the magical schoolbus goes to america
i ask you all to please forgive the lack of capital letters. they hurt my wrist too much for me to blog with them. so no caps, or no blog (in which case there would still be no caps...)
today was interesting. it began with the bus ride from ... well not so bad as hell, perhaps. but the rain took the breaks out partially, and the lightning flickered across the mirrors like we would all die a painful, frizzy death. and there was a new genre of music playing over the loudpseaker. patriotic country, which is a step worse than just plain country. and really, even that would have been fine, if not for the unavoidable fact that everyone (all 10 odd of them) on the bus was singing to the songs. and glaring at me. because i wasn't.
a) i do not know the lyrics to these songs, and if i did, i'd pull my hair out by the roots.
b) a patriotic song is not necessarily a good song. the two can mix, certainly, but they are not tied to one another. (here i was tempted to make a comment about prisoners, but decided it was tasteless. what you get instead is this comment about a removed comment.)
c) i'll save my public singing performances for the national anthem, and even then, it'll be when appropriate, and not while i'm preparing to die on a bus of brainlessly patriotic west texas yuppies. did i say all that? oh my.
the day got better when i wasn't listening to a multitude of tuneless renderings of some song with the prominent line "i'm proud to be an american/where at least i know i'm free" which actually had a good tune, when the music drowned out the aforementioned west texans.
then i got to class. i had prepared a full 80 minutes of material, on the off chance that my budding writers sat like lumps with shiny eyes. i did not cover even a full 2/3s of it. usually that's a good thing. it means that we got so engaged in something that there was no need for group work or grammar exercises as time-filler. this time, it was not a good thing. my students are a week behind their classmates in other sections, due to the monday thing. so i had to go over the assignment due today, the assignment due friday before i see them again, and the long assignment due next week that they'll need to be writing on this weekend.
it was an 80 minute damage control session. a third of my students came in with today's assignment completed. a third came in without the finished assignment, but with a firm-ish grasp of the procedure. a third came in with, pardon me, not a single fucking clue. by the half mark, the last third had confused the hell out of the middle third, and the first third were contemplating their writing impliments and considering gouging their eyes out from boredom and the frustration of helping me explain it to the growing number of confused students.
first, i tried to move on with the promise that we'd get back to the idea. but every time i asked for questions about the new material, some one would ask about the old, and we'd be sucked back in and more students would be lost. finally, i sent the first third home early, as to not waste their time. i had the second third explain it to me as they understood it, and sent home those who were not yet confused. the others spent the rest of the class with me going over what must have been the simplest assignment i've ever encountered in all my topic teaching. honestly. there have been countless ambiguous assignments in my years here. this was not one of them by any stretch of the imagination.
so now i'm going to have to send out a mass email regarding the assignments due that we didn't cover rightly. if this were my class, i could move everything back and spend time explaining over and over again. but the schedule isn't mine, so i've got to do something to keep us moving along. ugh.
the office hours were supposed to be barren of students, though after the fiasco of class, i expected to be swamped. instead, the helicopter student arrived, to use km's term. they are the ones who come early in the office hours to ask an ostensibly quick question, and then hover for over an hour trying to chat you up. about books on my shelf (which is bulging again), about the course in general, the other class, etc. making or attempting to make the kind of brownie-point jokes that don't apply to topic since i'm not giving him his grade.
i ended up nearly late to the second class, almost lunchless (i managed a little over half of my sandwich at about 3, and taught until 5, but that's okay, because i'd planned a snack break into the lesson plan). i explained that we had a lot to cover, and that there would be a break, so don't freak out on me. we got stuck on the same stupid assignment. and on html. i told them the formula, and they just...couldn't...get...it. really, you just put the carats and letters in this order. there's nothing to get. it's just following orders. no thinking, even.
i didn't get to gnaw on my granola bar because half the students never left for the break, prefering to swarm the desk and ask questions. silly me. thinking they'd get a candy bar and soft drink and settle down for the rest of the time. ha.
but they were incredibly engaged, both classes. right up until the road block. i had so many different examples and explanations, and ways to describe their tasks. we talked about batman begins and all sorts of pop culture stuff that usually clarifies things for them.
all in all, i'd say the classes were extremely successful for literature discussions, and abysmal for composition assignments. i have a lot of lecture notes via email to disseminate.
drive home was fine. ate immediately, and feel a bit better.
my throat has been ticklish this weekend, and i'm a little worried about getting sick. don't need that. no sir. none of that now.
well then, i'll leave you to it, and work on bend sinister for the next 4 hours. should be able to get at least a small chunk of it read. no knitting. the wrist can stay as is until bend sinister has been finished some time tomorrow night. it won't die or anything, and i'll rotate it after every page.
