PregnancyNovember 4, 2009
Claiming
Not long ago, on an afternoon off, I took the kids downtown to our natural science museum--one of our favorite places. It's free, and there are tons of neat exhibits to roam around, and some impressive dinosaur skeletons here and there, poised in mid-lunge. When we were in the main dinosaur room I noticed another family there--a woman and man, and their infant son, who must have been about two months old.
November 3, 2009
Anxious
It was strange to be back in the classroom on Monday. There’s nothing like missing practically an entire week of work to make you feel out-of-the-loop, and very, very far behind. I also noticed that while I have a hard time getting any students to come visit me in my office for a chat about misplaced modifiers, or parallel sentence structure, they didn’t seem to mind dropping by to ask me about my battle with the swine flu last week.
What were my symptoms?
How long did my fever last?
Was I really, really, really sick?
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.
- Tags: Technology, Teaching, Students, Parenting, College Life
October 1, 2009
So there
I was talking with a fellow teacher from another college recently and I mentioned to him how much I enjoy reading my students' essays and finding out more about who they are, and where they come from. I told him that the stories they sometimes share with me through their writing are sometimes deeply personal, and that I felt privileged to read them.
"Really?" He looked surprised and uncomfortable. He preferred, he told me, to think of his students in as anonymous terms as possible so he could concentrate on objectively teaching them the material.
"Really?" I countered.
- Tags: Students, School Daze, Parenting Teaching, Children
September 16, 2009
Sanctuary of food
I recently asked my developmental writing students to write up a descriptive piece about food: what foods they remember from their childhoods, and the associations these foods have now in their lives, now that they are out on their own for the first time, and growing into adulthood.
- Tags: Students, Parenting, Moms, Food for Thought, Family, Cooking, Children, Character Sketches
June 4, 2009
Fear factor
When I teach freshman composition--which I do all the time, actually, I try and make an effort to assign my students readings that will help them understand and question the world at large. For years I've been giving my students readings from different cultures--whether they are cultures abroad, or cultures within this country, the one we all claim as our own. I try and shake up their perspective, in order to teach them the critical thinking skills I think are most important for success in this world.
May 26, 2009
Duty
I hope your Memorial Day was a little sunnier than ours. We did get lucky in the end, though. After hours of on again and off again sunshine, the rain clouds blew through around 4:00 pm and we ended up with a perfect window of sunshine for the annual potluck at our neighborhood pool. Also on again and off again most of the afternoon I cooked for the potluck (sesame noodles, banana bread, pasta salad) and listened to many remarkable stories on NPR about soldiers from days long ago, and recent days, too.
- Tags: Teaching, Students, Memorial Day, Holidays, Character Sketches
April 9, 2009
That class
I have learned to appreciate recently that one of the most sensible, truthful, meaningful bits of wisdom out there for me this semester is this: sometimes what doesn't break you will make you stronger.
January 29, 2009
What's in YOUR closet?
Yesterday was a little crazy, all of it--the whole day. At the end of it I couldn't find much I wanted to write about because most of what I would have written about seemed whiny and self-pitying, or included rants about health insurance claims, playground injustices, the weather, and kids who spill hot chocolate on your favorite green pants. Sometimes all these petty and not-so-petty things add up inside your head, like an overflowing storage bin, and you just want to break out the rubber gloves and a gigantic vacuum and do some major housecleaning before you truly lose your mind.
June 24, 2008
Doing things differently
I did an interesting exercise with my students yesterday. We had just finished reading a short essay by Amy Tan--a memoir piece recounting a childhood experience about feeling different, out of place. As the daughter of immigrant parents from China, Tan writes often of her childhood experiences growing up and feeling different from her peers. I asked my students to think a little about a time in which they too felt different, and to write about it. One student claimed she couldn't think of a single time in her childhood or adolescence when she had felt different from her peers.
