October 20, 2009

Talk back

There's a new campus-wide cell phone policy in place at my school effective this academic year. It's nothing earth shatteringly new, only that by making it 100% official we faculty can send a student to the equivalent of the principal's office for being caught more than twice texting in class.

September 10, 2009

H1N1-101

Because I don’t have enough to worry about these days lately, I’ve been (finally) pretty worried about the swine flu.

March 26, 2009

The dream

Yesterday I was standing in the hallway at work, fumbling as usual for the keys to my office and a young woman rounded the corner, a chubby-cheeked baby in her arms. I recognized her immediately as one of the students I taught about a year ago--one of the students from this class. She'd been pregnant then--clearly with the little guy she held in her arms.

"Student S.!" I said in surprise. "So good to see you!"

March 10, 2009

Bag of tricks: The college survival edition

My students are in the throes of midterm exams this week. Whenever I watch my students bent over their papers, I feel a surge of protective, maternal concern for them--even for those students who taxed my patience in the weeks leading up to exam week. But my heart always goes out to them when they're taking tests. They seem more like the children they were (or are?) when they're chewing on their pencil ends, or staring off into space for the answers, or feverishly writing--pouring out all the stored-up knowledge onto paper.
September 15, 2008

Object lessons

The other day I was enthusiastically telling a colleague about a workshop I had prepared for my English Fundamentals class last Friday. I've done this activity with students before--several times in the ten years I've been teaching.