monica Ware's "Mislaid Plans" and Linda Pastan's "Jump Cabling" they were mixed--some got it. Some didn't. Nearly all responded, though, and went beyond plot summary. Many even talked about ironies or imagery. This reaffirms my decision to move from focusing on analysis and terms and to focus on the experience of lit and student's experiences as it relates to their readings instead.

I'm very excited that several students in the land-based class have read The Kite Runner. They are excited to read it again. A possible movie trip is in the works.

So this week: I met with 2 different ENGL1102 classes twice, met with 1101 twice, and have been communicating via email and discussion boards with the online ENGL 1102 students, who are really diving in to the introductions and making connections.

Some of my blogs have hits from outside of class! Yay!

On the home front: Tonight there is a family skate at Horace Mann. We'll try to bring McKenna to get more practice with her new skates.

First Day!

The first day of class is over! I had two classes today: both are ENGL 1102s, but one is at the Higher Ed Center and one is on campus. Both classes seemed filled with eager students; I'm looking forward to reading their first journal entries to see what they thought of Monica Ware's "Mislaid Plans" and Linda Pastan's "Jump Cabling."

There were many very positive reactions to The Kite Runner as an alternative to Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I worry that the reading is too light, but the discussions may be more productive as a result.

My online students are already busy--some have taken the first two quizzes (one on the syllabus, one for practice) and posted their introduction. When they mail me their diagnostic essay, they will have pretty much completed Unit 1!

Tomorrow I get to meet my ENGL1101 class, but I have to wait until January 31st to meet the other ENGL 1101 class (blended/accelerated class).

See What I Stumbled Upon

Flickr Tag Search

I stumbled onto this neat tag search engine in a visual format. This makes it very easy to find photos related to interests; I searched for images of Westminster Abbey and it found over 9,000 images. I do wonder, though, about the ease of searching photos. It seems this would often be used to steal others photos. However, I was hoping to find images from INSIDE Westminster Abbey, since photography is forbidden.

Musicovery : interactive webRadio

Musicovery : interactive webRadio lets me click on a mood or dance tempo and it webs musical interests. Sort of like Pandora?

Mr. Picassohead

A virtual Mr. Potato Head with Picasso-styling. A silly time waster.

Sites to visit

I have started in on my magazine bin. I had numerous issues of Parents magazine, Real Simple, and O to read.

Sites for kids (thanks to Real Simple Magazine--fall 2007):

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/
www.sfpg.com/animation/litebrite.html
http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/popnow.shtml
www.redkid.net/generator/trophy
http://www.addletters.com
http://www.howmanyofme.com/

I also checked out this site for trading:
http://www.zunafish.com/

and I've been a member for awhile at
http://www.paperbackswap.com/

Zunafish is intriguing, though, because of the videogames.

Shirley?

The phone rings and I answer, "Hello?"

"Shirley?" rasps the woman on the other end. Oh no! I cringe. It's the Shirley-lady again.

"No, I'm sorry. There is no-one by that name living here."

"Oh. Ok." Click.

I wait. Yes, there it is; the phone rings again. I let the machine pick it up. I wait, but there is no message.
****

Every so often an elderly lady calls our house and asks for Shirley. No-one named Shirley lives here, and I've had this number for almost five years! I used to engage the woman in more dialogue consisting of giving her my number, asking if this is the number she meant to dial, and where Shirley might live (as it might be an area code issue). One day she called me FIVE TIMES IN A ROW, despite my increasing impatience as I explained she was dialing the wrong number over and over.

Now the calls are limited to about once every other months or so. Or maybe it's as a new holiday approaches. I think I'll start writing it down.

I wonder if she ever does talk to Shirley? Or does she only get to talk to me each time?

Whoa!

I know I've read too many essays in one day when I see these words:

Babies are hard to warm up because they've been refrigerated

In fact, there were two sentences on the page (the essay is about types of babies' personalities):

"The slow to warm up baby does have a tendency to cry, but mostly because they [sic] are frightened."