love and peace (and i'm actually finding this lower case enjoyable...)
today was interesting. it began with the bus ride from ... well not so bad as hell, perhaps. but the rain took the breaks out partially, and the lightning flickered across the mirrors like we would all die a painful, frizzy death. and there was a new genre of music playing over the loudpseaker. patriotic country, which is a step worse than just plain country. and really, even that would have been fine, if not for the unavoidable fact that everyone (all 10 odd of them) on the bus was singing to the songs. and glaring at me. because i wasn't.
a) i do not know the lyrics to these songs, and if i did, i'd pull my hair out by the roots.
b) a patriotic song is not necessarily a good song. the two can mix, certainly, but they are not tied to one another. (here i was tempted to make a comment about prisoners, but decided it was tasteless. what you get instead is this comment about a removed comment.)
c) i'll save my public singing performances for the national anthem, and even then, it'll be when appropriate, and not while i'm preparing to die on a bus of brainlessly patriotic west texas yuppies. did i say all that? oh my.
the day got better when i wasn't listening to a multitude of tuneless renderings of some song with the prominent line "i'm proud to be an american/where at least i know i'm free" which actually had a good tune, when the music drowned out the aforementioned west texans.
then i got to class. i had prepared a full 80 minutes of material, on the off chance that my budding writers sat like lumps with shiny eyes. i did not cover even a full 2/3s of it. usually that's a good thing. it means that we got so engaged in something that there was no need for group work or grammar exercises as time-filler. this time, it was not a good thing. my students are a week behind their classmates in other sections, due to the monday thing. so i had to go over the assignment due today, the assignment due friday before i see them again, and the long assignment due next week that they'll need to be writing on this weekend.
it was an 80 minute damage control session. a third of my students came in with today's assignment completed. a third came in without the finished assignment, but with a firm-ish grasp of the procedure. a third came in with, pardon me, not a single fucking clue. by the half mark, the last third had confused the hell out of the middle third, and the first third were contemplating their writing impliments and considering gouging their eyes out from boredom and the frustration of helping me explain it to the growing number of confused students.
first, i tried to move on with the promise that we'd get back to the idea. but every time i asked for questions about the new material, some one would ask about the old, and we'd be sucked back in and more students would be lost. finally, i sent the first third home early, as to not waste their time. i had the second third explain it to me as they understood it, and sent home those who were not yet confused. the others spent the rest of the class with me going over what must have been the simplest assignment i've ever encountered in all my topic teaching. honestly. there have been countless ambiguous assignments in my years here. this was not one of them by any stretch of the imagination.
so now i'm going to have to send out a mass email regarding the assignments due that we didn't cover rightly. if this were my class, i could move everything back and spend time explaining over and over again. but the schedule isn't mine, so i've got to do something to keep us moving along. ugh.
the office hours were supposed to be barren of students, though after the fiasco of class, i expected to be swamped. instead, the helicopter student arrived, to use km's term. they are the ones who come early in the office hours to ask an ostensibly quick question, and then hover for over an hour trying to chat you up. about books on my shelf (which is bulging again), about the course in general, the other class, etc. making or attempting to make the kind of brownie-point jokes that don't apply to topic since i'm not giving him his grade.
i ended up nearly late to the second class, almost lunchless (i managed a little over half of my sandwich at about 3, and taught until 5, but that's okay, because i'd planned a snack break into the lesson plan). i explained that we had a lot to cover, and that there would be a break, so don't freak out on me. we got stuck on the same stupid assignment. and on html. i told them the formula, and they just...couldn't...get...it. really, you just put the carats and letters in this order. there's nothing to get. it's just following orders. no thinking, even.
i didn't get to gnaw on my granola bar because half the students never left for the break, prefering to swarm the desk and ask questions. silly me. thinking they'd get a candy bar and soft drink and settle down for the rest of the time. ha.
but they were incredibly engaged, both classes. right up until the road block. i had so many different examples and explanations, and ways to describe their tasks. we talked about batman begins and all sorts of pop culture stuff that usually clarifies things for them.
all in all, i'd say the classes were extremely successful for literature discussions, and abysmal for composition assignments. i have a lot of lecture notes via email to disseminate.
drive home was fine. ate immediately, and feel a bit better.
my throat has been ticklish this weekend, and i'm a little worried about getting sick. don't need that. no sir. none of that now.
well then, i'll leave you to it, and work on bend sinister for the next 4 hours. should be able to get at least a small chunk of it read. no knitting. the wrist can stay as is until bend sinister has been finished some time tomorrow night. it won't die or anything, and i'll rotate it after every page.
love and peace (and i'm actually finding this lower case enjoyable...)
posted by Rehkmira @ 19:44
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