Whew. Sort of...

Bundle of Nerves

Randy and I are now giving a presentation regarding Prairie Fire during our faculty duty day. We were asked to talk about the project from inception to completion. Mixed feelings abound.

I'm taking a class at BSU to learn more about blogs and wikis. Can I be a grad student again? More to the point--am I still studious enough? Or have I become lazy? Will I meet deadlines? Will I have the time I THINK I will have? Am I crazy to take this in the Spring?

Next term looms in the horizon. Will the classes be more/less productive? Will I like not having ENGL 0050 for a semester? Will I enjoy the later class schedule? Will I have more or less time to spend with MayMay?

Prairie Fire

It is done! The project that has taken most of my free time this semester is finished!

My dean asked us to submit a summary of the project to the online newsletter for faculty and staff. Here's what I sent:

Since Fall 2006, we have been working towards the completion of our Excellence Awards project. We proposed the creation of an annual anthology of student writing and art, which would showcase some of our general education coursework, increase interest in the college, and generate student interest.

All last year, we solicited manuscripts via visits to classrooms, emails to faculty, notices in the campus newsletter, and table tents in the commons. Last fall, we also advertised a “Name the Baby” contest and Joan Brickner’s suggestion, Prairie Fire, was the winner.

This project was the result of great support from colleagues. The Graphic Arts faculty assisted with the development of this project by letting their students know about the project and telling anyone who was interested in designing a cover to come see us. Pamela Sund also assisted and brought us a stack of projects from her first year art students. Crystal Jensen, Joan Brickner, and Mark L. Johnson volunteered to be on the editorial board. This fall, we all met and selected the manuscripts and art that would be published. Chuck Chadwick helped us obtain a Bremer grant to cover our initial printing costs. Jamie Grant, then an MSCTC Graphic Arts student and now a full-time graphic artist, is responsible for the very striking cover and the overall layout of our first edition.

The overall goals of the project were:
· To showcase student writing and art and give recognition beyond a grade
· Create potential course material for our writing courses
· To provide an opportunity for collaboration between departments
· To increase the community’s awareness of our Gen Ed program and opportunities at this
campus
· To foster a sense of accomplishment for student writers and artists
· To increase students’ awareness of the concept of audience
· To create a self-sustaining and highly-anticipated campus tradition!

Proceeds from the sales of this book will fund the production of our next edition. We already have a dozen submissions for next semester but expect many more! Students interested in submitting their work (whether it’s a sociology paper, a poem, or an oil painting), can pick up submission forms from us.

Now we have had the pleasure of seeing the project come together: the first edition of the Prairie Fire anthology is for sale at Campus Crossing. They are $5.95 and make great stocking stuffers!

We weren't expecting several things along the way: the one that worked out the best, though, was that the printers were done about a half a week before we dared to hope they would be! We were basically told it may not be finished until finals week, but when I called Thursday for an update, I was told they were done! That threw off all Thursday and Friday plans because we had to pick them up, tally the complimentary copies, create some sort of marketing in the display case we commandeered. We still want to create a bookmark-like submission form to insert in all copies to solicit more manuscripts for the second edition!

Whew.

I was nervous about the whole project, of course, but we had such positive feedback from everyone that I can finally relax and enjoy it.

Cricky! It's Crazy Time!

This past week was frantic. It was filled with work on the last steps towards creating an anthology of student writing and art that a co-worker, Randy Mann, and I proposed as a project last fall. We had hoped to have it to the printers on Monday morning, but as you will soon see, that did not happen. Seriously, I scarcely recall what I did last week because since last Friday I was preoccupied with the following activities:

Took edited files from Randy and tried to lay them out in Word using a booklet template. I started Friday night and worked through-out the day Saturday. I thought it was pretty good. I emailed Randy the file so he could finish editing. He worked hard on this Sunday only to find out the editing didn't save! Six hours worth of work was lost, but he gamely tried it all again. WOW!

On Monday, I worked all day trying to get the pictures not to float, often over or under text, to random pages! I even called in the big guns and asked an instructor who teaches with Word, but she also could not make it work. It wasn't for a lack of trying! She tried text boxes, anchors, different text-wrapping, changing alignment, etc.

Since that didn't work, I sent it to the graphic artist who created our cover art. She completed it around midnight! I should have sent it to her much earlier; a graphic artist, I am not!

Then, on Tuesday, Randy and I printed it, caught minor editing errors and some inconsistencies with layout, so we called the artist in Tuesday evening and worked for a couple hours to iron out some of the glaring errors; trust me, there are still errors.

Finally, on Wednesday morning, we had the files saved to CD and we dropped it off at 9 am. At 2 pm we got the call that the proof was done. Whoo-hooo! I ran to get it, brought it back to campus and showed everyone. It's very striking! We gave it the thumbs up, and we should have copies to sell the week of Dec. 10 or early during finals week.

In the midst of all this, I graded 40 example essays for 0050, planned class, and so on. I did take Friday night off from all things school-related. Today, however, I got back on the horse.

Activities accomplished today:

• Slept in until 10 am. An unexpected treat as hubby was at work and daughter was at Grandma B's. Outcome: a totally rested me who should have been able to grade all day long.
• Tried to teach daughter, who returned early due to predicted snowstorm, how to pick up the cat properly (as opposed to using the tail). Result=one scratch on foot and several tears and no papers graded as planned.
• Graded last blog posts for three classes. Consequence: I feel like I accomplished SOMETHING today despite not getting 0050 comparisons, 1101 Hybrid research papers, or my 1102 poetry essays graded.
• Made sloppy Joes for supper. The effect? Family with full bellies and FINALLY, a non-fast food meal this week for me.
• Played Tomb Raider legend on Xbox 360 for an hour. My impression? Too much fun. I simply must have hubby hide the controllers from me so I get some work done.
• Read 20 more pages in The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Accomplishment: it's like sighting an island after being through a storm at sea. It calms me. It's like it reconnects all the fragmented parts of my life: mom, teacher, student, wife, colleague, daughter, etc. In short, it's rejuvenating to read.

Bad Ads

http://www.about-face.org/

I like this site!

Readings

I finished The Silenced Cry by Ana Tortajada this weekend. The descriptions of the purdah, or separation of men and women by walls, screens, clothing, etc. was fascinating. The diary might be interesting to use for the travel writing as she describes the "tug" Afghanistan has on her even before she steps foot there (Quindlen also discusses this phenomenon in her book).

Even the obvious discussions a class can have about othe contrast between how free we are to travel about, borders (physical and otherwise), space and landscapes would be infused with the experience of another culture.

As Turkey Day looms near, I am reminded that several of the early American explorers also would set the stage for the course. Other works I'm considering right now:

Gulliver's Travels
Kerouc's On the Road

Books for this weekend

I had time to kill between class and a meeting today, so I ran into our library to see what it had to offer in terms of literature, periodicals, and general resources for a class on travel literature. I was pleased to find the Fall 2007 issue of Out Traveler. I didn't even know this existed, but it will be fun to read. They also subscribe to Outside, which features articles on destinations. One caught me eye: "the World's 30 Greatest Trips Ever." I am fascinated.

The books I picked up include

• Conquer the Impossible by Mike Horn (journey around the Artic Circle)
• The Silenced Cry by Ana Tortajada (a woman's diary of her trip to Afghanistan)
• True North by Bruce Henderson (Peary and Cook's journey to the North Pole)
• Queenan Country by Joe Queenan (a trip to England)
• Imaginary London by Anna Quindlen (all about literary London)

I returned to my office at around 1pm, started skimming Quindlen's book, and before I knew it, I had finished it! At 2:30, I closed the book and transported myself back to the here and now. I don't believe I'll use it for my class, but it was a great read, nonetheless.

Other ideas right now include some Lewis and Clark (for the regional factor) and a colleague suggested writings by Theodore Roosevelt and Bruce Chatwin. She also reminded me of the title of the movie in theaters currently: Into the Wild.

Lots of research to do, but it will be a pleasure to do it!

A Break from Grading and Class

Halloween and the past two weekends have blown by. In addition to massive grading, I've been busy with MayMay. For Halloween she was a ladybug; we were harried parents.

We've discovered that MayMay loves jumping in the inflatable things. Unfortunately, she is not much of a jumper yet. She was more often pummeled by the other kids, but she yelled "jump!" the whole time she was in it.

We took a weekend to go to the Manitoba Children's Museum in Winnipeg. MayMay was fascinated with the train. She could play with buttons and levers and sit in the conductor's seat. She played with plastic food in the galley and made us breakfast. She also got to play with water, rocks, sand, pipes, a VW Bug, fun mirrors, slides, etc.

Then we went to the zoo. Yes, it was chilly, but no crowds and the animals were quite active.

MayMay saw this bad boy and yelled, "It's a puma!" Oh, you have to love Go, Diego! Go!

At the hotel, we had access to a kiddie pool, a hot tub, and a giant water slide. I've discovered that I hate dark, loop-dee-loop spaces filled with rushing water. I was certain that the local mounties and paramedics would get to practice their de-fib equipment and skills.

MayMay was not much better with water. We haven't really had an opportunity to have her swim in large bodies of water, so she was nervous but loved it. We bought her a new life jacket for the occasion. She can't balance herself though and keeps flipping over. Now, though, she wants a nightly swim in our hot tub. It's hard to say no and it's kind of nice to get more use out of it.

So this week it's been time to refocus. My accelerated class is nearly over; Wednesday night was workshopping of rough argument/research drafts. In two weeks, they turn in final drafts. The Gateway section of 1101 is just at the drafting stage; today they turned in their research notes. In 1102, the online class is working on their exam and poetry essays, and in 0050, students just wrote their in-class essay and tomorrow we discuss the next essay. There's a lot yet to do!

New Course

The English folks want to keep trying to offer a "Special Topics" literature course, but since my Intro to the Novel class was cancelled for this Fall, I'm nervous about offering another. What courses will students sign up for?

We've offered two with great success: Supernatural/Horror Fiction and Banned Books. I tossed around ideas about genre fiction (but what should I call it it to garner attention? Naughty Novels and Western Wonders? Blechk.), and then my hubby asked why I didn't teach "those darn travel books that you talk about all the time?" You see, I've been on a Bill Bryson binge. I started reading A Walk in the Woods last summer after a colleague mentioned she used it in her Nature Writers course. I loved it and bought all his other travel books (and one on the English language). His other titles include (in the order I read them):

• Notes from a Small Island (which is about his travels through the United Kingdom)
• I'm a Stranger Here Myself (a collection of essays about moving back and adapting to America after 20 years abroad)
• The Lost Continent (traveling across America)
• Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (as the title suggests, it documents his trip through numerous European countries)
• Bill Bryson's African Diary (a small hardcover--proceeds to go a non-profit organization--about a quick jaunt into Africa)
• In a Sunburned Country (travels across Australia)

Of course, he was on to something. I am excited by the possibilities of a class on travel literature. I can use a Bryson text, of course, and I can also use travel blogs, biographers of travelers, poetry like Wordsworths' The Prelude, novels like Gulliver's Travels, and so on. I thought about Whitman's Song of the Open Road but the excessive use of exclamation points remind me of bad emails and, frankly, irritates me.

Ideas for marketing: Escape winter! Take Travel Literature!

There's a lot of planning to do for this: what authors to include, do I limit the class to certain eras or geographies? How to blend fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. into a cohesive approach to the topic of travel writing. What kind of projects? It's not a writing class, but it would be fun to have the students create their own travelogue of sorts. At the very least, have them research and write about places they would like to visit.

This reminds me of the blog created based on Samuel Peyps' diary. I think this is a great way to update the text for modern students. I would love to see this done for Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere journal.